Tracy parked the car along the street in front of the bookstore and walked inside without even offering to help bring in their bags. She did, at least, leave the door open for them. They walked toward it and Myka noticed the picture behind the building - the sun was resting over top clouds, surrounded by a rutilant haze that was politely waiting to envelop the orb. She had forgotten how beautiful the sunsets were at home, especially in the summer. Is it possible that she missed this place?

"Happy to be home, darling?" Myka must have been staring off, which prompted Helena's question.

Myka's lips ticked upward for a moment, "I guess I've missed some things, yes." Helena tried to smile back, but couldn't quite manage it. This wasn't her home. She didn't exactly have one of those anymore, it seemed. It was all unfamiliar and, while in the past that had seemed exciting to Helena, in this very moment, it set her on edge.

Myka held her hand out expectantly, "You ready?"

A quick nod and a squeeze of her hand in response and they approached the doorway. Myka tried to walk toward the flight of stairs to leave their things in their bedrooms, but Helena yanked her back.

"What?" Myka's pulse quickened, "What's wrong?"

"Myka…" Helena's eyes were wide, moving reverently from one aisle to the next. She took a deep breath and let it go silently. "Did you really grow up here?"

Myka quickly looked around herself, "Well, yeah. Upstairs, but yeah."

"How did you ever manage to get anything done? Look at this…" Helena let go of Myka's hand and approached a florid mahogany cabinet that kept a number of first editions illuminated, on display, and under lock and key.

"Yeah, that's where my parents keep the collectors' items they buy and sell. They're mostly what keep the store in the black. Mom and pop bookshops aren't really a cash cow, but they do well with those." Myka explained while looking up the stairs to see if her parents were moving about. All she could hear was the sound of a muted pop song coming from behind Tracy's closed door. When she turned back, Helena was gaping at her.

"Myka, there is a first edition of Fahrenheit 451 in here."

Myka crossed to look at the copy herself, "Oh, they must have gotten that recently, I wonder if it's inscribed or not…" She began examining the copy through the glass.

"How are you so calm about this? It's remarkable!" Helena nearly shouted the words incredulously.

"It's nice to hear that someone appreciates my work."

Both Myka and Helena's heads snapped toward the front door, where Mr. and Mrs. Bering were standing, holding a number of leather-bound books sealed tightly in plastic bags. Myka didn't respond to her father's voice right away. She had prepared herself for the eventual meeting face-to-face. She had run through every scenario of what might happen when she saw him again. Would he pretend like their conversation hadn't happened? After all, it had been a few months ago. But he knew how to hold a grudge… Would he pick up where they had left off and start lecturing her about her lack of experience? Would he passive-aggressively throw in digs about her relationship status or point out how much, exactly, their trip had cost him? She had prepared a response no matter what version of Warren Bering greeted them. And yet this, this sudden and abrupt appearance of her parents, she had not been ready for. She was off her guard. Again. Helena noticed her hesitation and approached Myka's parents herself.

"I'm afraid I was coveting your collection. Myka had spoken highly of it," she hadn't, "but I am still quite impressed."

"Well, I'm glad it's lived up to your standards." Warren began to walk past the girls when Helena stepped in front of him and put her hand forward to shake his.

"I'm sorry, I haven't properly introduced myself. I am, of course, Helena and I want to thank you so much for your kindness in the past few months. It has meant a great deal to me. I apologize if I've seemed rude for not thanking you before tonight, but I intend to make that up to you. Both of you. Myka has told me how wonderful it is to work here," she also hadn't said that, "and I couldn't be more delighted to be sharing the summer with you all."

Warren scoffed in response, but before he could give a true riposte, Helena continued on.

"I'd be happy to carry those for you, if you'd like."

It seemed that Helena was impervious to Warren's churlish demeanor. If she kept this up, Myka didn't know what her father would do. He always expected a response when he antagonized people. If Helena refused to acknowledge it, then he couldn't pick a fight with her. He couldn't make her look bad. Myka dipped her head and grinned. Of course Helena would be good at interacting with him. She had worried when they originally agreed to spend the summer in Colorado with her family. Partially because she wasn't interested in going home herself and partially because she had thought Helena too vulnerable. She had felt like she would be leading an injured zebra straight into a pride of lions.

But no, even at her worst, Helena was so much more capable than that. So much more perceptive than that. She could read people like they were the books in this very shop. She had done it to Myka too, though in that case, it had come from a place of genuine interest in the girl. Here, now, Myka knew that Helena wanted to win the game. Helena wanted to win the game for Myka.

"I think I can manage them on my own." Helena smiled at him as he walked up the stairs and Myka was certain she heard him muttering to himself, though she couldn't make out the words.

"What about you, Mrs. Bering? Do you need any help?"

