Fic: Perhaps not to be (5)
See Part One for warnings
Regents Chang and Lattimer, as Artie addresses them, excuse themselves, and everybody else congregates in the den. Claudia and Pete curl up on one of the sofas; Myka and Artie perch on the edge of the other and each look as though they would rather be anywhere else. Helena just stands, at first, until Leena brings through more tea and coffee and then takes the seat next to Myka. Helena shrugs, and makes herself comfortable at Claudia’s feet - she needs the floor, really, to lean on while she writes, and she has so many things to say before dawn.
She runs through twenty-five index cards while the others sift through things they could say and find nothing. Claudia bends down, occasionally, to peer at what Helena’s writing, and her knees push through Helena’s shoulder when she stirs. Helena ignores her, focuses only on the rows and rows of her neat handwriting that will be her only eulogy: A series of labelled diagrams and ‘This is how to throw a punch, and remember: It is always better to kill outright than to allow an assailant the chance to harm you’ come first; then ‘I hid a secret compartment inside my time machine; the combination to unlock it is August 3rd, 1321, three swift raps on the topmost dial, and a good kick at the base. You should find enough information in there to rebuild it, or any number of my inventions - and Claudia, darling, there is no-one in the world with whom I would rather entrust my life’s work than you’, and lastly ‘MYKA, THIS IS OF VITAL IMPORTANCE: Thank you I wish Myka, I feel that Rarely have I ever There are times when I think I should have liked to have been better. I was magnificent but never good and you I wonder now if it wouldn’t have been better if I were. You Truly, Myka, I have met no one better than you, no one as good and as wonderful and as strong as you, and I do regret that I didn’t make this clear during my lifetime. Furthermore, I would not recommend dying, and therefore urge you to take reasonable precautions to prevent this happening to you & Claudia, and all those you hold most dear. Cordially yours, Helena G. Wells’.
Claudia reaches as if to snag the last card, and Helena raps her on the knuckles with the pen. She pulls her hand back, sufficiently warned, and Helena can see Pete give her shoulder a firm squeeze.
The small stack of messages Helena has assembled look like playing cards, and she flips through them absently. The diagrams on the first few cards all run together into one broken movement - a woman making a fist and snapping someone’s neck and stealing an assailant’s weapon - and Helena stops. Shuffles the cards, and then recalls that they were in a specific order for a reason and has to go through them all carefully, piecing it back together.
And that is how the first half hour passes.
*
Just as Helena sets aside those cards, Claudia leans forward and says in a voice which is considerably more voce than sotto, “So we’re going to save HG, right?”
“You want to lie to the Regents?” Artie certainly doesn’t seem thrilled by the prospect, but that isn’t in itself remarkable. What is remarkable, however, is that his eyebrows come together and he tips his head ever so slightly to one side, almost as if he’s considering the suggestion. “We can’t.”
That, at least, comes as no surprise, but the sudden explosion of sound as the others leap to her defence does. “Artie, they really want her gone,” Pete is saying; Claudia protests that it isn’t fair, that she can’t take losing anyone else just yet, and Myka strides away from the sofa and faces the other direction.
“She saved us, Artie, and she died doing it.”
It’s all too much - much too much - and Helena wants to scream. Three times in about as many days, she’s faced oblivion and been granted some twisted reprieve, and she doesn’t have the strength left to hope. Doesn’t know what she has left to hope for. There’s an odd pressure on her chest, as if someone has a belt looped around it and is binding her tighter and tighter, and Helena knows that if she still needed to breathe, she would be gasping for air. Please oh please she thinks, and her fingernails dig into her thighs, little crescent moon stings, and she doesn’t even know what she’s begging for right now.
Leena kneels before her and holds Helena’s name in her mouth, oh Helena, like it’s poetry, and Helena ducks into herself, a tiny comma, and waits for the world to grow calm.
Sounds are muffled now, as if they’re travelling through glass to reach her, but she hears someone move to kneel besides Leena and then Myka’s quiet “What is it?”
“Terror,” Leena whispers. Someone swallows.
The world is already a little steadier by the time Pete crosses the room. “I’m gonna go see my mom,” he says, and shuts the door after him. Helena takes that as her cue to stop shivering, to unfurl herself, and so she does. The first thing she sees is Myka.
