Thanks to Aimofdestiny for the beta.
2014
Helena raked her hand through her hair repeatedly while talking to Abigail. She had just told the former therapist about one of the recurring nightmares that had become a staple of her dreamscape since she had been de-bronzed. Abigail had told the Victorian to write her night terrors down immediately upon waking, so that they became available for further analysis: commonalities and points of connection that might reveal their source.
The Victorian was slightly frustrated; to her the connection was clear as day. Every last nightmare she'd had had been about Christina. Unless of course they were about Myka and Adelaide. The faces that featured in her dreamscape were the clear commonalities of her nightmares. The precise events in her dreams were changeable, even though they were similar. Disaster befell those three people. Actually, there was another connection between those dreams: Helena was always involved in those events, sometimes even responsible for them. Invariably, she would jolt upright in bed, her clothes damp with sweat and her heart beating so fast that she was afraid it would burst free of her chest.
Sometimes there was yet another connection between those dreams. In those dreams, a new face joined the old: A young woman, slightly taller than Helena, with dark, curly hair, and bright green eyes. That was all Helena could see of her when she was there. The writer felt she knew the young woman, even though she didn't recognise her face. But those eyes made the Victorian uncomfortable. That woman had shown up in her dreams since HG had lived in Boone. The green-eyed apparition had not become involved; she had merely stood there, watching Helena struggle with losing Christina, Myka or Adelaide. Once, however, she had walked over and had taken the writers hand, smiling fondly at her. Just that once, Helena had felt safe.
"So Myka shows up in your dreams, too?" Abigail asked interestedly.
"Well, she's important to me and I seem to be afraid something could happen to her, yes." Helena concluded while leaning back in her chair and staring at the ceiling.
"And how important would you say she is to you?" Dr. Cho was a little too interested in HG's personal relationship with Myka. At least this was what the Victorian thought. The former therapist redirected the topic of the conversation towards the curly haired woman altogether too often. It wasn't that she didn't want to talk about anything else, or that she wasn't interested in Helena's other problems. Nevertheless, the topic of 'Talking to Myka' came up very often - and at some point the writer had begun to get the feeling that it was more Abigail's personal interest than part of the therapy.
Well, of course talking to Myka would also be a step forward for her recovery, but...
"Guess." Helena said with a slightly annoyed tone of voice. Of course she was in love with Myka and of course the therapist knew.
"Have you decided to talk to her, yet?" Abigail went into the topic, Helena could hear her smiling at the words, but something told her that the former therapist wasn't really referring to their love for each other.
The Victorian leaned forwards and mustered her intensively. "Dr. Cho."
Dr. Cho smiled softly. "Abigail."
"Abigail. HG." The writer replied naturally.
"HG?" The therapist seemed to give those letters a try.
"Abigail." HG nodded encouragingly.
"Good." The keeper of the inn smiled again.
"Abigail, I don't know if I want to talk to her... I don't mean talking to her at all. Of course I want to talk to her because we're colleagues and friends. But... this whole situation is..." Helena made a frustrated noise from somewhere low in her throat and squeezed her eyes shut.
"You mean this - how did Claudia describe it back then?- 'time travel and seeing a future' situation?" Abigail eyed Helena questioningly.
"Indeed. That's my problem. She has seen a future in which she has... a child. What does that mean?" The Victorian huffed, still frustrated.
"That you two maybe-" Dr. Cho was immediately interrupted by HG.
"No, that's exactly the problem. That's it. 'Us two'... having children. We both know that I love Myka and that it would be so wonderful to be with her but... I'm afraid that this daughter in the future Myka has seen isn't mine as much as I am afraid that she is mine."
Abigail bowed her head in understanding and was quiet for a brief moment. "But what would it mean for you if that child was yours?"
The writer's eyes darted around the room for several seconds while she was searching for words. Her mouth opened and closed a few times. Helena was obviously very conflicted about this topic.
"A child in this world... with me as a mother. Abigail, that's jus-"
"Ah, I see." The former therapist tiled her head and offered the Victorian a caring look. "Your biggest problem, HG. The problem we want to work on." She leaned forwards in her seat and rubbed her hands. "You were talking about running from the Warehouse and running from Myka and hiding from both of them as Emily Lake. Myka even sending you away." Then, Abigail shook her head. "But HG, you've never been running from the Warehouse or from Myka, isn't that the truth? The Warehouse is the place where you belong and you always knew that. You only needed Claudia to tell you to come back to it. But you didn't really run away from it. The only person you've been running from while being Emily Lake, and while asking for being bronzed, trying to cause an ice age with that Trident, the only person you've been running from, because you don't trust her, is you. And you know that."
