A/N: I apologize for the very lengthy hiatus
Chapter 8
Claudia opened her mouth to tell Helena exactly what she found out, still too incensed to think of the negative consequences of divulging the information. Artie reached the young woman before she could utter a word, swiping the Farnsworth from her hands.
"Nothing," he said gruffly, "that can't wait until you two get back." He promptly cut off the connection and closed the Farnsworth. Claudia walked over and angrily swiped the Farnsworth back from Artie; an arched eyebrow and thin lipped scowl clearly projecting a what-the-hell look at the older man.
Artie sighed, sliding his glasses up onto his head before rubbing his face in exasperation. "Think with me," he spoke toward the young woman, his eyes closed, his fingers pinching the bridge of his nose in an attempt to staunch the oncoming headache he could feel building behind his right eye. Opening his eyes to see Claudia with her arms crossed defensively and still looking decidedly upset, Artie tried to make her understand, "What would Pete do with this information?"
Claudia narrowed her eyes at him trying to see where he was going with that particular line of thought. Rolling her eyes at him she decided to just go with it and answer Artie's question, "He would get pissed about whatever the hell the Regents were thinking. He'd probably rant and rave until he tired himself out," she rolled her eyes at herself and shook her red mane, "kinda like I'm doing. And then he would try and figure out what exactly this all even means." She made an all encompassing gesture with her hands. "And then, we would all make a plan on how to use this info to bring Myka back."
Artie nodded, agreeing with her. "What would Helena do?" The young woman opened her mouth to reply, floundering for an appropriate answer; silence stretched between them. Snapping her mouth shut, Claudia stared at Artie with an unsure expression marring her features. "Exactly," Artie whispered almost to himself.
After a tense moment, Claudia shook her head running a hand through her short hair in frustration, "Okay, Artie," she lowered her arms, blowing out a short breath, "I get it. My bad alright," she waved her hand dismissively, "I probably shouldn't have mentioned anything to HG." She moved to exit the room, "She was gonna find out anyway. And, I'd much rather tell her and have her on our side than she find out we hid it from her, too."
Artie surprised Claudia by grabbing her shoulder and spinning her around to face him, "I don't think you appreciate the very real threat HG could be if given the proper motivation, Claudia," he sounded almost frantic.
"Whoa there old man," Claudia lifted her hands in the universal sign of surrender, strongly staunching the urge retaliate to his grip with force. "HG isn't the bad guy here, Artie," she tried to reason, noting the real worry on his features.
"She's just a time displaced genius with an emotionally unstable psyche whose lover is in some sort of temporal coma that the super secret entity she works for has known about for over a hundred years," Artie's eyes bored into her as he released her. "You don't have to be a bad guy to do bad things," he sighed heavily, "sometimes circumstances can drive you past a certain point where you can't distinguish good from bad."
"Speaking from experience?" she asked picking up her Farnsworth, avoiding Artie's stare.
"I think we both know what that feels like," he replied softly after a moment's pause.
Claudia turned to him and shrugged the comment off, "So what do we do about this?"
"We start by asking Mrs. Frederic," Artie motioned to the figure that had appeared behind Claudia, "the very same question."
Pete slowly closed the Farnsworth, "That was weird," he stretched out the word, "even for Artie." He looked over at Helena who had an inscrutable expression on her face. "What do you make of it?" He asked almost as an afterthought, trying to not immediately shut the other woman out. They needed to work together or nothing was going to get accomplished. He was willing to concede the high ground and be the one to initiate conversation, knowing Helena would likely not be the more forthcoming one of the two.
"I haven't the faintest idea," Helena shrugged at the other agent, uncomfortable with the unexpected and inexplicable feeling of dread that gripped her. It worried her that Artie felt the need to hide something. She knew the man distrusted her and was, at the best of times, not the most open person but something about this situation felt different, and she was much too deeply invested in Myka to ignore the uneasy feeling coursing through her.
"Whatever it was," Pete grunted as he heaved himself into the driver seat of the SUV, "it's giving me a bad vibe."
Helena followed suit into the SUV (albeit much more gracefully), lost in her own thoughts. The silence stretched between them for a few miles out of the rest area, not nearly as uncomfortable as the suffocating silence of the first leg of the trip back to the Warehouse.
Trying to fill the silence, as quiet was not his natural state, Pete fiddled with the radio before giving up when all the stations were little more than static. Sighing dramatically he looked over at Helena who had a brow arched at his behavior (slightly amused despite herself). "What?" he whined, wanting to stick out his tongue at the woman but refraining in an attempt at maturity. Helena raised her other brow, shaking her head at his antics, before she turned away ready to ignore him for the remainder of the trip. Pete finally gave into his childish pique and stuck his tongue out at Helena's turned head.
The action inadvertently made him think of Myka. The thought immediately sobered him. Becoming serious, Pete cleared his throat, "So," he waited until Helena turned her head back toward him, "I'm all ears HG. What's your version of what's going on?"
