Beauty and the Beast
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters represented in this fiction. They are the property of Syfy, Jack Kenny, and the creators of Warehouse 13.
Summary: Myka analyzes the eternal paradox that is Helena G. Wells.
Rating: T for violent situations
Pairing: Implied Myka/Helena
Beauty and the Beast
In retrospect, there were two sides to Helena Wells, Myka figured out. Almost a Jekyll and Hyde syndrome, a beauty and a beast inhabiting the same body, two sides of the same coin. In the fairytales Myka had read as a child, there was the hero and there was the villain; they were never one and the same. The lines had never blurred. But with Helena Wells, Myka found that there existed that a paradox that seemed to make the divide between the hero and the villain a little less clear.
Beauty is in the heart of the beholder
The beauty in Helena, Myka had seen all too often. Physically, it was difficult to deny the Victorian inventor was anything but. No person with the ability to see could deny that Helena Wells was visually stunning. But it went beyond just her aesthetic beauty. Myka saw the beauty in Helena's playful side. Teasing glances sent sideways across tables, the intent sparkling in dark chocolate-colored eyes, more likely than not accompanied by a rakish wink. The flirtatious touches that ghosted against shoulders or smalls of backs, a mere brush of fingertips but with the weight that belied the casual occurrence. Those coy smiles that curled full lips with the Mona Lisa mystery that hinted to anything but the common perception of the Victorian era. Helena Wells was a force unto herself, equal parts charismatic and charming.
But the other side, that beastly side, was not as overt. It had lain dormant, festering beneath the façade of Helena's witty, cheerful, slightly whimsical persona. Veiled beneath the guise of the earnest Warehouse agent looking to reclaim her calling, fueled by a century of idle ponderings in a bronze prison, she fooled them all. The anger, the rage, and the pain that had simmered in the darkness of suspended animation, consumed all crevices of Helena's tortured heart before culminating in the nefarious scheme that had shattered Myka's trust in herself. They had seen the glimpses of the true beast in Helena that day, magnifying exponentially as the point of the trident plunged into the Earth's surface with the intent of destroying them all.
She was a paradox, Myka decided. Helena Wells was an eternal paradox that truly embodied the complexity of the human condition. Through their short time working together, Myka had seen many sides of Helena Wells, and for every beautiful, effervescent part of her personality, there existed an equally dormant side - sometimes reprehensible - that lay just below the surface.
It is not reasonable that those who gamble with men's lives should not pay with their own.
The genius side was the most noticeable.
That side was fairly obvious if one were just to hear her speak. Helena boasted an insatiably curious mind that never ceased to question the world around her. It was the first thing Myka found out about the Victorian inventor. Faced with this new world, she poked and prodded until she formed comprehensive knowledge of its nuances. This side housed a brilliant brain and staggering intellect that fueled the inventor who thought centuries ahead of her time. It was the side that took the principles within analytical psychology and proceeded to build a machine that transported the conscious mind into the body of another in any place and time, effectively validating the idea that time travel was entirely possible, just not physically. It was the side that invented an anti-gravity element that proved to be capable of sticking two grown humans to a ceiling for an extended period of time with a mere flick of the switch. It was the side that had made her such a talented Warehouse agent, her keen, analytical mind melding with that immense intellect and a fearlessness that allowed her to charge head on.
This was the side Myka was inherently drawn to. She had grown up with the stories of HG Wells, reveled in the fantastical world that had taken her away. To learn that those stories she revered as a child were really written by a woman only seemed to further construct the mythos of HG Wells in her mind. To her immense chagrin, Myka had developed a perpetual faucet mouth around the inventor, sometimes hearing herself blurt out some giddy question regarding one of Helena's books or inventions. But Helena had always humored her, patiently answering and always willing to discuss it further. It never ceased to amaze Myka when Helena revealed exactly what was reality in her fantastical stories.
When Helena wasn't on field missions with the team, Claudia had mentioned she had seen the Victorian woman sequester herself in the warehouse for hours at a time, and the sharp clanging of metal on metal could be heard resonating from the workshop. One such instance, Myka truly saw the genius that lay beneath the mischievous twinkle Helena's dark chocolate eyes.