Her dark hair falls down around her face like a veil, hiding her expression from everyone who isn’t roughly where Helena is, and Myka looks to be that same odd combination of steadfast and desperate she had been in the forest.
“Um.”
Leena just nods and gets to her feet. “She’s calmer now.”
“Good,” Myka says to Leena, and then turns her attention back to the space where Helena sits. “I mean, good.”
Helena nods, and gathers her own hair out of the way. The pen is still beside her, as are several blank cards she has yet to use. ‘It was nothing, I assure you. A momentary lapse-‘, and then Myka’s hand stalls the pen mid-stroke.
“Don’t do that,” Myka tells her. “Don’t lie to us now.”
“It may be the last opportunity I have. I would so hate to squander it.” She feels - well, she can manage, at least. Carry on. It isn’t pleasant, but she doesn’t have long left, and Helena thinks, she really thinks that she can last these last few hours until-
“What lie?” Artie narrows his eyes at the index card and makes a little noise in the back of his throat that is likely intended to convey mistrust. His constancy is at least reassuring - the world can be burned into nothing, and Artie will still be there, frowning at Helena and demanding that she be supervised at all times.
Yes. This is manageable. She would dearly love a better example, but she has felt this way twice before: the first, outside a lodging house in the outskirts of Paris in which resided one of the men who had killed her daughter; the second, in Warehouse Two. Anticipation and dread and acceptance (that this will not end well, that this will not make her happy, and that she will do it anyway) all in one. She has travelled this road before, and she can recognise these signs at least, and she knows that she will carry on. Helena acknowledges that she is broken, badly so, but the universe has yet to prevent her from being functional, and it isn’t about to start now.
Helena pulls on the pen and Myka, after a moment, releases it. “’My locket,’” Myka reads out loud. “’I believe my locket is the artefact.’ Helena-“
Artie’s face holds something that Helena might almost call compassion. “We’ll talk about that tomorrow. You don’t need... We can talk about it tomorrow.”
“But, Artie-“
“Claudia, no. We don’t know what side-effects there are to this, we don’t know anything-“
“Because we haven’t even researched it-!”
‘With which sources? Darling, the archives were destroyed too. There is no data to which you can compare this.’
Myka dutifully relays the message to the others. Claudia huffs a little; Leena bows her head, and Artie gestures towards Myka.
“Exactly,” he says. “Exactly.”
“We don’t know that there are side-effects, though.”
“Exactly!” It’s Claudia’s turn to point at Myka. “Exactly to that. What if there isn’t anything?”
Artie removes his glasses and rubs his eyes. “HG- Helena. Is there anything you would, ah, like to do before morning?”
Finish the repairs on my time machine, is Helena’s first thought, which may well suggest that she hasn’t quite rediscovered that odd serenity she once found in embracing her doom. The clock at the side ticks on- time marches inexorably forward - and she only has a few hours left.
‘I do enjoy that Scrabble game.’
“Really? Right, OK. OK.” Myka rubs the back of her neck. “OK, we’ll play Scrabble.”
Leena goes to fetch the board, Pete rejoins them and acquiesces after only a little prodding, and Claudia folds her arms and glares.
“This can’t be your bucket list.”
“‘I don’t know what that means, Claudia, but I would very much enjoy your company.’” Myka’s voice quivers a bit as she reads that out, but she doesn’t cry, just swallows deeply and lets her hair fall and hide her face. “’If you are the last people I will see then, yes, that will be a pleasant thought.’ “
*
They play for a little while, talking the same way Helena learned how to drive - scared, but reckless, taking her cues from the faces of the people around her and hoping that the answers come quickly. Pete makes conversation by himself, apparently undeterred by the fact that nobody - save Leena, sometimes - is answering him, and Helena tries to focus on the click of the tiles against the board. If she closes her eyes, lets Pete’s prattle about proton packs and neutrino wands fill up her empty spaces, she can almost believe that they’re happy.
She still doesn’t know, is the only thing - how to say goodbye, especially to the one person who knows her better than anyone else. Or Claudia, for that matter. And maybe it is selfish, and maybe Claudia is hurting, but Helena wants- She wants to have this moment, uncomfortable and imperfect, because she’s standing on the cusp of an eternity without them at all. Helena has never pretended to be selfless.