Releasing a heavy sigh, Helena turned to look at the rolling planes lazily extending to the horizon, "I am unsure where to begin."
"The beginning," Pete retorted sarcastically, "is usually a good place to start."
Ignoring his tone, Helena continued to look out to the horizon in contemplation. "How does one know where the beginning is when past and present seem to converge in a confusing kaleidoscope of color, merging and blurring the lines where one distinctly separates from the other?" she asked in honest wonder. "I only hope our future is hidden somewhere in this as well," she muttered in resigned defeat, tone contradicting the words.
Pete furrowed his brow in confusion, grunting in consternation when he could not dissect the meaning of the inventor's words, feeling he was missing an integral piece to the puzzle. "I'm not sure I follow," he finally admitted.
Helena waved off his statement, already lost in memories of a life long past. "It had been an unbearably cold winter," Helena began, settling into the mode of a storyteller, voice comfortably dropping into a deep alto with tempered cadence, eyes glazed as the reel of memory played across her retina, "and it was coming on spring of 1890, which promised to be as unpredictable as most springs in London tend to be."
"1890? I thought we were talking about Myka," Pete tried cutting in only to be completely ignored by the woman. "Okay then," he mumbled to himself, "I'll just sit here and listen."
"Rain was the most consistent thing that spring. Which was actually quite a blessing as it gave me an excuse to tend to the stranger that had seemingly fallen straight out of the sky into my lap by the name of Myka O. Bering," Helena was too lost in memory to notice the visible shock crossing Pete's face. At the name, he immediately dispelled any wondering thoughts and focused his attention on the unraveling story falling from Helena's lips, listening raptly.
"In the days and weeks following the night MacShane and I found him, the inclement weather allowed Myka to heal properly." Pete was not quite sure he heard the gender Helena was referring to Myka correctly. He would have asked for clarification but Helena did not give him any room to ask questions, she simply plowed ahead as if he was not the one and only audience to whom she was telling the story. "In that time, we acquired something resembling a friendship, though it seemed that Myka was extremely resistant to the idea of more than polite detachment from anyone and everyone."
Helena smiled sadly, finally understanding Myka's reluctance. "I was not just anyone, though," she admitted in a tone approximating guilt, "and Myka was too much a mystery for me not to take an undue amount of interest in." Pete nodded unconsciously, barely noticing every passing mile, already fully engrossed in the unfolding tale. "Myka was easy to interrogate and prod into more than polite detachment once we were partnered together by Caturanga," Helena smiled fondly at the memory of her mentor. "Except for the occasional teasing remark, MacShane was unbelievably unperturbed by the whole ordeal. I think he was just happy to be able to spend more time with his family."
"Your partner didn't mind you all of sudden being partnered with somebody else?" Pete asked quickly as Helena took a small pause.
The woman shook her head absently. "MacShane and I were not really partners," Helena tried to explain, "we were simply colleagues that sometimes partnered up for certain investigations." Pete gave a small nod of understanding, prompting the inventor to continue.
"When Myka's ribs were sufficiently healed after the explosion at the deserted warehouse we found him," Helena continued, falling back into a rhythmic lilt, "we took the opportunity of a clear day to meet Caturanga in Warehouse 12." Helena's voice took on a different, slightly more intimate tone making Pete feel like he was intruding on some private moment, "As unpredictable as the weather tends to be in the spring, we should have known it was inevitable to get caught in a downpour."
Myka closed the book with a soft thud. Her head making a second thud as her forehead hit the closed cover of the book. Turning to look at the mark on her right wrist, she tried to temper the overwhelming feeling of helplessness that threatened to drown her. Closing her eyes and sighing heavily, Myka struggled to ignore the incessant voice in the back of her mind telling her she was never going to find a way home.
She had exhausted the Wells library in search of anything to help her figure out what, exactly, the feather of Ma'at tattoo branded onto her wrist meant. All her research had turned up nothing. Instead of answers she was finding dead ends. She needed access to Warehouse files. Those were sure to have some sort of explanation for her current situation. Myka was willing to try anything to mitigate the growing sense of frustration at her predicament.
Bolstering her courage, Myka straightened back up (grateful when only the barest uncomfortable twinge resonated through her ribcage, not paralyzing pain). She worried her bottom lip as she absently traced the tattoo with the fingertips of her left hand. What does this mean? Her brow furrowed in contemplation as she tried to remember all her Egyptian lore. Why London? Why 1890? Why Warehouse 12? Cutting her eyes to a silver ornament reflecting her imagine, Myka stared hard at the reflection. Why this body? Why in such close proximity to Helena? She had so many questions, and not a single answer.