Myka wound through the labyrinth that was the warehouse, drawn to the clanging resonating from the depths. She knew that Helena was at it again and had followed her ears, curious to see what Helena was doing. Throwing back the gate to the HG Wells section, Myka found herself surprised to see a Tesla Roadster elevated on a mechanic's rack and the inventor hunched over the popped hood.
"Helena?"
She giggled as Helena looked up and poked her head around the upraised hood, the dark chocolate eyes blinking towards the entrance, magnified behind the goggles covering her eyes. The dark blue coveralls were dotted with stains as evidence of her work, and some sort of tool that sparked blue lightening was clenched in her hand.
"Hello, darling," Helena greeted with a smile, tugging the goggles off.
"Hi," Myka returned. "What's all this? I'm hope I'm not disturbing you."
"No, not at all." Helena assured her. "In fact, you can join me."
Myka's eyes scanned over the car, the various parts strewn on the floor of Helena's workspace. "What are you doing?"
"When I'm bored, I rather like to tinker," Helena explained. "Call it an unfortunate byproduct of the rarely idle mind. Some of my best inventions have manifested because of my insatiable curiosity towards the inner workings of objects."
Myka gestured to the car. "And this?"
"Well, I was watching a cartoon called The Jetsons on Pete's recommendation, and they had automobiles that flew through the air. So I'm trying to see if the properties of my cavarite would be compatible for such a contraption." Helena propped her hands on her hips, observing the car. "I must say, motor vehicles are quite more sophisticated than they were back in my day. Of course, those were just the rudimentary stages then."
Myka's eyes had gone wide with the implications that Helena just might have invented an effective hovercraft. "So have you figured it out?"
"Perhaps." Helena cocked her head, surveying her work. "First, I started with just your traditional vehicle, the ones that are fueled by gasoline and internal combustion. Then, our dear Claudia informed me that some cars these days are actually fueled by electrical currents running within the vehicle's body."
"And you used electricity to increase the properties of cavarite back at your house to stick me and Pete to the ceiling," Myka finished. She shot a wry glance to her Victorian counterpart. "Thanks, by the way."
"I do apologize for that, darling," Helena returned, slamming the hood shut. "But to be fair, I did warn you that the wiring in my Imperceptor Vest had nothing to do with the wiring on the panel."
Myka pursed her lips, choosing to ignore Helena's counterpoint, instead repeating her earlier inquiry. "So have you figured it out?"
"I'm not sure," Helena mused, walking around the small smart car. "It is one thing to create enough energy to defy gravity with two people. It is quite another to do so with a vehicle amounting to 1,200 kilograms at curb weight. Plus, there is a matter of safety…not to mention properties of acceleration, deceleration, reversal…" Helena shook her head, smiling brightly and refusing to let such trivial matters deter her. "Well, no matter. As dear Tommy once said, 'I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.'"
Dark brows shot skyward, and Myka ventured tentatively, "Did you know Thomas Edison?"
Helena waved a hand. "We've come across each other once or twice."
Thrown by the dual armament that came from the idea Helena might actually be successful in her defiance of gravity and the casual allusion to one of the greatest minds in the history, Myka had to process that new information for a second. "Uh, Helena, we're not going to test it out are we?"
"No, darling of course not. I've hardly verified if this vehicle is safe," Helena dismissed. She rotated sharply, disappearing for a moment. She returned, lugging two dummies by the arm towards the car. Propping the stuffed men by the car, she waved a hand. "Meet Herbert and George. Each the same approximate weight of the average man."
Myka smirked. "Herbert and George?" she teased.
"I thought it was clever…" Helena mumbled sheepishly.
Myka rolled her eyes, helping Helena place the two stuffed dummies into the seats. "And how are you going to control the car?"
"Remotely," Helena answered, turning towards her workbench. She plucked a large black contraption that looked like an X-Box controller from the clutter, gesturing to the appropriate buttons. "Engine starter, gas pedal, break pedal, steering wheel." The last button was colored a stark blue. "Hover initiator."
