New Beginnings by Marcia Gaines

Chapter Seven

Helena sat squarely in front of the portal thinking deeply about the encounter with Myka. The pool of darkness swirled in front of her reminiscent of newly spilled ink against fresh paper. She watched it, eyes unfocused, as she mulled over recent events. In this strange afterlife such interactions were not just rare, they were the leftover rumors of myths shrouded in mysterious legend. Everyone had a story to relate. Supposed escapes believed to have happened to this person or that, whom no one could remember having met, were shared with her in passing. But the stories seemed overly fantastical and they all missed one vital element. She wiggled the fingers of her right hand and felt the fading reminder of her experience. It was not likely any of the stories were credible. She was not even sure her own experience was credible. She looked at the portal more closely, seeking evidence rather than directionless observation. Somehow she made a physical connection with Myka. She felt her. The white vortex was but a distant thought quickly dismissed in light of her discovery. There would be no rest for her now, not until she found a way to make that connection permanent.

Myka turned in earlier than usual and lay in bed contemplating the day's events while rubbing the fingers of her left hand. She could no longer feel the memento of her brush with Davy Jones' Locker, but it played like a movie reel in her head. Helena was in there trapped on the other side of some undetectable curtain, and she tried to make contact. Myka had only one thought playing in her mind; she would find a way to talk with Helena if it killed her. According to Artie any sort of interaction like she had earlier could very well cost her life, but he was sometimes prone to hyperbole and she already knew Helena would never do anything to hurt her. If Helena was trying to reach her, there could be no danger. She glanced at the clock and sighed when she saw it was not yet even nine o'clock. With her mind racing as it was there was no way she was going to get any sleep.

She dressed and made her way downstairs. The rest of the team was in the dining room and she could hear the usual bantering that was a constant companion through their meals. She took care to avoid being seen and she walked toward the hall closet. Myka glanced at the common sitting area and paused. She thought of the many nights she found Helena reading near the fireplace with only a cup of tea to keep her company. The familiar pain she usually felt when thinking of the misplaced time traveler failed to hit her, and she smiled realizing she had hope for the first time in months. She grabbed her coat from where it hung and quietly made her way out of the building. After the confrontation with Artie earlier she had no desire to cause a recurrence.

When she pulled into her parking area at the Warehouse she focused on just one desire. She was heading for the locker to see Helena.

Helena ran through various recollections. She compared each of them to the events of the occurrence earlier. None of it made sense. No matter what scenario she examined she could find no indication of what created the circumstances allowing her to physically break the barrier between life and death. Helena's thoughts raced, and she needed something to give them order. She turned to the one method that always worked – her problem solving skills. One by one she moved through the elementary steps of deductive reasoning applying various inherent laws and sorting through the observed details. She navigated through her plethora of "if-then" statements, mixing and matching them until she exhausted every configuration she could imagine. Her ending results were the positive conclusions that Myka was alive and she was dead. For all her love of deductive reasoning techniques, sometimes the exercise irritated her.

Beginning again, she looked at the portal considering what she knew as the arguments and conclusions formed in her mind. If the boundary could be broken, and Myka had broken it even just temporarily, then it stood to reason something specific to Myka was the cause. But what? She considered their affinity for one another and quickly dismissed it concluding emotion was not unique amidst her fellow captives. So what would set Myka and herself apart from them?

Myka walked slowly to the receiving area for the Warehouse. Newly acquired artifacts yet to be entered into standard inventory sat waiting for inspection. Atop one of the crates, standing on edge as it had earlier in the day, sat the locker. The lid was still open making it look more like a small closet than a chest. She lay her jacket on one of the crates and ran her hand up one of the locker's panels. The wood was gnarled but smooth from its years of use. Weathered brass reinforced each corner revealing a rich patina in the crevices of the metalwork. It was larger than she thought it would be, and yet far too small to match the dimensions Leena described for the container it truly was.