Jean smiled back at the girl, "Actually, yes, could you hold these for just a minute?" Helena took the sealed books from her hands and Jean turned to her daughter, hugging her tightly without giving Myka's arms the freedom to hug back.

"I'm so glad you're home, sweetie." After a kiss to Myka's cheek, she turned to Helena and gave her a hug as well. "Helena, welcome to our home. We're happy to have you." She took the bags back out of Helena's hands. "Your father and I have some work we need to get done with these new books. There are leftovers in the refrigerator, or you can order something. I'm sorry I didn't have dinner ready for you, today was all very unexpected. Just let me know what you decide." She laughed nervously and went up the stairs as well.

"Be up in a bit, Mom." When Jean was out of earshot, Myka swiveled around to face Helena, playfully backhanding her forearm. "Well, that was well played."

"Whatever do you mean?" Helena went back and grabbed both of their suitcases that were still sitting in the middle of the room and rolled them over to the stairs. She busied herself with their things as Myka continued to watch her.

"You know what I mean." Myka drew the words out, acting as if she were in on some secret, as she picked up her own bag.

"I don't. Which way is the guest bedroom?"

Myka squinted her eyes and waited one last time for Helena to acknowledge her duplicity. "Fine, it's up the stairs, to your left, the door all the way at the end of the hall."

"Thank you very much."

Myka followed Helena upstairs as well. Her bedroom was right next door to the guest room, so she let Helena get settled while she unpacked. Her room, window facing right out to that sunset, was the same as she had left it after winter break, though it looked like her mother had put new sheets on the bed and dusted the knick-knacks, trophies, and medals around the room. She opened her suitcase and began to unpack into her now empty drawers. It was strange to be coming back to this place - it being the same, and she being so very different. She had felt that at Christmas as well, but when she was home then she didn't even bother unpacking the suitcase, reminding herself that she would be going back to her new life quickly. But this time, she had brought her new life with her.

She heard a sigh behind her and turned to see Helena leaning against the doorway, watching her.

"Enjoying the view?"

"Marveling at its beauty, yes."

Myka shook her head and returned to her suitcase. "You're such a sap sometimes."

"I prefer the term romantic." She crossed to Myka's bed and sat, leaning her back against the pillow and the corner where the walls of the room met.

"The guest room is nice." Myka hummed in agreement and continued to organize her things.

"Myka, can I…" she faltered, but came back more resolute. "Can I sleep in here with you instead of in the guest room?"

Myka laughed and her eyes went wide. "There is no way my dad will let us sleep in the same bed. Can you imagine even asking him?"

Helena scooted toward the foot of the bed so she was closer to Myka, and her hands were clasped tightly around that frog Myka had seen in her bedroom in England. She hadn't noticed that she had it with her until then.

"I know, I know that. I'm not asking to sleep with you so we can do anything. We can even move a second bed in here. I just…"

When she hesitated again, Myka crossed to sit next to her on the bed.

"I just need to hear you breathing. I need to feel that thing that you do as you're falling asleep."

"What thing?"

Helena looked down and grinned, relaxing her hold on her stuffed animal. "You… twitch. Like your brain's trying to convince you to stay awake, but your body won't agree to it."

"I didn't know I did that..."

"You wouldn't, you always fall asleep right after." Helena chuckled while Myka tried to imagine this habit she didn't even know she had.

"I get anxious when you're not next to me."

The honesty of Helena actually acknowledging the root of it brought Myka closer to her. She cradled Helena's cheek in her hand and kissed her palm. "You know I'm not going anywhere, right?"

Helena nodded, "Yes, I know, but, try as I might, I can't quite convince myself of it."

"Well… my parents tend to go to bed around eleven. I suppose one of us could sneak into the other's room?" She was thinking how it might actually work, "Although my mom wakes up pretty easily… What if she came to check on me and found you in bed too?"

"I think she'd probably find two clothed individuals who just happen to be asleep in the vicinity of one another and she would realize that our need for one another outweighed your desire to follow the rules." It was a convincing enough argument.

Myka flopped down and landed on her pillow, her body feeling more tired than she had realized. Maybe it was the time change. "Well it's not like my desire to follow the rules has gotten me anywhere, so I don't think it would matter much if I broke them…" She turned onto her side, "He didn't even speak to me, Helena."

Helena nodded, running her fingers up and down Myka's leg. "Your father is a very interesting man. He reminds me of my own after the accident." At the mention of her father, Myka visibly tensed, but Helena grasped her thigh, reassuring her that she was fine. It was okay to talk about him. "The only difference is mine didn't have the capacity for rationality anymore. There was no reason for his outbursts, they simply came when they came and then they were over." She looked down at her frog again. "No, your father is much more self-aware. He knows what he's doing." Helena pursed her lips, reviewing the scene in her head once more for any indication of what made Warren so combative.

"Wait a second," Myka hopped up to her knees "You did know what I was talking about downstairs! You were playing a game with him!"