Myka shifted her gaze from the controller to the car. "And this car is fully functional?"
Helena smirked, pushing the engine starter. The roadster roared to life, and the sparkle in Helena's dark eyes was infectious. "Well, darling, I suppose we'll have to see."
A push of her thumb started the engine with a roar, the electricity surging through the inner parts to fuel the car. Helena inched the vehicle forward experimentally. Once she was satisfied the controller was sufficient, deft fingers eased the car through a series of basic maneuvers before bringing it to a stop. Helena's smile grew exponentially as they twinkled with mirth.
"And now, we shall see if this vehicle is able to defy gravity."
Myka practically thrummed with excitement as Helena brought the little roadster to a stop in its original spot. Helena's thumb hovered over the blue button. Unceremoniously, she pressed down.
The car shook for a moment before leaving the ground. Two dark-locked heads followed the car as it shot upwards as though pulled by an invisible string from the heavens, rising steadily until it broke through the roof of the warehouse…and didn't stop.
"Hmmm," Helena hummed thoughtfully, thumb jabbing the blue button again. "I do believe I underestimated the properties of the electrical current…"
"Helena…"
Myka stared wide-eyed at the new hole in the ceiling of the warehouse and the particles of whatever Herbert and George were stuffed with fluttering down around them. She could see the car rapidly taking shape as it plummeted the path from where it had just came.
"Helena…!"
Shocked eyes returned to Helena, amazed at how calm the raven-haired woman was. The genius inventor stood with her hands on her hips, staring unconcerned at the swiftly plunging vehicle. At the last possible second, she took a step back, allowing the car to impact with the ground with a terrifying crash where she stood just moments earlier.
Helena frowned, dark chocolate eyes surveying the wreckage. Myka bit her lip.
"There's a hole in the warehouse," she commented unnecessarily.
Helena shook herself as though realizing that detail for the first time. Her eyes rose upward to squint up at the new skylight showing a remarkably blue sky before dropping back to the battered remains of her roadster.
"Oh dear," she lamented, "I don't think Artie is going to be too pleased with that…"
0-0-0
At the same time, Helena boasted a potent primitive side. It was the side that allowed the id to run rampant with very little consideration to the more cogent parts of the ego and superego. It was the side that ignored the brilliant analytical mind, eschewed principles of rationality and reason for baser instincts. It was the side that witnessed an injustice and responded not with prudence but rage, vengeance, and bloodlust. It was the side that hunted down her daughter's executioners and exacted her revenge as she saw fit; the side that saw what the world had become and took it upon herself to play judge, jury, and executioner.
With her normal disposition, Myka would have never guessed Helena harbored this primal, animalistic side. It seemed wholly divergent to the graceful and poised Victorian woman who seemed to unconsciously exist with a perpetual elegance. But it was there, and it roared with the furious flames of a raging fire. She had read the files chronicling Helena's revenge against her daughter's murderers. The details had made her face pale and her stomach turn. It was gruesome to say the least.
Helena didn't engage in hand-to-hand combat often, preferring to utilize the silky smooth accent and flowery language that equal parts charmed and mesmerized her targets, but when she did, she transformed into a deadly tornado of vicious movement. Wild ferocity glinted prevalent in Helena's eyes during those times. In those moments, Helena personified the untamed animal, thirsting for blood. Myka should have known in those moments that there lay something beneath the surface of the elegant and charming Victorian woman.
Adapt or perish, now as ever, is nature's inexorable imperative.
There was the innovator.
It represented the side that challenged the status quo not by standing on a soapbox and preaching to the masses but by using the written word to entertain, weaving fantastical tales of intergalactic invaders and invisible men. This side seemed to be constantly confronting the norm, refusing to be satisfied with the way things were. This was the side that walked around shamelessly in pants and a form-fitting shirt and vest during a time when expectations of women called for them to be paragons of virtue.
