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A loud, frustrated sound escapes Myka’s throat as she slams her hands against the solid wall, and if Helena wasn’t so equally malcontented, she might’ve smiled at the drama of it.
But as things are, she only swallows her own frustrated growl.
“How, exactly,” she begins dryly, “did you snag the cloak the first time?”
“Pete stabbed Radburn in the chest with an arrow artifact,” Myka answers flatly, “and if James MacPherson wasn’t already dead, I’d do the same to him.”
“Then I apologize for having stolen your revenge,” she teases.
It’s a terrible diversion, in the poorest taste, and yet the point of it isn’t to amuse. Its purpose is to distract, and it succeeds in that.
Exasperation is already written across Myka’s features when she turns to Helena. Helena adopts an innocent expression immediately, and Myka sees through it just as quickly. But the agent also sees the joke for what it is, and drops it, shaking her head.
Still, Helena sees her small smile and feels that warmth she always finds in Myka.
Her… disposal of the ex-agent is still very much a sore point for Artie Nielsen, but the others have come to accept her despite her past. Myka especially. MacPherson’s crimes against the Warehouse likely helped those who’d had no prior attachments to the man forgive her for that particular sin. As did their ongoing efforts to locate and re-acquire the artifacts he’d stolen and sold.
Hence their current hunting of the Lenape Tribe’s cloak.
“We’ll never catch him like this,” Myka says, the agitation clear in her voice. She runs a hand through her curls and adds, “Not when he can just duck through the nearest wall.”
Helena hums. “We’re fortunate, at least, that he wishes to keep the artifact hidden. Though, how he always knows which buildings are empty is a mystery.”
“If we only knew who he was!” Myka huffs. “We could set a trap or something.”
“How do we trap someone who can walk right out of it?” she asks pointedly.
The agent rubs her forehead with her fingers and answers ruefully, “By coating the walls in neutralizer goo?”
Helena only lifts an eyebrow, which Myka answers with a small, amused smile, and Helena has to stop herself from melting.
“We need a break,” she says softly. “We need to think. Our friend seems disinclined to leave the city; we can take one afternoon.” Adding playfully, “As long as we don’t tell Artie.”
Myka laughs, that full, deep sound, and turns to Helena with light-filled eyes. “Have you ever been ice-skating?”
~V~
“There were ice-skating clubs, back in my day,” she begins, and Myka stiffens.
“What?” Helena asks, noting the reaction.
Myka looks up from where she’s tying Helena’s boot. Helena had protested when the agent knelt, but Myka had claimed a desire to know the ‘skates’ were laced correctly.
“Who told you to say, ‘back in my day’?” Myka asks with narrowed eyes.
“Peter, first,” she answers, her own suspicion climbing. “I asked Claudia, and she confirmed the phrase’s use.”
Myka rolls her eyes and returns to her task, muttering, “Those two don’t even need to speak to conspire.” To Helena, she says, “Check with me or Leena next time.”
“What does it mean?” Helena asks wearily.
She’s adapting to the modern age rather well, if she may say so herself. And the ability to wear trousers without receiving odd looks is more than welcome.
But language. She’d never expected to have such an issue with it. And in some ways, she doesn’t—she can communicate easily and effectively. But there are times when speaking feels like walking across a field of land mines. The breadth of their communication allows it to evolve so quickly, until nearly every word, every phrase, has a secret meaning.
Myka and Leena, she knows, wouldn’t purposefully lead her astray. Nor Artie, should he deign to speak to her—though she doubts his knowledge is much greater than her own. Peter, she knows well, requires verification.
But Claudia had been her greatest resource on modern vocabulary, and if she’s now playing along with Peter, it bodes ill for Helena’s education. Past and future.
How much of what Claudia has already taught her is false?
“Well,” Myka begins awkwardly, and Helena has that sinking feeling in her stomach, “it’s something people say to make fun of, um, well, older people.”
Prideful indignation flares through her.
Helena may, chronologically, have been born over a century ago, and it’s true her mind has worked so long, but physically, she’s still quite in her prime, thank you very much.