She stood in front of it and thought again of the connection she felt earlier in the day. She waited, but nothing happened. She peered into the box and looked for any sign of life. Again nothing happened. Furrowing her brow she placed one hand against the back panel as she had previously. What was the problem? She spent the next hour trying every possible method she could think of to recreate the feeling from earlier in the day. Nothing worked. When she finally gave up in frustration she swore loudly and hit the side of the box with her hand. The sound echoed down the aisle causing more than one item on the shelves to noisily voice their protest.

"Myka?" Leena's inquiring voice called out to her. Myka turned and greeted her with genuine surprise.

"L-Leena! Hi. What are you… What are you doing here?" The question came out more defensively than she intended. "I thought you were busy in the other room."

"I was," she said. "But, I saw your car through the kitchen window." She looked at Myka and then at the open locker. "I figured you were coming here." Myka looked away avoiding Leena's gaze. "Didn't you hear what Artie said, Myka? That locker is dangerous for you. For all we know it's dangerous because of you." Her voice fell with compassion as she saw the pained look her reminder elicited.

"I just, I wanted to see…" she started before Leena interrupted her.

"You wanted to see if you could re-establish that connection." It was not a question. Myka sighed and remembered how much Leena already knew. As her only confidante Leena spent many hours comforting Myka in her grief over losing Helena, and had dried many of her tears. "You never lost it."

"Yeah, I did." Myka whispered. Leena shook her head, but let the argument go. There was no use in trying to explain what she saw. Though it seemed weaker now, drifting in and out of visibility for her, the wispy connection between Myka and the locker was still there. Now that she knew what to look for she noticed it even back at the Inn, but she kept the knowledge to herself.

"I know I said I'd leave it alone, Leena. I know what Artie said." Myka began pacing. "But what if he's wrong? What if I don't believe it's a portal to another dimension? I didn't see anything change."

"No, but we did." Her voice was gentle as she spoke. "Even though Artie overreacted, his concern was real. Destroying that barrier would unleash hundreds – probably thousands – of angry souls into the world. We can't do it." She paused and chose her next words carefully. "Not for any reason."

Myka's pacing grew more harried and she gestured with her hands as she spoke. "I know. I know! I… I just wish I could explain what it was like. I touched her, Leena. I know I touched her!" The earnestness in her voice was matched only by the intensity of her expression. "She's in there, isn't she?" Myka looked at her with eyes pleading for confirmation. Leena studied her before answering with a nod.

"It doesn't change anything, Myka." Leena's voice was steady.

"It changes everything, Leena. Don't you see that? H.G. is in there," she pointed toward the locker. "She's in there, and she's trying to reach me." Myka stopped pacing and looked out over the Warehouse as her emotions flared. "It's not right. It's not right! She should never have died. She shouldn't be in there."

"But she is," Leena said with a rattling finality. "She gave her life for you."

Myka whirled to face her. "No! Sykes TOOK her life." She spat the words in her fury. "H.G. would be alive right now if not for him! She didn't give her life for me. She had it taken from her!"

Leena paused a long moment before responding. "Yes," she finally said. "And now she is with countless others who also died in unfair circumstances. But, Myka, she made the choice. And if she hadn't, you wouldn't be here. I wouldn't be here. None of us would be here. She saved us all." The words stung. She wished people would stop reminding her that Helena made that choice because of her; she was at fault for the painful loss.

Everyone acknowledged Helena's sacrifice. They all credited her with saving their lives, but only one person turned the pain inward. Only one person heard the words echo repeatedly, "It was the only way I could think of to save you," and knew what they meant. And if Leena and she were talking of anyone other than H.G. Wells she might have been able to hold back her frustrated tears. Instead, she let them fall and sank to her knees. She let herself admit there might not be any hope left, and the tears fell harder. The complexity of her emotion unraveled with the kind of anguish that cleaves a heart in two. Her shoulders shook with the strain of her sorrow and she took heaving desperate breaths when her body allowed. She was a woman finally undone.