Despite those restrictions, Myka found that Helena knew exactly the extent of women's capabilities. Even during that time, Helena used "her" influence paired with the image of her brother to push that agenda, raising a few eyebrows along the way. It was one of the more remarkable things Myka had learned. Helena had held an interesting perspective of the world in her better days, a sort of eternal optimism about the future, yet tempered with the strains she had endured during an age that stifled her inherent joie de vivre for the mere matter of her gender. She had never thought of Helena, or HG, for that matter as a political advocate, but a viewing of Spielberg's interpretation of War of the Worlds completely changed that mindset. She wasn't sure why, but Myka was amazed at the true extent of Helena's extremely insightful perspective on her Victorian England.
"So what did you think?"
Helena cocked her head, observing the black screen, the credits rolling down steadily. Myka observed her reaction closely. The dark brows had drawn together, her mouth tilted in what seemed to be a calculating frown.
"Well, it certainly wasn't what I had in mind when I wrote the novel. I do suppose it is more relevant to be set in America in the present day."
Myka frowned. There was something to Helena's intonation. "You didn't like it," she surmised.
"It was entertaining," Helena mused, "but I meant to make a statement about the state of the world at the time, specifically my feelings of British imperialism. Like I said, I suppose one could make an allusion that it pertains to the modern world and the American concept of globalism, but it is not the core value of the film."
"And you don't think this movie did that?" Myka ventured.
Helena's lips pursed as she absorbed what she had seen thoughtfully. "I believe this manifestation is a function more for the entertainment value rather than for the societal implication I attempted to convey," she asserted. "This film holds certain inferences, more specifically a bit of anti-war propaganda. However, my aim extended beyond just a war. It challenged the very way of life of Victorian England."
Myka cocked her head. "Well, what did he miss?"
Helena pondered her stance for a moment. She tapped a finger against her chin. "At the time, I wished to challenge the idea of British imperialism," she explained. "I paralleled the brutal invasion of the Martian forces with the then-modern day aggressive expansion of the British empire. We believed that it was our God-given right to conquer these territories because we had proven to be the 'superior' race through our technological advancements. Through those advancements, it was our duty to bring civilization to these nations. The crown was strongly in the mindset that Britain had been 'selected' through Darwin's theory as being the superior nation."
Myka nodded her comprehension. "And you warned against that thinking."
"Precisely," Helena affirmed. "Eventually, the dominant race becomes stagnant and another replaces the former race as the foremost power. It's the very basis of evolution. That phenomenon was bound to happen to the British Empire, just as it was bound to happen to the humans in my novel. I questioned what gave us the right to assert our dominance over these territories with men and women who have existed just as long as we have. Certainly they must have been doing something right if they are still survive even with their impoverished conditions."
The bookworm in Myka was having the time of her life. She had always dreamed about sitting down with a famous author and picking his or her brain to better understand the words she had so excitedly absorbed. It was so surreal being able to do so with the HG Wells. "And having the Martians die by bacteria?"
"It was a bit of deux ex machina," Helena admitted. "But it was also a subliminal warning. The Martians were the source of their own destruction, as they did not have immunity to human diseases. It was both an allusion to the settlers of American folklore and the caveat that sometimes ones biggest enemy is himself."
Myka absorbed that for a moment, thrown at Helena's revelation. It was though she was speaking to a modern-day philosopher who had taken a century to be able to process these theories. Helena knew of the dangers as they were happening in her contemporary world. It certainly was remarkable to think about. She sat back, thoroughly drinking in Helena at her intellectual finest. The Victorian inventor possessed a sparkle in her sepia gaze, a twinkle belying her sharp mind as the wheels turned in her mind. It was stunning to say the least.
Helena must have caught something in her expression because the raven-haired beauty cocked her head, eyeing her curly-locked counterpart closely.
"What, darling?"
"You're amazing," Myka answered honestly.
Helena's full lips curled upward in a rakish smirk. "Now, now, dearest, had you made that utterance back in my time, that would have been an invitation under your skirts…" She winked for effect.
Myka blushed, averting her eyes amidst Helena's tinkling laugh.
If only…
0-0-0
There was the dogmatist.
