Confessions in a Snow Storm
AN:After "The Greatest Gift;" Pete finds himself thinking about what exactly was so different between the Myka he met in the alternate universe and his own Myka. He realizes that he is not the only one that has shaped Myka into who she is today.
OKAY I KNOW I SAID ONE SHOT BUT...
He wakes up early, his sleep plagued with dreams of a time and a place where he could not have possibly lingered. He doesn't know what he would have done, had he gotten stuck there. (Debronzing H.G. and getting her therapy is oddly high on his makeshift list, however. He blames that one the previous evening entirely.)
It was just so wrong and so different there and he couldn't stand even another minute of it.
The bed creaks as Pete rolls over, staring at his alarm clock. Seven in the morning on Christmas Day. He hasn't been up this early on Christmas since before his dad died. His sister tended to like to sleep in, as did his mother - and Pete had grown into a teenage boy just a few quick years later and soon he was sleeping more than either of them combined.
This morning, however, he does not have much time. He fumbles with his Farnsworth and punches in Myka's frequency, blinking sleep out of his eyes as he does so. It's early, but Myka's a morning person - she should be up by now.
He's got to do this before he loses his nerve.
Pete hopes Myka won't be mad.
She looks like she is still half-asleep when she finally opens her Farnsworth and flickers into view. Pete smiles as Myka shoves her glasses up her nose and blinks sleepily at him. "Yes?"
He curls his arms around his knees, holding the Farnsworth over them and staring at his partner's face. She's his best friend in the whole wide world; he can't stop thinking about what it would be like to not have her in his life. He hates the very idea of it. It is wrong and awful and oh god, that Myka had been so lost.
He hated it.
"Hey Mykes," He says. Pete rubs his hand at the back of his neck and tries to pick his words carefully. He doesn't want Myka to shoot him down before he even has a chance to try. Inhale, you can do this Pete. "I uh... Someone wanted to talk to you, and I thought, well, since its Christmas and all..."
H.G.'s orb (pokeball, but he'll never call it that in front of Myka because she'll hit him and it hurts when she does that) is sitting on Pete's bedside table next to his alarm clock. He turns the Farnsworth quickly, wincing a little as Myka makes a grouchy sounding noise on the other end.
Pete can see her eyes widen, and then narrow with half-awake suspicion. He doesn't blame her; he doesn't exactly have the best record of being in H.G.'s corner.
"Pete..." Her voice is hoarse; she coughs a little and Pete waits, hand resting on H.G.'s orb. "I..."
He shakes his head no, and gives her a little grin. "Just wait..."
He opens the orb and watches as H.G. materializes next to him. She takes one look at his attire and turns around quickly, "Agent Lattimer, perhaps some trousers would be in order?"
Pete looks down; he's still in his boxers and a t-shirt. He supposes that Victorian ladies probably don't need to see that, and bends down quickly to pull on the jeans he left on the floor the night before. "Sorry."
"You have no sense of decency, obviously." H.G. tutts, before glancing down at the Farnsworth still clutched in Pete's hand (the one that isn't busy shoving his boxers down his jeans). She sees Myka's face, sees Myka's confusion, and Pete turns it so that H.G. can see Myka quickly, watching as realization and a happy smile dawn on H.G.'s face. "Myka...?"
There's such a look of love and of innocence on H.G.'s face that Pete knows he's done the right thing, even if now Myka looks like she's about to cry and H.G. isn't looking that much better. He supposes that they're still healing.
Pete leans the Farnsworth up against the lamp on his bedside table and pulls the quilt back up over his bed in a half-assed attempt at making it. "I'll just leave you two at it," he whispers, getting up and formfitting his seat for H.G. She takes it with a grateful smile and Pete lingers just long enough at the door to see the look of complete adoration on Myka's face.
"Coffee time," he mumbles, and traipses down the stairs.
He doesn't know how long to give them, how long they'll want to talk. He sits in the kitchen and thinks that he's given Myka the greatest gift of them all, sipping his coffee and feeling very proud of himself.
"Tell me about where you went," Pete jumps about a mile in the air, and barely avoids slopping coffee all over himself as Mrs. Frederic walks into the kitchen. He'd completely forgotten that she's stuck here too (although he thinks that it's just a lie as Mrs. Frederic obviously could apparate).
He sets his coffee down hurriedly, "Went?" he asks, playing innocent and hoping that Mrs. F doesn't know that he's got H.G. hooked up with his Farnsworth upstairs, talking to Myka. That's totally not how he wants them to find out about this either.
Good will at Christmas is good will at Christmas. This has nothing to do with the fact that he didn't even exist over there.
Mrs. F gives him a look and Pete sighs. "I was putting something away in the Aisle of Noel and I might have touched Phillip Van Doren Stern's upholstery brush." The words tumble out of his mouth quickly, like he's telling his mother that he just broke her favorite vase. He feels chastised, even if the whole thing was a complete and utter accident.
"I see that you found it again and made it back in one piece, Mr. Lattimer," Mrs. F replies, pouring a cup of coffee for herself and sitting down across from him. "What interests me more is why you are suddenly full of good will towards someone who hurt you - who hurt everyone here - very deeply."
Pete supposes that it's a legitimate question. He looks at his hands though, and shrugs. "I realized something when I was there. It wasn't just me that shaped Myka into who she is today. There were... other people involved too."
"Ms. Wells, yes," Mrs. Frederic sips her coffee and inclines her head. "What they share runs very deep."
Pete gives her a 'you think' look and shakes his head. "I wanted so hard to be mad at H.G., but to see a version of Myka who didn't know her... I don't know, it was really weird and really unsettling."
"Alternate realities tend to be that way, yes." Mrs. Frederic agrees sagely.
They fall into a silence then; Pete sticks his hands in his pockets and finally asks what he's been afraid to ask since the thought first occurred to him yesterday. "H.G. - she told me that when we turn her off... she doesn't go back to her body, she's just trapped in nothingness."
Mrs. Frederic gives him a sharp look, "That is a Regent matter, Agent Lattimer, you'd do well not to question it."
He can't help himself, it's like a scab once you start picking at it. The whole thing has to come off. "But she's already been bronzed, it seems a little cruel and unusual to imprison her in such a way again when really she just needs a good shrink."
"The regents have closed this matter, Pete, don't think about it anymore." There is a kindness in Mrs. Frederic's voice, laced with a steely threat that tells Pete more than he ever wants to know about how the Regents are willing to do things.
Pete is going to think about it though. He has to. For Myka, for H.G. even, for Claudia who had finally found a maternal figure who both encourages and discourages her from doing stupid shit with artifacts.
"I'm going to go and see if they're done," He says, standing up, coffee mug in hand. He can't let them do that to H.G.
It is strange how dedicated he has become to this cause.
There's quiet laughter in the room when he reaches the door and he sticks his head around it carefully. Myka is grinning at something that H.G.'s said and H.G. is looking a lot less pouty and morose than she's looked in ages. It's a good thing, it's Christmas. Pete's happy for them both.
"So," he begins, sitting down next to H.G. hand accidentally passing through her with a hastily mumbled apology. "It's Christmas, Mykes."
"It is indeed," Myka agrees.
They all smile then, and Pete knows that he'll stop at nothing to put these two puzzle pieces back together again.
It's good that Mrs. F knows where he went, but bad at the same time. Pete doesn't like the idea of H.G. being kept separate from her body – from her personhood. He'll have to tell Myka about that someday. But not today, not on Christmas.
Today is a day for rejoicing.