Helena grinned slyly without verbally acknowledging Myka's observation. "I sincerely appreciate his kindness, and it was, in fact, a kindness. He let me see my father one last time and I mustn't forget that. I just don't necessarily appreciate his lack of kindness toward you."

Myka pulled her back so they were laying down, together this time, on top of the bedspread. She didn't want to talk about her father anymore or analyze his inability to communicate with her, there would be plenty of time for that in the coming months. Myka looked down to find the stuffed frog now comfortably poised between the two of them.

"Where did you get this?"

Helena chuckled, "Where else?"

"Of course." Myka hadn't meant to bring up her father, again, but Helena's attachment to the creature made perfect sense now.

"Do you want to know what I did to this when he gave it to me?" Myka nodded. "Do you see where it's all stitched up on the stomach? Papa had recently told me about dissections," Myka knew where this was going and snorted back a laugh. "and I wanted to try one of my own out. When my mother found me with the knife she nearly screamed her throat dry, but I explained to her that I wasn't trying to kill the frog, I was studying it, like Papa told me about!" As she went on, she became more animated until Myka was guffawing and even Helena was having trouble controlling her laughter. "Oh, she was furious with him. Of course, I was just disappointed that all I found in the frog was stuffing. When he got home, he sewed it back up and explained that I should always wait until he was there if I wanted to do science experiments. He tried to be stern with me, but I could tell he thought it was funny. And a week later there was a mini-laboratory set up for me in the basement." Once their laughter had died down, they laid in silence for a few moments in which Myka curled into her embrace. Helena closed her eyes, a foreign bulge appearing in her throat.

"Charles was right, wasn't he? There was no hope for me to bring him back, was there?"

Myka began making sounds in argument, but Helena could feel her body going slack... and there was that slight twitch.

"It wasn't my fault. I couldn't have changed it."

Twitch, twitch.

She knew it would get bigger and then Myka would be asleep. They hadn't yet made a decision about where Helena would sleep, but Helena knew it was useless to try to talk to Myka once she was this far gone. Then there was the light breath on her cheek signaling that the girl was completely out. Helena turned her head to lay a kiss on the sleeping girl's lips, which turned up into a sleepy grin before returning to their slack position.

"Oh Myka Bering, you are a wonder."

She took a final look at her before she grabbed a quilt from the end of the bed and blanketed it over her still body. The sun was fully down now and there was only a faint luminescence from a streetlamp coming in through the window. Helena backed out of the door, shutting it silently. When she turned around, she found Mrs. Bering in the hallway and jumped back toward the door.

"Oh! I'm sorry, you startled me! Myka fell asleep. Must be the jet-lag." They shared a smile and just as Helena went to open the guest room door, Jean began speaking.

"Well, in that case, do you know what you'd like for dinner? We could just order pizza?"

"Oh no, Mrs. Bering, that won't be necessary, I have some food left over from the trip. Do you think, though, that someone would be able to drive me to the supermarket in the morning?"

Jean sighed, "Helena, please don't think that you have to fend for yourself while you're here."

"That's very gracious of you, Mrs. Bering, but I'd like not to be even more of a burden than I already feel."

"All right, well if you change your mind, we'll be in the kitchen. It's just at the other end of the hall."

Helena nodded her head and went back into the guest room where she immediately crossed to her backpack that sat on the chair facing the desk and opened it to take out her books and notebooks. She had brought along notes from Dr. Frederic who had given them to her just in case. Just in case she felt like keeping up on the continuation of their research. "The trials with new patients, the findings coming in, and so on," as she had been told. She skimmed through them before changing her mind completely and walking to the kitchen.

It had only been a few minutes since Helena and Mrs. Bering had parted and Helena found her, along with Tracy, looking at coupons and discussing what kind of pizza to order. They looked up when she came into the room.

"Actually, Mrs. Bering, I would like to have dinner with you. If that would be all right."

"It would be more than all right." Tracy nodded her head vigorously while her mother spoke. "Why don't you just come help us pick something out, none of us can ever decide on anything together."

"Well the field is wide open for me, really. I'll have the option of continuing my studies in any number of specific topics after I graduate." Myka's mother and sister had become very interested in exactly what it was that Helena was studying and so she had spent a great deal of their meal together talking about her background and how exactly it was that she ended up in Cleveland, of all places.

Up until this point, Warren had been sitting in the seat closest to the door, eating his food quietly, but not outwardly paying attention. He had a bundle of research material in front from the acquisition that he was reviewing.

"I assumed you were studying literature. You seemed pretty interested downstairs. And Myka," Warren cleared his throat. Helena wasn't sure if it was intentionally a slight to his daughter or not, "you got her that book of H.G. Wells stories at Christmas?" He looked up at her, his eyes narrowed behind his glasses.