“I suppose, Myka darling,” she drawls, “we’ll be thinking up two plans.”
Myka smirks, looking up at her. “How to catch our thief, and how to get revenge on Pete and Claudia?”
“Precisely.”
Myka laughs again, the sound reverberating through Helena like sunlight in this cold auditorium. Then she pats the side of Helena’s skate and stands, holding out her hands to help Helena to her feet.
And there’s something about Myka’s hands that Helena must always take.
From the beginning, even as Myka handcuffed her in that chair, when the agent’s fingers had brushed her own—it had been the first touch since her un-bronzing that hadn’t felt like gravel against her skin.
It wasn’t as though Myka’s touch had been particularly gentle—she had been putting Helena in those handcuffs, after all—but there was something familiar about it, in more than one sense of the word.
Familiar in the sense that Helena had been in such a predicament before. Familiar in the liberty that she took, running her fingers against Myka’s, chasing the contact. And familiar in that imperfectly remembered way, as if she’d known Myka before, and had forgotten.
She doesn’t think she could ever forget Myka.
And that familiarity—she’s been chasing it, in this strange world. The feeling increases, betters, with everything she learns about the other woman. With every moment spent in her company.
So she puts her hands in Myka’s and allows the agent to pull her to her feet.
She isn’t entirely sure if it’s intentional, but the action brings her closer to Myka than they’ve been face-to-face since they met again in the university award room.
Color rises high in the agent’s cheeks, and Helena gives her the same charming smirk as she had then.
Myka ducks her head, stepping back. But she only slowly releases Helena’s hands, as if she’d prefer not to.
But then the agent seems to shake herself and looks back to Helena with a smirk of her own.
“So,” she prompts, “back in your day?”
Helena scowls. Then answers haughtily, “We had ice-skating, too, you know. There were social clubs one could join for regular activity. We tied the skates to our boots, though they were less,” She looks to the ice, where a figure skater is ‘warming up,’ “agile than these appear to be.”
“We won’t be doing anything like that,” Myka assures dryly, following her gaze. The figure skater leaps, turns in the air, and lands backward.
“I would worry for her ankles,” Helena remarks, “but these feel almost like the boots I used to wear.”
“How did you ever chase artifacts in boots like these?”
“By not rolling my ankles.”
Myka chuckles. “Okay, I’ll give you that one.” She holds out her hands again. “Come on, let’s get on the ice.”
Helena isn’t sure if the agent believes she truly needs help, or if it’s simply an excuse to touch her. But while a small part of Helena rankles habitually at the idea of needing help, the larger part of her loves the excuse.
So she puts her hands in Myka’s yet again, and follows her to the edge of the rink.
This was always the most difficult step. That shift from the stable to the treacherous. It’s the kind of thrill that makes one’s stomach drop to their knees, and Helena has loved it since she was a child.
She wonders what draws Myka to it. Helena doesn’t doubt the activity helps Myka think—everything does, after all. But Myka isn’t one to chase thrills, despite her occupation. She likes order. She likes creating order.
So, what is it?
Myka steps onto the ice with practiced ease, even backwards.
Helena is… less graceful. She wobbles. And while she might’ve otherwise faked uncertainty to keep Myka’s hands on her, this is unfortunately unintentional. Hopefully Myka will suspect her of the subterfuge anyway.
After all, they may not speak of it, but they’re both still aware. Aware of Helena’s interest. Of Myka’s. The only question, the only uncertainty, is in who will break first.
She’d love to count Myka’s easy fluster as a weakness in Helena’s favor, but, well—not showing it isn’t the same as not feeling it. Helena’s fluster is a weakness in Myka’s favor as well.
Once they’re both on the ice, Myka shifts, releasing one of Helena’s hands to skate at her side. They begin slowly. Gently. There’s a grace in Myka’s movements that she knows the agent would deny having.
By point of fact, Helena knows more of Myka’s history than she’d willingly admit. So saying, she understands where the woman’s self-deprecation derives from—though she does disagree with its every argument.