“Apart from that one time,” she murmurs besides Myka’s ear. “Well, technically more than once, but they don’t really count.”
“Q-U-A-R-T-Z, quartz,” Myka says. It’s a good move, but it has placed that ‘Z’ a few spaces above the ‘g’ in Pete’s D-O-G, and a triple word score in the middle, and that’s even better than Helena could have hoped.”Your move.”
“I shall- Myka, I did miss you, you know.” She places her own tiles down, a little pleased that her last action on this earth will not be to lose a word game to Pete Lattimer.
“Oh, come on, really?”
“Zymurgy.” Myka makes a tiny little chuffing sound that could almost have been a laugh. “Are you cheating at Scrabble?”
‘Well, yes, but not during that last turn.’
“I knew it.”
‘I thought that you knew!’
“Yeah, I thought that you’d think I’d know.” The clouds in Myka’s eyes clear (cumulonimbus, almost certainly) and her lips quirk upwards in a fair approximation of a smile. “But I also assumed that you’d have too much pride to cheat at Scrabble.”
‘To borrow one of your charming little idioms, Myka: Suck it.’
A moment of nothing, and then a bark of laughter so sudden that Myka manages to upend the game board with her elbow. Helena reaches for her wrist, tries to hold her, but her fingers decide to lose track of their faux physicality once more and she can’t quite make contact.
Something inside her throat squeezes. There are three hours left until dawn.
*
They never do return to the Scrabble game after that. Artie is the first to make his excuses, and both Pete and Leena slip away when Helena isn’t paying attention.
“So, your plan is just to wait until they come and kill you?”
‘I’ve already been killed.’
“And you’re still here.” Claudia’s eyes glitter in the pre-dawn light from the window. “You just pwned us all in Scrabble, so what point are you trying to make, exactly?”
“I wish I knew.”
If this is the end- and Helena is spiteful enough to resent Claudia, for leaving her thinking that anything else is still a possibility - then it could probably be worse.
Her remaining time can be counted in minutes. She has one hundred and twenty nine of them to go.
*
The Regents are early.
*
They come downstairs a few minutes before sunrise. Helena is standing at the window, watching the light wash over the sky, when she hears their footsteps on the stair. The others must hear it too - Myka stiffens, while Claudia gives a very loud, very wet sniffle, and inclines her head towards Helena’s shoulder. Several strands of bright hair pass into the bone. Helena can feel them there. They make the inside of her clavicle itch.
The door creaks open, and Claudia and Myka don’t turn around.
“We’re waiting for the sunrise,” Myka informs them.
The young one, Chang, grunts at that like he’s about to protest, but Regent Lattimer - wearing a neatly-tailored pantsuit, and looking far too put-together for this time of the morning- holds up her hand, Ssh.
“Very well.” And then, because she is a Regent, after all, and therefore incapable of being kind due to any sort of human decency, she moves to stand with them. “So, your necklace is an artefact, then.”
Claudia and Myka don’t move. Helena does take a step backwards, but that’s more because the itch is becoming absolutely unbearable than because she feels intimidated. Nobody would even know the difference.
“You left it as a message to warn the others, looked after it for years because of Christina-“
“-I’d thank you to leave my daughter alone.”
“-And you wanted to hold onto her, even after her death. And then your necklace survived the explosion.” Lattimer pauses to school her voice into something that she probably intends to be comforting. “I wouldn’t be surprised.”
“Don’t.” Myka places her arm gingerly around Claudia’s shoulders, and her hand just hums along the surface of Helena’s chest. It isn’t the kind of tone that invites discussion.
Lattimer, though, is far more foolish than even Helena would have guessed, as she continues to speak all the same. “My son-“
“-She said don’t, lady. Not now.”
That does the trick. Regent Lattimer ambles towards her partner, and Helena watches them watching Claudia, and in this moment, she would very much like to kill them both. Because they were early, because they are planning to use Claudia, because they dared invoke Christina’s memory. Myka would probably not appreciate it, though, so Helena contents herself with making a rude gesture towards them both and then placing her own hand on Claudia’s other shoulder. She isn’t quite touching Myka’s arm, but she can see the hairs along it stand to attention all the same.