Leena knelt quietly beside her, saying nothing, and laid a hand on her back in small comfort. It was a simple gesture, but the compassion in it was real.

Helena's lip hurt from biting it so hard as she watched Myka's emotional breakdown. She placed her hands against the boundary and pushed with all her might. It was no use. She could not penetrate the barrier's integrity in any way. It remained an unspoiled testament to the divide between life and death. Helena stood watching Myka's tears and listened to her despair. She would have died a thousand deaths rather than be the cause of so much pain. The irony of the thought did not escape her, but neither did it change reality. No matter who or what set those fateful steps in motion, in the end it was her death that tormented Myka.

She watched Leena try to comfort the anguished agent, and thanked her with words Leena would never hear. At least Myka had someone who shared in her agony. To think anyone might bear such a burden alone, as she herself did for so many years, was a difficult proposition. When the connection broke and Leena finally managed to get Myka to her feet, Helena turned and walked into the corridor away from the portal. She vowed then and there to end Myka's suffering. If they had a connection, as Leena said, then severing it was the only way to bring Myka peace.

Leena and Myka walked through the door and were met by the entire team in the common area. Pete beckoned the two women over to join them all in a board game. Artie was taunting Pete with his Taboo savvy, and Claudia and Steve fought for the TV remote control. She smiled at their revelry. Clearly the two young agents were still relishing the camaraderie. Their playfulness amused her, it was as if the water-gun fight she'd accidentally walked into earlier in the day had not been enough joviality. They inadvertently targeted her so many times as they ran up and down the aisles at the Warehouse, they eventually soaked her head to toe. She had been forced to return home to change clothes.

She smiled despite her sadness, and found herself accepting the invitation. Maybe a night with her team, having fun, instead of dealing with Warehouse business would shake her out of her misery. "I'll be right there," she said to Pete. "I just need to run upstairs for a minute. Gotta freshen-up." Pete nodded and continued setting out the board game. Myka smiled again and ascended the stairs. She went to her room and was glad she decided to spend time with her friends. Her room seemed small and suffocating tonight. She quickly washed her face, threw her jacket on the bed, and turned to head back downstairs. At the door she paused, remembering to retrieve Helena's necklace. It still sat in the pocket where she stowed it protectively after the water fight erupted. She fished out the locket and hung it around her neck. Whether there was still a reason for hope or not, she would continue keeping Helena near her heart. She patted the locket fondly glad to have it where it belonged, and walked downstairs.

When she returned to the group it was just as Leena arrived with a tray of packaged snacks. Pete, as usual, was the first to dive into the food. They played Taboo for the next hour and enjoyed each other's company. During a break in the game, they were out of snacks and Leena went off to retrieve more, Pete turned to Myka and asked, "So heavy day, huh?" It was more of a statement than a question.

"Yeah, definitely one I would prefer not to repeat," she agreed with an emphasizing look. Pete nodded and took a banana from the tray of fruit Leena placed on the table. He peeled it quickly and popped a piece into his mouth.

"Fo erd oo do oh uhlah tie?" he said with his mouth full of banana.

"Dude! Do you ever not talk while you're eating?" Claudia teased. "We have no idea what you just said." Pete looked at Myka and nodded his head toward Claudia.

"He asked where we went earlier tonight," Myka said stiffly. She had hoped to avoid this conversation.

"Leave it to Myka, the walking Pete-Translator," scoffed Artie. They all laughed.

"We were at the Warehouse," answered Leena. "Myka wanted to visit the locker again." Myka braced herself for Artie's reprimand, but he was strangely quiet. His eyes, however, bore a hole right through her with his stare. Myka looked away. "Nothing to worry about, everything was fine," Leena added more for Artie than anyone else.

"Uh, was that really such a good idea?" asked Steve. "I mean, you know, all things considered?" Pete nodded his head and pointed at Steve as he threw the last of the banana into his mouth. Myka clenched her teeth. It had not been a good idea, but none of them could possibly understand what drove her. None of them suffered like she suffered these last months. To finally have hope and be forbidden to act on it was just not something she could have stomached.