Helena stared at the other woman, her face completely blank. Of course she knew that. But hearing it from somebody else stole her breath.
"We want to help you to trust yourself again, HG." Dr. Cho smiled carefully at the writer. "And that means that you should allow yourself to be part of other people's lives. It was a very big step to come back to your family again, HG. It's something you can be proud of. The next step is Myka, the person you love. And I really don't want you denying that. Agent Bering trusts you. She has always trusted you, even back then in Yellow Stone. And because you don't trust yourself you keep doubting her." Now Abigail leaned back in her armchair again, folding her hands in her lap. "You cannot transfer your distrust in yourself onto other people. Myka didn't send you away like you think. She let you go because she knew you needed time to find your trust in youself again."
HG clenched her jaw, staring at the other woman. "Abigail, I can't-"
"You can't what? Trust Myka? Imagine a future in which you have children? Let me assure you that this is not about the future at all. It's about getting you to trust yourself again. And for that you need Myka, the woman who trusts you most." Dr. Cho eyed Helena while the Victorian's face changed quickly between different emotions while she processed those thoughts.
"I don't know if I can do that." Helena replied with a monotonous voice.
"And that's why it's good that you have us - the Warehouse family - to help you, right? There is a saying: People are medicine for people." Dr. Cho smirked and then looked at the clock on the wall. "Well", she sighed, "time's up, I'm sorry. I I'm really looking forward to talking about this more next week, but now I have to call the mattress company. Keeper of the inn and morality booster of all these agents are two jobs that keep one very busy. And to be honest, I did only sign up for one of them."
Helena shook her head slightly to keep herself from overthinking her conversation with the former therapist that much. "Why do we need king size beds all of a sudden, Abigail?" She asked, blinking confusedly.
"Well, I think it's time for a change." The keeper of the inn replied enigmatically.
2044
"There we go!" Paul carefully wrapped the Medusa stone in his coat, his eyes squeezed shut. Sarah stood with her back towards him, eyeing her parents who were frozen in stone. She let him do it. He had explained that his ability to see auras helped him with seeing the artifact without having his eyes open and looking directly at it.
"Can you explain to me why they are all in the Warehouse?" His sister asked, staring intently at HG's frightened facial expression. She was so used to artifact disturbances that the reason why they were here seemed to be more important to her than the artifact itself or its effect.
"No, I can't." The younger Bering-Wells child opened a big drawer of the old, green cupboard that had stood in the office for years now. With a muffled thud he dropped the stone in it and kicked it close with his foot. Then he took the lock he had taken off another shelf and locked the drawer. "So, well, I think that is safe." He looked around cautiously. "Maybe we should shove Pete in front of it, so nobody will be able to actually open it." Sarah chuckled behind her hand. "What?" Paul grinned. "He put on a little weight in the last years, don't you think?"
Still stiffling her laughter, Sarah nodded her head into the office door's direction. "You still didn't answer my question about what you built there with Claudia's help."
"Ah, then let's go downstairs. And as for my excuse: She helped me and encouraged me without explaining why." Her brother started walking. On the way to the bigger lockers, Sarah called Adelaide to update her on the problem. She explained that Paul seemed to have a plan to solve this situation and asked Adelaide to take good care of Julia. The older woman only replied she had already set up a game of scrabble for them to keep them busy. Sarah rolled her eyes playfully. Regent Adelaide's solution for everything was Scrabble. Bad weather? Scrabble. Sarah's first break-up in high school? Scrabble. An artifact has turned your puppy into a sabre-tooth tiger? Why not try playing scrabble? There's nothing to do? With playing Scrabble, we would have something to do. And often it had helped, at least it distracted one from the problem one was having.
A few minutes later, Paul carefully typed the code into the device on the big locker in a side area of the Warehouse (and big meant big enough to store a smaller elephant in it - why exactly was it a family habit to compare big sizes to elephants in the first place? Sarah didn't know). Her brother didn't even need to look at the paper. Sarah had asked herself for years whether genetics hadn't given him Myka's eidetic memory. She didn't have it and she wasn't sure of Paul, because he didn't tend to boast or to say anything about it at all. Growing up with a mother who remembered everything was annoying and so Paul and his sister seemed to have a secret agreement on not talking about that at all. Except for their occassional eyerolls if their mother had remembered when they exactly had last helped with the housework or had stated the exact number of seconds until their grounding was over. Again.