“You’re freezing, HG.”
“It’s almost as if I’m not alive, isn’t it?”
Seconds to go.
*
The sun comes up, as it does every morning, and it isn’t really spectacular.
“If this were one of my novels, of course, the weather would have known what it was doing. Given me a fitting send-off, something poetic. The sort of twaddle Charles adored.”
“Pretty,” Claudia says when nobody else makes a sound.
“Yes, I suppose it is.”
As last words go, they aren’t too bad.
*
Regent Chang has already collected the locket from Myka’s bedroom - Myka chokes off an angry little sound when she sees it - but they allow Helena one last moment to fill in another index card. She gathers up the bundle she wrote last night and tucks them inside Claudia’s hands, and then she begins to write.
She would, anyway, if she knew what she wanted to say. Words have never failed her before - before the Warehouse, they were her bread and butter, or at least her chief means of obtaining the aforementioned - but now Helena can’t put a name to what she feels. Had never realised just how inadequate the English language can be, and feels vaguely outraged that there isn’t a word for something that seems so fundamental.
‘Please be happy,’ she writes when the Regents begin to look impatient, and she holds the message out towards Myka and Claudia. It will just have to do.
Neither of them reaches for it. Claudia shuffles into Myka a little more and watches Chang pull out a static bag and shake it loose. The rustle of the plastic sounds preternaturally loud, and he opens it so slowly that Helena almost swears he’s doing this on purpose.
This is it, she thinks, and not for the first time. This is how I die.
Claudia turns her face towards Myka’s shoulder, Chang and Lattimer look the other way, and Myka narrows her eyes. Swallows. But doesn’t turn away.
(Helena loves her a little more, just for that.)
Helena straightens out her fingers, slowly- her hands have balled into fists, as though she could ever fight her way out of this - and she pushes her chin forward, proud. She’ll die with a little dignity intact.
“Oh, bollocks,” she mutters anyway, seeing Chang hold the locket at the very mouth of the bag, and then-
“Helena,” she thinks she hears Myka say, just as Chang releases his hold on the chain. It falls into the bag with a soft thump, and absolutely nothing happens. No flash of light, no burst of sound- nothing. The moment is magnificent in its anticlimax, and the look on the Regents’ faces - confusion and irritation and a sliver of something else - is absolutely delicious.
Claudia guffaws. After a second, Helena joins her.
“It’s not an artefact?”
“It would seem not. Ah.” Chang gives the bag an experimental little jiggle, and of course Claudia and Helena only laugh all the harder for it. Helena gives him a cheery little wave with the hand still holding her final message and almost screams in delight at his expression.
Lattimer stills Chang’s hand, and looks back towards the card. “Excuse us one minute.”
The sound that leaves Claudia’s mouth then could be charitably described as a honk. Helena is faring little better - she knows, intellectually, that the two of them are circling hysteria, but she doesn’t care. Doesn’t have it in her to care right now. The message in her hand scrunches up, and Myka steps towards it instantly.
“Helena!”
“It’s fine, it’s fine,” Helena chokes out through her giggles, and shakes the little ball of paper to prove that she’s there. “It’s all fine, Myka!”
Myka, of course, doesn’t hear her and tries to smooth the paper out. “Are you hurt? Helena! What’s happening?”
‘Nothing.’ Helena pauses to collect herself, but her whole body’s still heaving and the letters come out in funny little jerks. ‘Nothing, Myka, I’m fine. Everything is fine.’
Myka looks as though she doesn’t believe that for a second, but just as she opens her mouth - probably to press Helena further; there’s little she dislikes more than thinking someone is lying to her - Leena opens the door and smiles, her eyes flying towards Helena.
“You’re still here.”
“She’s still here,” Myka confirms. Claudia dissolves further into a fit of giggles and can offer nothing more than a very brief “I don’t even...”. “How is she?”
Leena’s eyes crinkle around the edges. “She’s good. She’s... happy.”
“Not hurt?”
Leena hesitates, just a fraction of a second, before saying, “She’s very happy.”
Helena’s legs give way, and she falls straight through the table. The edge of the card strikes the tabletop, and it bounces out of her grip. She’s laughing too hard to care.