"Yeah, seriously, Myka. The body check you got from Artie over that not enough of a deterrent? It would be for me." Claudia answered her own rhetorical question. Artie shot her a look and she followed it up with a meek, "shutting up." Myka's nostrils flared and she tried to pace her breathing as she felt the frustration and sadness from earlier in the evening return. It was bad enough she was trying to deal with closing the door on the possibility of Helena's return, but now they were asking her to defend her hopes. Why couldn't they understand?

"No. It wasn't. Apparently." Artie's response was flat and even. "Did you try to open the barrier?" Myka gave him a dark look.

"No, Artie, she didn't," Leena said in her defense. "We went, looked, and had a good talk. That's it."

"Uh huh. And what about the locker?" he pressed. "Did it do anything, activate in any way? Was there any sort of interaction between it and you?" His questions came rapid-fire and his volume increased until he was near shouting again. "Did anything come out of the locker? Were there any sounds? Exactly what happened?"

And Myka's composure broke. "Nothing, okay? The locker did absolutely nothing! I stood there, I touched it, I tried to see if maybe, just maybe for once something could go my way and maybe I could have my friend back and be happy." Claudia and Steve looked at each other. "That maybe, just once, I could be like everyone else and bend a rule for something good!" She shot a harsh look at Artie. "That maybe, just once, I might actually be able to associate this job with something other than complete and utter heartache! Exactly how many times do I need to be responsible for losing the person I love because someone else chose to misuse an artifact? How many more times can I go through that? Tell me how much more I have to suffer!" Her voice broke as she addressed the dumbstruck group. Her hands shook as she spoke. "So, yes, Artie, I went to the Warehouse. I visited the locker against your orders, and I tried to see if I could make contact with her. I did it. And I'll keep doing it, because I love her." She looked at each of them in turn. "I love Helena G. Wells and I will never give up on her." She choked on Helena's name, barely able to finish her sentence, and just like that the outburst was over as she buried her face in her hands. The room went completely silent. Off to the side Leena tilted her head and watched as Myka's aural connection grew stronger.

Tears fell from Helena's eyes with Myka's outburst. It was Sykes who was responsible for her untimely death, not Myka. She knew Myka carried the burden of Sam's death with her; adding Helena's death to her conscience would not make that any easier. She looked through the portal and thought of the grieving woman's emotional hell. She wanted nothing more than to return to Myka's side, but the reality of not knowing if they would ever succeed forced her to consider the kind of pain Myka would put herself through unnecessarily. Rather than coming to terms and letting go, she would hold to her hope. And as long as she did that she would keep trying to reach Helena. And as long as she kept trying to make contact, she would only prolong her pain and suffering. Helena loved her too much to allow her to go through that. The only way to release Myka from her self-torture was to remove the possibility for any kind of connection.

She would never let go. She would never learn to be happy so long as she thought there was the slightest chance of breaking the portal open. In an instant Helena realized what she had to do.

She mustered all her will to wrench herself from the scene in front of her. She turned toward the white vortex and started walking.

Pete was the first to move. He shuffled over and sat next to her. He put one arm around her and hugged her tightly. It never occurred to him just how much pain Helena's loss caused her. And, for the first time, it occurred to him he had never given Myka the shoulder she clearly now needed. "You know, H.G. and I… we had our differences… but they were always because I was angry she hurt you. I'm sorry she's gone. In the end, you placed your faith in someone pretty amazing." Myka lifted her head and gave him a small smile. The trail of soft tears stained her face and he wiped them away. Leena placed herself near Myka's feet and gave her a comforting pat on her knee before she spoke. "She was more than amazing. She was a force of nature all by herself."

Each step was like running a marathon so strong was the resistance Helena gave to fight the tortuous call. She imagined hands reaching out to impede her momentum trying to send her backward to the dark masses huddled behind her. She steeled herself and kept walking.