Helena had been a strange woman for her time. She’s a strange woman for this time. And while she has never regretted her own personage, the whispers and the odd stares still sit within her. She understands how another’s voice can echo in one’s mind. How words, even unintentionally cruel, can inscribe themselves into the folds of one’s very being until the voice that speaks them is one’s own.
Helena will never pay Warren Bering that particular visit—doing so would upset Myka’s good heart—but she does take some private satisfaction in MacPherson’s use of Poe’s journal.
Despite all the things she knows, and understands, Helena will never comprehend how Warren Bering can be so blind to the wonder that his daughter is.
Myka wants his pride. Unfortunately for them both, they will never know how Myka saved him. How she saved them all.
Saved Helena.
Helena had spent so long trapped inside her mind. The experience is indescribable—the way even anguish becomes tedious. The way even boredom becomes a frenzy.
She had imagined the world she would awaken in endlessly, trying desperately to fill the darkness. The silence. The time she experienced, but didn’t live. She had planned for utopias. Worlds wherein she could find a new purpose, a way to occupy herself. Perhaps, even, to refill that emptiness within her.
More often, she planned—continued planning—for a world little better than her own.
Hubris, perhaps, has always been a weakness of hers. She’d believed herself to be an appropriate judge. Believed herself clear of mind. It’s laughable, in retrospect. Has anyone ever been more compromised?
She’d been all too easily convinced of the world’s ills after her waking. A conviction aided by the man who woke her. Helena is well aware of her failures, but she believes it’s fair to acknowledge that the first soul she’d met in this new world was only keen to use her. MacPherson’s sole interest was ever his own gain.
Regardless of the reasons, Helena had found herself wanting to enact the most unforgiving of her punishments. She had found herself ready to.
Disposing of MacPherson had been necessary, and easy.
Rejoining the Warehouse had been difficult, and indulgent. She’d needed funds, yes, but resourcefulness is a particular gift of hers.
Helena had gone back because she’d wanted to see it again, even if this Warehouse wasn’t her own. She’d wanted to spend her last days with it.
That had been her downfall.
She’d found Myka.
Or, perhaps, Myka had found her, leading Helena from the mire she’d been lost in. With every day spent learning about the agent, she’d pushed her plans back. She’d contented herself with the delusion that the world could end on any timetable.
But the truth was, and always will be, that she simply wants more time with Myka Bering.
So focused is she on the woman in question that Helena doesn’t notice herself turning.
Her skate catches, and she stumbles. But this is ice, and there’s nothing to catch herself with, and so she braces for the teeth-filled kiss of the cold surface.
She feels arms around her instead.
“Careful now,” Myka teases. “Falling hurts.”
And perhaps Helena’s a bit of a masochist, but this is one of the things she likes best about Myka—Myka will never coddle her. She will always keep her moving forward.
So Helena smirks up at the agent and teases back, “My hero.”
Myka returns the smirk, even as the blush covers her cheeks, but they both turn their attention to getting Helena’s feet back underneath her.
And that’s another thing Helena likes so much about the woman: she feels no drive for bravado. While Helena would prefer never to fall in front of a beautiful woman, there’s no fear from her pride. There’s no fear that Myka will think her clumsy. No embarrassment of weakness.
Helena has never had this certainty with another. She has never been so known by another. It’s as frightening as it is exhilarating, as discomposing as comforting.
And there’s relief in knowing Myka just as well. In knowing that when the agent turns the pages slowly, she’s only hiding from her pain between them. There’s a relief in seeing the reflection of Helena’s own grief and outcast, however the difference in context. There’s relief in knowing the right words to say to bring Myka from her doldrums into conversation. In knowing how to bring her to laughing. In seeing it can be done.
There’s relief in truly knowing there’s still one, at least, that Helena can do good for. Who can bring good to Helena.
How then, could Helena be blamed for loving her?
She only reluctantly pulls out of the agent’s arms. She doesn’t think she imagines the way Myka’s hands linger.
With that encouragement, Helena holds out her own hand to the other woman again. Myka cocks an eyebrow, a small smile curving her lips, and takes it.
Myka knows, Helena knows, that Helena’s not asking for help. She knows Helena simply wants to touch her.