*
Part Six
Regents Chang and Lattimer, as Artie addresses them, excuse themselves, and everybody else congregates in the den. Claudia and Pete curl up on one of the sofas; Myka and Artie perch on the edge of the other and each look as though they would rather be anywhere else. Helena just stands, at first, until Leena brings through more tea and coffee and then takes the seat next to Myka. Helena shrugs, and makes herself comfortable at Claudia’s feet - she needs the floor, really, to lean on while she writes, and she has so many things to say before dawn.
She runs through twenty-five index cards while the others sift through things they could say and find nothing. Claudia bends down, occasionally, to peer at what Helena’s writing, and her knees push through Helena’s shoulder when she stirs. Helena ignores her, focuses only on the rows and rows of her neat handwriting that will be her only eulogy: A series of labelled diagrams and ‘This is how to throw a punch, and remember: It is always better to kill outright than to allow an assailant the chance to harm you’ come first; then ‘I hid a secret compartment inside my time machine; the combination to unlock it is August 3rd, 1321, three swift raps on the topmost dial, and a good kick at the base. You should find enough information in there to rebuild it, or any number of my inventions - and Claudia, darling, there is no-one in the world with whom I would rather entrust my life’s work than you’, and lastly ‘MYKA, THIS IS OF VITAL IMPORTANCE: Thank you I wish Myka, I feel that Rarely have I ever There are times when I think I should have liked to have been better. I was magnificent but never good and you I wonder now if it wouldn’t have been better if I were. You Truly, Myka, I have met no one better than you, no one as good and as wonderful and as strong as you, and I do regret that I didn’t make this clear during my lifetime. Furthermore, I would not recommend dying, and therefore urge you to take reasonable precautions to prevent this happening to you & Claudia, and all those you hold most dear. Cordially yours, Helena G. Wells’.
Claudia reaches as if to snag the last card, and Helena raps her on the knuckles with the pen. She pulls her hand back, sufficiently warned, and Helena can see Pete give her shoulder a firm squeeze.
The small stack of messages Helena has assembled look like playing cards, and she flips through them absently. The diagrams on the first few cards all run together into one broken movement - a woman making a fist and snapping someone’s neck and stealing an assailant’s weapon - and Helena stops. Shuffles the cards, and then recalls that they were in a specific order for a reason and has to go through them all carefully, piecing it back together.
And that is how the first half hour passes.
*
Just as Helena sets aside those cards, Claudia leans forward and says in a voice which is considerably more voce than sotto, “So we’re going to save HG, right?”
“You want to lie to the Regents?” Artie certainly doesn’t seem thrilled by the prospect, but that isn’t in itself remarkable. What is remarkable, however, is that his eyebrows come together and he tips his head ever so slightly to one side, almost as if he’s considering the suggestion. “We can’t.”
That, at least, comes as no surprise, but the sudden explosion of sound as the others leap to her defence does. “Artie, they really want her gone,” Pete is saying; Claudia protests that it isn’t fair, that she can’t take losing anyone else just yet, and Myka strides away from the sofa and faces the other direction.
“She saved us, Artie, and she died doing it.”
It’s all too much - much too much - and Helena wants to scream. Three times in about as many days, she’s faced oblivion and been granted some twisted reprieve, and she doesn’t have the strength left to hope. Doesn’t know what she has left to hope for. There’s an odd pressure on her chest, as if someone has a belt looped around it and is binding her tighter and tighter, and Helena knows that if she still needed to breathe, she would be gasping for air. Please oh please she thinks, and her fingernails dig into her thighs, little crescent moon stings, and she doesn’t even know what she’s begging for right now.
Leena kneels before her and holds Helena’s name in her mouth, oh Helena, like it’s poetry, and Helena ducks into herself, a tiny comma, and waits for the world to grow calm.
Sounds are muffled now, as if they’re travelling through glass to reach her, but she hears someone move to kneel besides Leena and then Myka’s quiet “What is it?”
“Terror,” Leena whispers. Someone swallows.
The world is already a little steadier by the time Pete crosses the room. “I’m gonna go see my mom,” he says, and shuts the door after him. Helena takes that as her cue to stop shivering, to unfurl herself, and so she does. The first thing she sees is Myka.