It embodied the woman so narrow-minded in her view that she was blinded to everything else but her own agenda. The world had changed around her, evolving, molding itself into something she couldn't even really recognize. People traveled amongst the birds, in huge machines made of metal. Information could be sent across the ocean in a second with the click of a button. Scientists had found ways to take apart an atom, using its energy to decimate entire cities. Yet despite her immense intelligence and personality, Helena found herself floundering in the sea of the unknown.
One of Helena's greatest downfalls was that she couldn't adapt to the reality around her. The truth was that the present world was not the most pleasant place to live. For all that embodied the good, countless more things embodied a more disparaging life. One hundred years had changed the fabric of what she had known to be truth and reality. Famine, poverty, and chaos struck all four corners. Even in those conditions, the world managed to survive. But it wasn't enough to Helena. The world had not achieved the wondrous state she envisioned. Therefore, it had to be destroyed.
The past is but the past of a beginning.
There was the idealist.
It conveyed the woman who desperately believed she could change the past so much that she used her genius to transport herself into the body of another to save her beloved daughter. She had failed, but her feat had opened the door to thousands of more possibilities for warehouse agents in the future. It was the idealist that once proclaimed that the future was going to be a wondrous place.
At the core of this persona was Helena's perspective of the world around her. She held a very childlike manner in response to the wonders that surrounded her. To her, everything encompassing her environment was another part of her intellectual playground. She could use the phenomenon and marvels around her to facilitate the mind that held such inquisitiveness to what lay at her fingertips. The possibilities were endless; there were no bounds to the capabilities of science and technology, and paired with her incredible mind, she sought to exploit and extricate every nuance she could. This was the side that constructed her temporal consciousness transfer engine - which Pete still referred to as a time machine - and allowed two agents back into the 1961 to bring an artifact back to the modern time.
This was the side that, in retrospect, Myka probably fell in love with. Helena's childlike enthusiasm for knowledge, the thirst for explicating the intricacies of the world around her was too endearing to ignore. There was no denying Helena's beauty when that extraordinary intellect went to work. A sparkle manifested itself in the dark chocolate orbs of Helena's eyes, a furrow indented itself in Helena's brow as she pondered the query before her, and full lips pursed as she worked out the problem to conclusion. Myka remembered the way Helena frantically worked to cobble an antidote in California as Claudia worked her way to internal combustion. For a woman who floundered slightly in the modern world, she was supremely confident when faced with something she did know. That day, Helena had been a whirl of concise motion, plucking component after component, cobbling together a counteragent in record time. It was amazing to watch. Helena Wells in her element was absolutely stunning.
0-0-0
There was the rationalist.
She portrayed the woman who existed completely in the wrong era. Forced to hide behind the glorious moustache of a brother with only a fraction of her intelligence but blessed with the correct anatomical parts. It was degrading to Helenas aptitude, but it the only way that her ideas could be heard, and Helena was well aware of that fact. Myka was certain that Helena never anticipated how well her ideas would be accepted, her fiction creating a completely new branch of fiction that took the world's minds away from the present time and place and deposited them in scenarios like an intergalactic war.
In retrospect, Helena's quest for the Minoan Trident made complete sense. She saw the world had degraded into a filthy, degenerate shadow of what it once was, and the only remedy was to start again. In its own twisted, backward logic, Helena's solution made sense. If anything, it was the most reasonable explanation the Victorian woman could come up with. If something was broken, the practical thing to do was to fix it. And Helena's brilliant inventor mind refused to allow something to go unfixed. It just so happened that logic was tempered with the madness that festered for over a century. It had taken a bit, but Helena finally offered Myka an explanation.
Myka sighed, settling down onto the bed in her hotel room and the end of a long day. So immersed in her thoughts, she forgot she had activated Helena until the Victorian woman spoke.
"I didn't always believe the world was evil, you know," Helena whispered.
Myka jumped, startled by the sudden intrusion to her reverie. She looked to where Helena had sat on the floor, legs crossed Indian style, hands folded demurely in her lap. She was in her holographic state, once again called upon by the warehouse team for her expertise on an unknown artifact. Myka didn't respond, choosing to listen to her counterpart speak on a subject that had been taboo since the first time they worked together.