Myka hardly seems to mind.
“So,” Helena begins, just to say something, to stop thinking of how badly she wants to break, “Peter and Claudia.”
Myka laughs. “I’m not sure that’s the plan we should be focusing on.”
“Myka darling, that is precisely why we must focus on it first. To ‘get it out of the way,’ as they say.”
The agent lifts a dubious eyebrow, but amusement lights her eyes, so Helena continues.
“After all, once we’ve determined our course against this damned thief, we must spring into action. Then where will my poor plan be? Utterly forgotten.”
“Your poor plan,” Myka repeats, teasing.
Helena affects an innocent expression that she knows the agent sees through immediately, as she always does. So, she allows her attention to shift naturally to the curve in the rink as they’re guided back down the opposite side.
She sighs for effect. “Righty-ho, then. Our thief.”
But Myka squeezes her hand and offers, “It’s six hours back to South Dakota after this—I’m sure we can come up with something.”
Helena’s answering smile is genuine. She knows Myka’s offer has nothing to do with pity, just as Myka knows Helena wasn’t truly upset—not entirely, at least. Myka offers for the same reason Helena had felt a small twinge at the refusal: because it’s something to do together. Something for them, where they can use the better parts of their minds for something other than work.
And if there’s any excuse they search for more than to touch, it’s to be together.
Be together.
If Claudia can be trusted on this, then the term has gained a connotation. A connotation that doesn’t yet fit, but should. One she wants.
And she wonders, not for the first time, why she doesn’t allow herself to break. Why it feels so necessary to wait.
Helena has never felt this need to hesitate before. Has never held any reticence in pursuing her interest.
But Myka isn’t merely an interest, and Helena doesn’t know if she can withstand losing another person she loves.
She needs Myka’s strength in this. She needs her to start.
So she offers the agent that same charming grin that Myka secretly loves, and says, “Aces.”
Myka’s lips quirk in that way that means she doesn’t realize she’s smiling. “All right, Wells. It’s a deal, then.” She adds musingly, “But where do we start with our thief?”
And it is work, but it’s still diverting, planning stratagems with Myka. Working through a problem with someone who can keep up. Who can find flaws in her ideas. And perhaps that’s another reason that she’s a masochist, that she loves Myka for rightly telling her when she’s wrong.
They debate the impediment of barriers and the way around them. There are no other known artifacts that allow one such permeability without serious risk, and short of tearing down each wall, there’s no other way of following him directly.
They debate splitting up. One chasing their thief while the other awaits him with the tesla. But they have about as much luck in corralling him to the right location as they do for his unconditional surrender.
Then Myka says, “The Lenape tribe—I did some research on them after our first mission with the cloak. They have this legend about the artifact, and it starts with a figure called ‘The Man They Cannot Hold.’”
Helena turns her head, carefully keeping her body pointed forward, so she can watch Myka think. So she can see that distant look in her eyes, the tilt of her head, as her mind takes over.
Myka is a beautiful woman. Helena has admired her since that very first day in her old house. But it’s still her mind that attracts Helena most.
“In the legend,” she continues, “he’s killed by a witch and thrown in a river to be with his guardian spirit.
“But he comes back,” she says pointedly, her attention returning from the books of her memory, “six days later. He was said to have hidden in an underwater cave that he reached by going through the cave wall.”
She stops there, and Helena’s startled to realize that she doesn’t see what Myka sees. It’s thrilling.
“This has meaning to you,” she prompts.
“Everything we’ve seen the cloak pass through has been still matter. Walls, stone, even Pete that first time.”
“And what if it can only pass through still matter,” Helena finishes, her understanding dawning. “An electromagnetic field might yet be impermeable.”
“If you can create one, we can set it up somewhere and guide him to where we need him.”
Helena makes an indignant sound in her throat. “If I can create one?”
Myka smirks. “If we can come at him from different sides, I think we can get him to turn where we want him to. We just have to pick the right set of streets and lay some bait.”
“After,” Helena corrects primly, “I create the needed machinery.”
The agent grins impishly. Then asks more seriously, “What will you need?”