Her dark hair falls down around her face like a veil, hiding her expression from everyone who isn’t roughly where Helena is, and Myka looks to be that same odd combination of steadfast and desperate she had been in the forest.
“Um.”
Leena just nods and gets to her feet. “She’s calmer now.”
“Good,” Myka says to Leena, and then turns her attention back to the space where Helena sits. “I mean, good.”
Helena nods, and gathers her own hair out of the way. The pen is still beside her, as are several blank cards she has yet to use. ‘It was nothing, I assure you. A momentary lapse-‘, and then Myka’s hand stalls the pen mid-stroke.
“Don’t do that,” Myka tells her. “Don’t lie to us now.”
“It may be the last opportunity I have. I would so hate to squander it.” She feels - well, she can manage, at least. Carry on. It isn’t pleasant, but she doesn’t have long left, and Helena thinks, she really thinks that she can last these last few hours until-
“What lie?” Artie narrows his eyes at the index card and makes a little noise in the back of his throat that is likely intended to convey mistrust. His constancy is at least reassuring - the world can be burned into nothing, and Artie will still be there, frowning at Helena and demanding that she be supervised at all times.
Yes. This is manageable. She would dearly love a better example, but she has felt this way twice before: the first, outside a lodging house in the outskirts of Paris in which resided one of the men who had killed her daughter; the second, in Warehouse Two. Anticipation and dread and acceptance (that this will not end well, that this will not make her happy, and that she will do it anyway) all in one. She has travelled this road before, and she can recognise these signs at least, and she knows that she will carry on. Helena acknowledges that she is broken, badly so, but the universe has yet to prevent her from being functional, and it isn’t about to start now.
Helena pulls on the pen and Myka, after a moment, releases it. “’My locket,’” Myka reads out loud. “’I believe my locket is the artefact.’ Helena-“
Artie’s face holds something that Helena might almost call compassion. “We’ll talk about that tomorrow. You don’t need... We can talk about it tomorrow.”
“But, Artie-“
“Claudia, no. We don’t know what side-effects there are to this, we don’t know anything-“
“Because we haven’t even researched it-!”
‘With which sources? Darling, the archives were destroyed too. There is no data to which you can compare this.’
Myka dutifully relays the message to the others. Claudia huffs a little; Leena bows her head, and Artie gestures towards Myka.
“Exactly,” he says. “Exactly.”
“We don’t know that there are side-effects, though.”
“Exactly!” It’s Claudia’s turn to point at Myka. “Exactly to that. What if there isn’t anything?”
Artie removes his glasses and rubs his eyes. “HG- Helena. Is there anything you would, ah, like to do before morning?”
Finish the repairs on my time machine, is Helena’s first thought, which may well suggest that she hasn’t quite rediscovered that odd serenity she once found in embracing her doom. The clock at the side ticks on- time marches inexorably forward - and she only has a few hours left.
‘I do enjoy that Scrabble game.’
“Really? Right, OK. OK.” Myka rubs the back of her neck. “OK, we’ll play Scrabble.”
Leena goes to fetch the board, Pete rejoins them and acquiesces after only a little prodding, and Claudia folds her arms and glares.
“This can’t be your bucket list.”
“‘I don’t know what that means, Claudia, but I would very much enjoy your company.’” Myka’s voice quivers a bit as she reads that out, but she doesn’t cry, just swallows deeply and lets her hair fall and hide her face. “’If you are the last people I will see then, yes, that will be a pleasant thought.’ “
*
They play for a little while, talking the same way Helena learned how to drive - scared, but reckless, taking her cues from the faces of the people around her and hoping that the answers come quickly. Pete makes conversation by himself, apparently undeterred by the fact that nobody - save Leena, sometimes - is answering him, and Helena tries to focus on the click of the tiles against the board. If she closes her eyes, lets Pete’s prattle about proton packs and neutrino wands fill up her empty spaces, she can almost believe that they’re happy.
She still doesn’t know, is the only thing - how to say goodbye, especially to the one person who knows her better than anyone else. Or Claudia, for that matter. And maybe it is selfish, and maybe Claudia is hurting, but Helena wants- She wants to have this moment, uncomfortable and imperfect, because she’s standing on the cusp of an eternity without them at all. Helena has never pretended to be selfless.