Helena continued, a wistful glint to her sepia eyes, speaking more to herself than to Myka. "I would often dream of the future, what the human mind would be capable of. I had such dreams of an extraordinary world where humans would soar amongst the birds, that the most terrible diseases would find their cure, that equality would be a reality rather than a wistful fantasy…"
Myka frowned, speaking for the first time since Helena began. She rose from the bed, lowering herself to the floor opposite Helena. "So what happened?"
Helena shrugged. "I saw that for all the marvels men and women could create, there would also be destruction." She scoffed in a tone torn between restless nostalgia and solemn sorrow. "I had quite the disparaging view of humanity in the end. The Transcendentalists and I never did get along."
Myka bit her lip, trying desperately not to show too much emotion, should Helena try to take advantage of it. She schooled her features into stoic aloofness. "So what was so bad about the world?"
Helena straightened and cocked her head in thought. "In one hundred years, the world has gone through two global wars, damaged the environment to a point that may become the catalyst to its destruction, and manipulated the principles of science enough to find a way to release the energy of atom and to a point that it could destroy millions of people." Dark eyes flashed. "That wasn't the world that I believed in, that I claimed would be the wondrous place I thought it would be."
"And you thought it was up to you to fix it?"
"You must remember, darling, I wasn't in my right state of mind. Can you imagine all of that rage and angst simmering beneath the surface, just waiting for the catalyst to trigger it all?"
"And Warehouse 2 was the trigger?"
"I was ripped away from the only joy I had ever known," Helena whispered. "My Christina was my world. I would have gladly withered away in that warehouse if only to continue an existence with my heart, even if it was an illusion."
"It was wrong of them to bronze you, even if you asked," Myka intoned softly. "You weren't a criminal. You were depressed. To allow you to stay in your mind for that long is a crime. Any good doctor would have known that."
Helena canted her head sadly. "Yes, well, psychology was hardly as advanced as it is now, darling."
Myka bit her lip. "So why did they allow you to be bronzed?"
"I was deemed to be too dangerous to myself and those around me," Helena murmured. She scoffed. "All my dedication to the warehouse, all the artifacts that had been procured under my employment, everything was disregarded in a moment."
"The only one who could have possibly intervened on my behalf was dead." Helena's face slackened with grief repressed. "And it was my doing."
"So there was no one?"
"Unfortunately, William Wolcott could not speak from the grave," Helena mused, the bitterness and regret staining her tone. "It was one of the few times my genius worked against me. They were frightened what I would be capable of had I been allowed to continue."
"I'm sure you didn't help much by proving them right a century later," Myka couldn't help but blurt out.
Helena's smile was dry and sardonic. "Yes, well, as I said before, all that time offers a lady opportunity to think. Considering my state of mind going into the bronzing chamber, is it really that astonishing to believe that all that anger would do anything else but magnify? Maybe I wanted to punish myself," Helena mumbled. "Maybe condemning myself to that bronze prison was my penitence to my failure."
"You sure fooled us."
Helena raised her face. She seemed to hesitate, unsure of whether or not to voice the thoughts whirling through her mind. Finally, she responded in a voice soft but filled with a myriad of emotions Myka refused to name for fear of succumbing.
"My greatest regret was hurting you, Myka." Helena tentatively reached out, her holographic fingers ghosting over the curve of Myka's cheek. "Words cannot adequately express how truly sorry I am." She shrugged. "I was just…consumed in my vendetta."
Myka stayed silent for a long, heart-wrenching moment. She observed the woman across from her. Even in this moment of regret and remorse, Helena was gorgeous, her dark eyes conveying such anguish that it magnified her features to a sort of tragic beauty. Myka drew in a deep breath, surrendering to her heart even as her head rebuked this whole nonsense.
"I forgive you," Myka whispered. She chuckled to herself. "Heaven help me, but I do. I'm sorry that happened to you, Helena. I wish I could have helped."