The older Bering-Wells child shook her head at her own thoughts as the locker's heavy door opened. Of course Paul didn't need an eidetic memory for this. He'd said that he had been in that locker often in the last year because he had been working on whatever it was he had been working on. During the whole walk down here he had made a big mystery out of the nature of his invention and Sarah was sure by now that she wouldn't really like it at all.
As they entered the inside of the container-sized locker, her brother turned on the lights in it and Sarah's view fell on a big object which was shrouded in white sheets. It seemed to be some sort of bigger machine. Of course it was. Paul liked to tinker with all sorts of devices, like Helena. That was something Sarah had no interest in. Not the tiniest bit. She still could remember her momma's disappointed look when her daughter had yawned profusely in reaction to a long lecture about fuses.
"Hm, that screen is new." Paul noted while mustering the room. "And that memory stick as well." He pointed at a small table with a few smaller devices on it.
His sister blinked at him. "Eye for the details?" She asked innocently.
"No." He took the stick. "It's my lab. I know how I left it, Ferret."
Sarah surveyed the white sheets and shrugged, a little helplessly. "So, what do we got here?"
"Let's first take a look at what's on the memory stick." Her brother replied while linking it to the screen. "I need to find out what Claudia had planned about this."
The older sibling carefully tugged at one of the sheets but turned around when she heard Claudia's voice from the screen. "Hello angels!" The caretaker said with an official tone of voice as she had appeared on the screen. "Have you replied 'Hello Charlie!'? I hope so!"
Sarah and Paul rolled their eyes a little.
"So. If you see this, there seems to have been an accident in the Warehouse with - if my research is right - one of the Medusa stones. I don't know at all if that's right. Because well, I'm missing some memory. HG and Myka have tried to update me on it... But it's all a little ... messy. And I think I'm going to find out myself if that incident in the past will start making any more sense. Well, if you're looking at this now, it will make sense at some point, I guess."
Sarah leaned over to her brother. "She's around fifty now, right? Even though she looks like thirty. But she babbles like a ten years old. Just like Pete." Paul snorted in reaction.
"Well, less babbling, more explaining I think." Claudia spoke on. "Good. Uhm, to reverse the very uhm... paralysing effect of that stone, there are four smaller stones needed. The emotion elements. I know that sounds utterly cheesy and all, but I'm not in charge of giving those things names. Well, we have had two in the Warehouse for about 50 years now: Fear and Grief. They are in one of the smaller lockers upstairs. HG and Myka found Wrath thirty years ago in New York. But there's still one of them that's lost: Euphoria. Combined they uff... would unleash emotions strong enough to loosen the... stone." The caretaker made a dramatic pause and shot them a serious look.
"Well, but there's a thing. I'm pretty sure I found it thirty years ago. The problem is, I'm not that sure anymore due to some memory loss. So we lost it again. And by 'we' I mean Sarah."
Claudia made another pause, long enough to give Sarah's "What the hell?" and utterly confused looks and hand gestures some room. Paul looked again very nervous.
"So, Paul. I think you already know what that means: Sarah was with me that day. The date and destination in the machine is already set up by me. The only thing you have to do is to talk her into doing what she has to do." Claudia grinned a little mischievously. "And thinking about that part, I'm really glad that I'm probably frozen in stone or busy with other things and don't have to face her when you do it. I wish you strong nerves. Goodbye, angels."
"Goodbye, Charlie!" Paul tried. "Well, her reference talk is sometimes quite funny." He made a noise of pain as Sarah gripped onto his shirt's fabric to pull him close and growl into his ear.
"What the heck is going on, Paul?"
He inhaled the air loudly through his nose and seemed to struggle for words. "Well, you have to remember that this works differently than your watch."
"Whydoyoumentionthewatchwepromisedtonevertalkaboutagain?!" Sarah's voice cracked.
"Sarah, calm down! Please. Calm. Everything is alright. Remember: The machine works differently. Everything that happened that day has already happened. You cannot change a thing. Your watch trauma won't happen again." He carefully patted her shoulder, smiling maniacally. "Now, you may want to take a dee-"
"No!" Sarah let go of him to walk over to the white sheets and rip one of them away. She stared at a big chair with a lot of technical devices and cables linked to it. Even though it was now Paul's design and looked utterly modern and not anything like the machine she had seen several times in her life, she knew exactly what she just had unveiled: H. G. Wells' damn time machine.
AN: Well, of course it's a time machine. Why am I making Sarah time travel again? Firstly, after I explored this one form of time travel that alters time lines for about two stories, I'm now looking forward to explore the other one. Secondly, I really need Sarah in 2014 to get some shit done. Thirdly: HG's dreams, I have some plans where I'm going with Sarah's destiny.