“Apart from that one time,” she murmurs besides Myka’s ear. “Well, technically more than once, but they don’t really count.”
“Q-U-A-R-T-Z, quartz,” Myka says. It’s a good move, but it has placed that ‘Z’ a few spaces above the ‘g’ in Pete’s D-O-G, and a triple word score in the middle, and that’s even better than Helena could have hoped.”Your move.”
“I shall- Myka, I did miss you, you know.” She places her own tiles down, a little pleased that her last action on this earth will not be to lose a word game to Pete Lattimer.
“Oh, come on, really?”
“Zymurgy.” Myka makes a tiny little chuffing sound that could almost have been a laugh. “Are you cheating at Scrabble?”
‘Well, yes, but not during that last turn.’
“I knew it.”
‘I thought that you knew!’
“Yeah, I thought that you’d think I’d know.” The clouds in Myka’s eyes clear (cumulonimbus, almost certainly) and her lips quirk upwards in a fair approximation of a smile. “But I also assumed that you’d have too much pride to cheat at Scrabble.”
‘To borrow one of your charming little idioms, Myka: Suck it.’
A moment of nothing, and then a bark of laughter so sudden that Myka manages to upend the game board with her elbow. Helena reaches for her wrist, tries to hold her, but her fingers decide to lose track of their faux physicality once more and she can’t quite make contact.
Something inside her throat squeezes. There are three hours left until dawn.
*
They never do return to the Scrabble game after that. Artie is the first to make his excuses, and both Pete and Leena slip away when Helena isn’t paying attention.
“So, your plan is just to wait until they come and kill you?”
‘I’ve already been killed.’
“And you’re still here.” Claudia’s eyes glitter in the pre-dawn light from the window. “You just pwned us all in Scrabble, so what point are you trying to make, exactly?”
“I wish I knew.”
If this is the end- and Helena is spiteful enough to resent Claudia, for leaving her thinking that anything else is still a possibility - then it could probably be worse.
Her remaining time can be counted in minutes. She has one hundred and twenty nine of them to go.
*
The Regents are early.
*
They come downstairs a few minutes before sunrise. Helena is standing at the window, watching the light wash over the sky, when she hears their footsteps on the stair. The others must hear it too - Myka stiffens, while Claudia gives a very loud, very wet sniffle, and inclines her head towards Helena’s shoulder. Several strands of bright hair pass into the bone. Helena can feel them there. They make the inside of her clavicle itch.
The door creaks open, and Claudia and Myka don’t turn around.
“We’re waiting for the sunrise,” Myka informs them.
The young one, Chang, grunts at that like he’s about to protest, but Regent Lattimer - wearing a neatly-tailored pantsuit, and looking far too put-together for this time of the morning- holds up her hand, Ssh.
“Very well.” And then, because she is a Regent, after all, and therefore incapable of being kind due to any sort of human decency, she moves to stand with them. “So, your necklace is an artefact, then.”
Claudia and Myka don’t move. Helena does take a step backwards, but that’s more because the itch is becoming absolutely unbearable than because she feels intimidated. Nobody would even know the difference.
“You left it as a message to warn the others, looked after it for years because of Christina-“
“-I’d thank you to leave my daughter alone.”
“-And you wanted to hold onto her, even after her death. And then your necklace survived the explosion.” Lattimer pauses to school her voice into something that she probably intends to be comforting. “I wouldn’t be surprised.”
“Don’t.” Myka places her arm gingerly around Claudia’s shoulders, and her hand just hums along the surface of Helena’s chest. It isn’t the kind of tone that invites discussion.
Lattimer, though, is far more foolish than even Helena would have guessed, as she continues to speak all the same. “My son-“
“-She said don’t, lady. Not now.”
That does the trick. Regent Lattimer ambles towards her partner, and Helena watches them watching Claudia, and in this moment, she would very much like to kill them both. Because they were early, because they are planning to use Claudia, because they dared invoke Christina’s memory. Myka would probably not appreciate it, though, so Helena contents herself with making a rude gesture towards them both and then placing her own hand on Claudia’s other shoulder. She isn’t quite touching Myka’s arm, but she can see the hairs along it stand to attention all the same.