"You did," Helena refuted. "In that moment, when you pressed my pistol to your head, I came to a realization. In destroying this world, I would also be destroying the small iota of good there also existed in the world, a good that was embodied in you." Helena shrugged, glancing away from Myka. "Perhaps if I…" She trailed off, refusing to voice whatever the thought was that died on her lips.
"If only I would have seen it," Myka murmured, mostly to herself. "Maybe I…"
Helena shook her head, aching to reach out and touch Myka. "Whatever you did was enough to stop me from striking the Trident a third time," she pointed out softly.
Green eyes met sepia and they locked, the unsaid words floating in the space between them.
There's nothing wrong in suffering, if you suffer for a purpose. Our revolution didn't abolish danger or death. It simply made danger and death worthwhile.
There was the survivor.
Helena had experienced the breaking point of the delicate human psyche. She had endured the greatest pain known to man. Not only had she endured the pain of losing her child, but had relived that pain in multiple failures as she endeavored to change the past. Despite all of it, she found a way to survive, a way to continue on.
But Helena's survival came at a devastating price. Perhaps it was the beginning of her path towards madness. Perhaps it was the catalyst that twisted all logic, all sense into a vendetta that knew nothing but its execution and completion. Because even as she dealt vengeance on Christina's killers, the pain, the guilt remained. In her quest for revenge, the blood of Christina's murderers did not quench the beast that resided in Helena's heart. It continued to simmer, drowning all rhyme and reason to a once rational woman.
It was easy to find out the identities of her Christina's murderers. She knew the right people and dropped enough tidbits in enough ears to extract the right information. She had hunted them, followed their movements, learned their patterns. They weren't a bright bunch, just a crew of grunts who failed to think beyond the "smash and grab" notion. She had lured them into an abandoned warehouse with the promise of a job. She thought idly of the irony in the situation. Those thoughts vanished as quickly as they appeared as the men came into view. The id simply screamed for blood.
She stepped out into the light, shadows playing on her delicate features. One noticed her immediately. He was bald, tall and broad-shouldered. Definitely more brawn than brain.
"Oy, what are you doing here, pretty lady?" He had a Cockney accent, the words slurred slightly. "This isn't a place for you."
Helena played coy, her hands behind her back. "Oh, I think this is exactly the place for me. She approached with the stealth of a jungle panther prowling after prey. "You see, you lot took something from me," Helena drawled, coal black eyes glinting with a barely suppressed rage. "A little girl, not even ten. I believe it is only fair that I return the favor."
Another stepped forward his hair covered beneath a bowler hat boasting a rather full beard. Bowler Hat looked at the bald one.
"I think she fancies she can take all of us."
Helena's lips parted in a
Her attackers circled her, before the deadly dance began in a whirl of fists and feet. Helena ducked beneath one punch, her leg curving up to land a kick on the first man's face, followed by a left cross that felled him. Rotating to her left, she blocked the oncoming strike, returning with one of her own, sending him down with a whirling mule kick. Another man charged, and she windmilled backwards, avoiding his flurry of punches. Dodging to the left of a jab, she lashed out with a left cross, reversing the movement into a left back fist, followed by a right roundhouse punch.
Her head snapped to the side as one man's offering connected. Bracing herself, she countered with an elbow. Three kicks in rapid succession brought him to the ground where she finished him with a blow to the head. Rolling away from another flying attack, Helena slid to the side, kicking out to ward off another attacker but taking a strike to the side. Leaping into another roll, she clambered to her feet. She dove backwards, warding off another grab before flipping forward back to her feet. Dropping down, she swept the man's legs out from under him. Helena whirled, ducking to the side to avoid another fist. A snap kick doubled the man over and a knee to the face sent him down. She leaped over a charging assailant, dodging to the side.
Helena whirled to the side, avoiding another slashing wildly with a switchblade. She blocked thrusting stab and rotated her wrists, turning the knife on her attacker, ramming the blade through the heart. Barely pausing, she wrenched the weapon out, paying no mind to the dull thump of a dead body and flipped her hold to the blade. She rotated sharply, sending the knife whistling into the heart of another charging assailant.