"Ah, yes, that was more of a joke, actually." They all looked more or less confused. "Joke isn't the right word. Regardless, I wanted to be in the sciences… like my father."

They all suddenly went back to their food and, for the second time since she had been in the house, Helena had to assure members of the Bering family that she was okay.

"He was a research scientist, and so he taught me a lot of what I know. My mother is an English teacher, so my love of literature mostly comes from her." Mrs. Bering and Tracy both began to ask her more questions, Jeannie asking about her mother and Tracy asking about how she got her hair to be so shiny. It was charming and lovely and Helena was pleased that they were all getting along better than Myka could have possibly hoped. Just as Helena thought of her girlfriend, Myka stepped into the kitchen doorway, bleary-eyed and having changed into pajamas. Before she said anything though, Warren spoke up again.

"I followed in my father's footsteps too."

Everyone quieted down to listen to what he had to say and Myka stopped behind him, so Warren still hadn't seen her enter the room.

"He, uh…" he cleared his throat again, "I was the oldest of the kids and when he got sick, well, I basically took over."

Myka's father never talked about his childhood. Well, he certainly hadn't to his own children, so this was the first that Myka or Tracy were hearing about this. He looked like he was seeing it all happen right in front of him. He didn't notice his rapt audience, only the people he was remembering.

"Mama couldn't handle it on her own. Raising three kids without anyone's help. So I had to step in. I wanted to go to college, study the classics, but she needed me. Eventually, the store folded anyway. She remarried and I moved out here. No reason but to get away. Wandering until I met Jeannie, and the rest, as they say, well. You know." He finally noticed everyone in the room was focused on him and cleared his throat one last time before he returned his attention to his papers.

"Ya know, I'd better go finish reading these before the meeting with Jim tomorrow." He put his plate in the sink and turned toward the doorway where Myka was still standing, completely frozen, gawking at him. His face softened at her appearance before quickly shuttering itself up again behind a mask of sternness.

"Could you move, please?" Myka wordlessly stepped into the room and out of his way before he traipsed off and shut the door to his bedroom loudly.

At the noise, Jeannie set her plate in the sink as well. "Girls, would you mind cleaning this all up before you head to bed?" She didn't wait for an answer, kissed Myka on the cheek, and followed her husband into the bedroom.

"Whoa." Tracy looked over at Helena. "Seventeen years, I've never heard him talk about that and you're here for, what, three hours and he's spilling his guts? What's that about?"

Helena looked down, running the tablecloth through her fingers absentmindedly, "I couldn't say." Though she probably had a good idea of what it was.

"That was weird." Tracy looked up at her sister, "You look like a mess."

"Thanks Trace." Myka hadn't yet moved from her spot near the door. She was alternating between looking at the closed door of her parents' bedroom and Helena, at the table.

"I'll do the dishes if you guys put the rest of the pizza in the fridge and take the garbage out."

"Yeah, whatever…" Myka was still processing. Any time she had ever tried to ask her dad about his family, about where he came from, his lips had been sealed tight. Her mother had filled in some of the gaps for her when she had to do family tree projects, but it was still mostly a mystery to her. She hadn't even known that he, like Helena, and Pete for that matter, was young when his father died. Though now that she heard it out loud, it made sense.

Myka ate silently while Tracy did the dishes, once again catching Myka up on gossip that she didn't care about in the least. Helena gathered all of the cardboard boxes and Tracy showed her where their garbage cans and recycling bins were, directly out the back door.

When Tracy had eventually tired of trying to make the girls care about her high school exploits, she went to bed, leaving them alone at the kitchen table.

"When did I fall asleep?"

"Oh, a little while after I told you about the frog."

"Right." Myka chuckled at the memory of the story. "Did I twitch?"

"Yes, of course."

"Riiiight." Myka's head began to dip and her eyelids were fluttering closed.

"Darling, I think you should go back to bed." Helena tugged a reluctant and overly-tired Myka out of her seat and led her to her door, turning her so that they were facing one another. "And this is where we say goodnight."

"You don't have to sneak in, they're probably in there for the night." Myka whispered it, though her voice carried more than she realized, so Helena put her hand across the girl's mouth while grinning wide and shook her head.

"No, Myka, I think I should stay in the guest room and you stay in your room. At least for tonight."

Myka looked crestfallen. "Really? You got my hopes up earlier."

"Let's just try it tonight, okay? If I change my mind, if it's too hard, I'll come over."

"You'll use your ninja skills so you don't even wake me up?"

"Unless you want to be woken up."

"That depends on why you wake me up." Myka grinned once more and Helena almost followed her into her room, but she truly did want to try this alone. More than anything, she just needed to know if she could.

"All right, go to bed." She peeled the girl off of her and opened the bedroom door, leading her to lay back down. "I'll see you in the morning."

"Good night, Helena."

"Good night, Myka."