“You’re freezing, HG.”
“It’s almost as if I’m not alive, isn’t it?”
Seconds to go.
*
The sun comes up, as it does every morning, and it isn’t really spectacular.
“If this were one of my novels, of course, the weather would have known what it was doing. Given me a fitting send-off, something poetic. The sort of twaddle Charles adored.”
“Pretty,” Claudia says when nobody else makes a sound.
“Yes, I suppose it is.”
As last words go, they aren’t too bad.
*
Regent Chang has already collected the locket from Myka’s bedroom - Myka chokes off an angry little sound when she sees it - but they allow Helena one last moment to fill in another index card. She gathers up the bundle she wrote last night and tucks them inside Claudia’s hands, and then she begins to write.
She would, anyway, if she knew what she wanted to say. Words have never failed her before - before the Warehouse, they were her bread and butter, or at least her chief means of obtaining the aforementioned - but now Helena can’t put a name to what she feels. Had never realised just how inadequate the English language can be, and feels vaguely outraged that there isn’t a word for something that seems so fundamental.
‘Please be happy,’ she writes when the Regents begin to look impatient, and she holds the message out towards Myka and Claudia. It will just have to do.
Neither of them reaches for it. Claudia shuffles into Myka a little more and watches Chang pull out a static bag and shake it loose. The rustle of the plastic sounds preternaturally loud, and he opens it so slowly that Helena almost swears he’s doing this on purpose.
This is it, she thinks, and not for the first time. This is how I die.
Claudia turns her face towards Myka’s shoulder, Chang and Lattimer look the other way, and Myka narrows her eyes. Swallows. But doesn’t turn away.
(Helena loves her a little more, just for that.)
Helena straightens out her fingers, slowly- her hands have balled into fists, as though she could ever fight her way out of this - and she pushes her chin forward, proud. She’ll die with a little dignity intact.
“Oh, bollocks,” she mutters anyway, seeing Chang hold the locket at the very mouth of the bag, and then-
“Helena,” she thinks she hears Myka say, just as Chang releases his hold on the chain. It falls into the bag with a soft thump, and absolutely nothing happens. No flash of light, no burst of sound- nothing. The moment is magnificent in its anticlimax, and the look on the Regents’ faces - confusion and irritation and a sliver of something else - is absolutely delicious.
Claudia guffaws. After a second, Helena joins her.
“It’s not an artefact?”
“It would seem not. Ah.” Chang gives the bag an experimental little jiggle, and of course Claudia and Helena only laugh all the harder for it. Helena gives him a cheery little wave with the hand still holding her final message and almost screams in delight at his expression.
Lattimer stills Chang’s hand, and looks back towards the card. “Excuse us one minute.”
The sound that leaves Claudia’s mouth then could be charitably described as a honk. Helena is faring little better - she knows, intellectually, that the two of them are circling hysteria, but she doesn’t care. Doesn’t have it in her to care right now. The message in her hand scrunches up, and Myka steps towards it instantly.
“Helena!”
“It’s fine, it’s fine,” Helena chokes out through her giggles, and shakes the little ball of paper to prove that she’s there. “It’s all fine, Myka!”
Myka, of course, doesn’t hear her and tries to smooth the paper out. “Are you hurt? Helena! What’s happening?”
‘Nothing.’ Helena pauses to collect herself, but her whole body’s still heaving and the letters come out in funny little jerks. ‘Nothing, Myka, I’m fine. Everything is fine.’
Myka looks as though she doesn’t believe that for a second, but just as she opens her mouth - probably to press Helena further; there’s little she dislikes more than thinking someone is lying to her - Leena opens the door and smiles, her eyes flying towards Helena.
“You’re still here.”
“She’s still here,” Myka confirms. Claudia dissolves further into a fit of giggles and can offer nothing more than a very brief “I don’t even...”. “How is she?”
Leena’s eyes crinkle around the edges. “She’s good. She’s... happy.”
“Not hurt?”
Leena hesitates, just a fraction of a second, before saying, “She’s very happy.”
Helena’s legs give way, and she falls straight through the table. The edge of the card strikes the tabletop, and it bounces out of her grip. She’s laughing too hard to care.
*
Part Six