Helena faced her final attacker as he charged. Left, right, up, down, raise the leg, kick back, she moved to stop the flurry of blows. She parried a one strike than another, crossing the man at the wrist. A sharp push upward knocked him off balance. A two-handed strike knocked him back a side kick doubled him over. Helena tensed her muscles and whirled, sending him to the ground with a punishing back fist. She straightened, ebony hair whirling and dark chocolate eyes sparkling with unmitigated rage. She grinned her victory, moving to secure the five men. She sat primly on a crate before her captives, speaking mostly to herself.
"Now, my dears...we shall have some fun…"
Hours later, Helena stalked away from the scene, the wild fire prevalent in dark depths, a small smirk playing at the corners of her mouth. Her hands were cracked and stained with blood that was not her own. There was a feral sense of triumph about the woman, animalistic in its appearance.
It was done.
0-0-0
There was the victim.
It was easy to see that Helena was born in entirely the wrong era. She was simply a victim of the times. Even by modern standards, the legacy of HG Wells was lauded and celebrated, "his" works thought to be the innovation towards an entirely new genre of novels. But Helena Wells was merely a ghostwriter, lurking in the shadows, the true genius behind the stories. She had been correct during their first meeting. During her time, it was easier to believe in the possibility of a time machine than in the reality that a woman thought one up.
One of the more pervasive affects Myka could see during Helena's existence in the presence was the freedom afforded to women in the present time. Myka could see the melancholic glint to Helena's eyes as she took in liberties such as Margaret Thatcher's rise to the British prime ministry or even Gloria Steinem's voice as an activist for feminist rights, knowing that such a thing would have been scoffed at in her time. She could see the wheels turning in Helena's head. With the technology at Helena's fingertips and the dazzling mind, Helena would have no doubt been afforded the glory she had been deprived of back in the 19th century.
Sometimes Myka wondered what Helena would have been like had she been born in 1966 instead of 1866. Helena would have been a product of the generation that lived through the free love of the 1970s, that harbored the cynicism born from the Cold War and Watergate, and that worshipped hair bands, Madonna, and arena rock during her twenties. Would Helena have applied the same brilliance that she did to the Victorian era to the Dot-Com generation? Would she have embraced her inner feminist and brought a new perspective to the world around her? The possibilities were endless in Myka's mind, but she did know that the world had been done a disservice not knowing the true nature behind the mythos of HG Wells.
Affliction comes to us, not to make us sad but sober; not to make us sorry but wise.
Myka knew the adage stated the opposite of love wasn't hate, it was indifference. She had never taken stock in the words, had never believed in their validity.
She was wrong.
They had to be true. Because she wouldn't feel this dead inside, feel this apathetic if there wasn't a conversely strong emotion paralleling her heartache. She wouldn't feel as though her very being had been ripped from her chest. She wouldn't have just given up. Helena represented something in Myka that she couldn't even begin to fathom or comprehend. She wanted to feel something, anything from Helena's betrayal, but all she could feel was a chasm resonating through the space her heart once occupied.
There were many sides to Helena Wells.
The genius side. The primitive side.
The innovator. The dogmatist.
The idealist. The realist.
The survivor. The victim.
They all made up that infuriating, multi-faceted woman. And Myka found herself staring at the blunt, unadulterated truth. She had fallen in love with Helena Wells. All parts of her.
The beauty and the beast.
Perhaps that was what the dull ache truly encompassed. She had given Helena all of her heart. So that meant with Helena's betrayal, the woman had taken it in its entirety.
It was a hard lesson to have learned.
She had to lose her heart to regain it once more. But in losing it, she gained something. The next time, she would be a bit more prudent in giving it away.
Helena taught her that.
You have learned something. That always feels at first as if you had lost something.
END
And there she goes! I hope you all enjoyed my little foray into the Warehouse 13 world. Hopefully, this won't be my last. Considering the promo to the season finale, I sincerely doubt that...As always, let me know what you thought, I welcome your comments!