Gently leaning against the desk, Helena startled Myka out of her thoughts. Green eyes abruptly shifted to hold a twinkling brown gaze. "Ms. Wells," Myka breathed out, her body unconsciously shifting to lend Helena her full attention, "is there something I can do for you?" She cringed inwardly at the suggestive tone her voice took on when uttering the question and the amused smirk Helena shot her way at hearing it. She took in a deep breath to dispel any thoughts in a wayward direction and to calm her rapidly beating heart. Myka realized her mistake a second too late as Helena's scent assaulted her senses making her almost lightheaded. The tenuous control she had gained over the body she was walking in quickly slipping (as it always seemed to do when around Helena), Myka shifted a bit uncomfortably under the prolonged brown stare.
"Mr. Bering," Helena said as she shifted, completely heedless of propriety, to sit herself atop the desk no more than a few inches from a man that was little more than a stranger, "don't you think we are quite past the point of formalities?"
Myka absently noted the question but did not answer, her attention riveted on the woman herself. Swallowing thickly and feeling distinctly constricted and warm underneath the collar of the shirt she was wearing Myka averted her eyes from the beguiling woman looking down at her. Green eyes no longer caught in a brown gaze wondered away from Helena's face (with the intent of focusing on the scene of the sun peeking out from behind heavy clouds outside the window) only to be diverted south of the woman's head.
Helena was in very form fitting suit sans jacket; the trousers, vest, and oxford shirt under the vest all wrapped around the woman perfectly. Several thoughts crossed Myka's mind as she digested the outfit draped over Helena's curves: suit fetish, she discarded that quickly; Victorian fetish, she considered that for a moment before discarding that as well; Helena fetish, and she could not really argue that point unless she blatantly lied to herself. Groaning Myka forced herself to meet Helena's eyes and focus on what the woman was saying.
Helena's eyes narrowed, "Do you have a problem with my outfit?"
Myka floundered, flustered at being caught. "Uhh, no," she started, straightening in the chair, "of course not." She cleared her throat, "I was just admiring how," Myka paused trying to find the appropriate word, "dashing you look." It was the apparently the right thing to say because Helena just smiled and continued as if she had not asked that question. Myka heaved a sigh of relief.
"How do you go from expounding on the merits of my beauty with a frightening familiarity to the constraints of polite formality?" Helena asked continuing a conversation that they never seemed to finish, mostly because the man would not deign to answer any of her questions. Myka flinched at the accusation, more so because it was true. "Who are you?" She asked bluntly. "And how do you know me?"
"You are nothing, if not persistent," Myka mumbled to herself, shifting back in her chair to have a little more personal space to think. "Helena," Myka said the name reverently, "I'm Myka Bering." Helena rolled her eyes at that answer, saying without words that she knew Myka's name but a name was not what she was asking for. "I want to tell you everything," Myka sighed, trying to appease the woman but finding herself unable to give her what she wanted, "but I can't."
"It is Warehouse related," Helena stated more than asked.
Myka nodded, knowing it was much too late to hide the fact that she knew about the Warehouse. She figured she needed the Warehouse resources to get back home anyway, so she needed to divulge the fact that she knew about it eventually. And, she honestly did not want to lie to Helena.
"How do you work for the Warehouse without Caturanga knowing about it?" Helena leaned slightly closer to a retreating Myka.
"It's complicated," Myka said in a rush.
"So you have already mentioned," Helena countered, easing off slightly. "Perhaps if you explained it to me, it would lose some of its complexity," Helena said exasperation seeping into her tone.
Myka immediately felt guilty, her face taking on a contrite expression.
Helena softened at the obvious predicament the young man seemed to be caught in. How is that he is keeping something of so much import hidden and I am the one who acquiesces and backs down every time? Helena was chagrined at her own behavior. She could not seem to find it in herself to distrust the young man, however. He was a stranger, though she was working to at least make him a friend, but she felt a strange connection with him. She was not sure if the connection was spurred from the young man (who obviously knew her, somehow) or if it stemmed from her own person. In either case, she was intrigued. She loved mysteries.
Helena slid off the desk, picking up the book Myka had been reading and stepping over to the bookshelf to put it away. "Come on, then," she said over her shoulder, "let's go to the Warehouse and see if Caturanga can be of more use than these books for whatever it is you are attempting to find out."
Myka rose slowly, not quite sure if she was off the hook completely. She felt as if Helena was just waiting on the proper moment to pounce for more information, but she could not deny the desire to find out what she could garner from the Warehouse archives. So, knowing she really had no choice, Myka trailed after Helena. Each grabbed their coats before stepping out into a cold, wet spring day.
"We're walking?" Myka asked somewhat surprised.
"It is not terribly far," Helena responded, "and you could use the exercise after being mostly bedridden for the past couple of weeks."
"What if it starts raining again?" Myka looked up at the approaching dark, heavy rain clouds that marred the western horizon.
"Let's hope it does not," Helena said impishly, a smirk pulling at her lips, "or that we can outrun any inclement weather."
Myka shrugged and fell into step with Helena.
A mile into their walk the sky opened up and caught the two travelers in a downpour.