“A generator,” Helena answers with the complete knowledge that her request will be refused, "and unfettered, overnight access to a hardware store with a detailed electronics section.”
“Helena,” Myka says with immediate exasperation. “We’re government agents. We aren’t going to break, enter, and steal.”
“We’ve broken into a number of museums and stolen priceless remembrances of history.”
“That’s different.”
“How?”
Consternation colors the agent’s features, but Helena has to look away to avoid a careening child as they take the turn again. The question of how many times they’ve been around the ice flares briefly in her mind, but it’s only idle curiosity.
“We only take artifacts from museums when they’re being misused or are a proven danger, and we replace them with perfect replicas so that people can still enjoy the history. It’s not like we could return your device.”
“So the act is forgivable as long as it remains unknown?” She tsks.
“Helena.”
Helena smirks. “We don’t have to steal, darling. We are government agents, after all. We simply tell them we need supplies for a federal investigation, borrow their store for the night, and send the bill to the unspecified agency.”
Myka huffs a laugh. “Artie’s not going to like this. It’s not exactly covert.”
“It’s all about the sale, Myka darling.”
She huffs another laugh. “You say that like you’ve done this before.”
“If I were to say, ‘this isn’t my first rodeo,’ would that be its only meaning?”
The agent’s expression pinches immediately.
Helena sighs. “What does it mean?”
“No, that’s the only meaning I’m aware of, but you shouldn’t say it.”
“Why not?”
Myka’s expression pinches again. She looks half uncomfortable, half disgusted.
And in that strange way they have of understanding one another, that’s all Helena needs.
She smirks. “I shouldn’t say it because you favor my manner of speech.”
Myka blushes to her roots, and refuses to meet Helena’s gaze.
Helena’s smirk gentles into a soft smile. “Why, Agent Bering,” she says, and there’s absolutely no hint of teasing in her voice, “one might accuse you of being terribly romantic.”
At that, Myka’s gaze snaps to Helena’s. Her eyes are full of surprise. And something like hope.
Did that count as breaking? Will it be the start they need?
But before either of them can reply to Helena’s remark, the lights dim.
Helena’s stomach clenches, her hands autonomically following suit. But it stays dim without becoming dark.
“There’ll be lights in—” Myka begins, but she’s interrupted by the lights themselves.
Spotlights. In pink and green and yellow and blue, sliding slowly over the ice.
“What is this?” Helena asks curiously.
“Couple’s skate,” Myka answers. “They kick the kids off the ice and let couples have a few turns at their own pace.”
It’s an almost aggressive serendipity. A shove, rather than a push, from whatever entity decides things.
“Skating is a common enough date activity,” Myka continues, rambling now.
It’s rare, for her. A nervous tick that only shows itself when Myka’s trying to avoid something in particular that she wishes to say.
Helena doesn’t need their strange connection to guess the content. But she does wonder, consciously, for the first time, if Myka needs Helena’s strength as much as she needs Myka’s. If her own losses, and the insecurities molded into her, are holding her own tongue.
What if neither of them can break?
But if Myka needs her… that’s a source of strength. Helena will always worry over losing Myka. She’ll always worry over what she might do if Myka is ever taken from her the way Christina was.
Love isn’t something she’d ever expected to find, even in her own time. She’s too distant, too impatient with others, too focused on books and inventions. And after Christina, too calloused.
To find someone who understands, who accepts, and moreover makes Helena want more in her life than machines and ink, is nearly incomprehensible.
But it’s real. And Myka’s here, her hand still in Helena’s, rambling about romantic music and lighting, and there is music playing.
And perhaps the song is almost over, but it hasn’t ended yet. And if Myka needs her, then Helena can be strong enough to break first.
“Myka,” she interrupts, and the agent silences herself immediately. Helena loosens her grip, allowing Myka room to pull away if she so chooses.
Then she asks, “Myka darling, will you skate with me?”
Never mind that they’d never stopped.
Myka’s answering grin is brighter than every spotlight. She tightens her grip around Helena’s hand, and Helena follows suit, knowing she’ll never need to let go again.
“I’d love to.”