Leena looked at Pete and then at Myka. She raised her eyebrows as she watched Pete's aura fed into Myka's aural connection. It seemed brighter than it appeared just moments ago. When Steve and Claudia crowded in behind her, each placing a hand one of her shoulders, the intensity was undeniable. Their collective energy was strengthening Myka's connection to the locker.

"I didn't get to really know her, but I can tell you that if I ever have someone who cared about me the way she did for you, I'd be the luckiest person in the world." Steve squeezed her shoulder and fell silent. Claudia gave him a reassuring look and sat down next to Myka as she spoke.

She looked into the white vortex. It was blinding and beautiful. A wisp of energy flowed past her and joined the collective, and Helena watched it until she could no longer distinguish it from the other reflective energy. She wondered if that was what would happen to her.

"I miss her too, you know. She was like Victorian-me, and I don't think I ever had more fun than when we used to sit and design new interfaces for some of the equipment around here. She had mad skills. A little more computer training and she'd have upgraded this place something fierce." Claudia beamed a smile at Myka, eliciting one in return, and laid her head on her mentor's arm.

Helena stood before the wall of white contemplating her end. She thought of her daughter, Christina, and wondered if she would keep any memory of her when she entered the swirl of energy. She wondered if it would be cold, or if she would feel anything at all. She considered what it meant to truly let go – and tried to understand how she would shed the intangible aspects of her life.

She placed her hands into the vortex and experienced the strange sensation of being and not being at the same time. The whiteness curled around her arms like fog rolling across an open field. She knew when she finally stepped through the threshold that all she knew and all she was would disappear and simply cease to exist.

The details of her life played before her mind and she dismissed them one by one, thankful for each memory as it served to remind her what a gift it had been to have lived. It was interesting, she thought, how much of what defines a person comes down to nothing more than emotional response to life. In this peculiar place she found it fascinating that for the first time she would find a way to accept the events in her life as simply being moments in the same way the color blue is the color blue. The emotions surrounding those circumstances are what made life difficult, she realized. It was not the circumstances itself. Those emotions mattered only because she had let them matter. They dictated her life when, if she had learned the lesson earlier, she might have had made a difference in the world. But, that was nothing more than regret and in the end it, too, was unimportant. Her mandate now was to focus on what mattered. Her resentments fell away, her joys, and her pains, and when all she had left to shed was her love, she thought of two people. One had driven her for over a hundred years and the other had taught her how to live again.

She looked again at the white vortex and prepared herself.

Artie was the last to speak. He leaned forward in his chair and placed a hand on hers. "Hey, kiddo," he said in his fatherly voice. "I'm sorry. You're right. This job.. it, uh... It takes a lot of things from us, and sometimes I forget how painful that can be." He struggled for the right words. "What I'm trying to say is, Myka, H.G. wasn't a bad person." Myka looked at him. "Well, I mean, she was, but she wasn't in the end. You know what I mean." She smiled as he flustered himself. "In the end, she willingly gave her life for something other than herself, and that kind of selfless act... well... I never realized she had that in her. I was wrong."

Helena looked back toward the opposite end of the portal and saw her old team gathered around Myka giving her comfort. She smiled. It was what Myka needed. Knowing Myka would have such strong support gave her some form of relief.

Leena's mouth fell open as she watched each person's aura flow to Myka and then to the connection. The colors blended and swirled and the soft translucent light-pink became a brilliant blinding white.

Helena took a breath and closed her eyes. She said "for Myka", but the words were stripped away as she entered the vortex and joined with the others. And then, at last, she was free.

The group sat physically and emotionally connected until Myka looked at each of them with a smile. "Thank you," she said. "I mean it, thank you. I'm sorry I got so upset." They stood and walked toward the kitchen for dessert. Pete nudged her from the side and she nudged him back. The tension was over.

"Myka?" Everyone turned at the sound of Myka's name being called. They stood silently and stared. There, in the center of the room, stood a smiling H.G. Wells.

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