Title: An (Un)Natural Disaster
Pairing: Myka/HG
Fandom: Warehouse 13
Rating: PG
Word Count: 570
Summary: AU. What if Myka were never part of the Warehouse? What if she hadn't been there to stop HG from using the Minoan Trident?
A/N: Written for an AU challenge at
femslashverse. Prompt is "natural disaster."
Myka has forgotten what it feels like to be warm.
She dreams of it sometimes; dreams of lifting her face up towards the sun and basking in the pleasant comfort of its rays. She’s come to hate those dreams, though. Because she always wakes up, and as the dream slips away, the sting of icy air feels all the more cruel.
***
It’s been over a year since Myka saw another human being, when a woman, half frozen to death, stumbles into her camp. Later, the thought will occur to Myka that maybe she should have been more cautious towards the newcomer, but other than the cold and the hunger, the only real threats that Myka faces nowadays are polar bears, rather than something as rare as another person.
So Myka can do nothing but stare, awestruck.
Even after the woman stumbles and falls, lying immobile in the snow, it takes several moments before Myka can even think to try to help. She lurches into motion, then, walking forward and sinking down onto her knees before the prone form. She turns the woman onto her back, and hazy brown eyes blink up at her, very slowly. Myka had almost expected her to be dead, but no. Not yet.
For the first time in a very long time, Myka feels something that she thinks could be described as hope.
***
It’s been eight months since Helena arrived, when she brings it up for the first time.
“I wish I’d known you back then.”
Helena’s whispered breath barely reaches Myka’s ears, and Myka - almost asleep, with her arms wrapped tightly around the body pressed up along her front - needs a moment to process the words.
“Back when?” she murmurs into the back of Helena’s neck.
“Before,” Helena replies. “Before all this. Before it happened.” Her tone is soft and solemn, but Myka is too tired to think anything of it.
Myka offers a vague agreement. “Mm. Would’ve been nice,” she says. The corners of her mouth turn upwards as a thought occurs to her. “Could’ve taken you out for a real date.”
Helena remains silent.
Minutes pass, and again, Myka is almost asleep when Helena speaks, even quieter this time.
“Maybe you could have stopped me.”
Myka means to ask what Helena is talking about. But her eyelids feel so heavy; her mind feels so sluggish; and, lying beneath the bearskin blanket and with Helena enveloped within her arms, she’s as close to warmth as she can ever remember feeling.
Before she can say anything, sleep comes up and claims her.
The next morning, Myka forgets the brief conversation entirely.
***
Helena hasn’t forgotten what it feels like to end the world.
Every morning, she wakes up and thinks again about trying to confess her many sins. But with each new dawn, the sight of Myka’s bright green eyes - bone-tired but somehow content; maybe even happy - causes all of Helena’s courage to slip away.
“Good morning, love,” she says instead, pressing a kiss to the corner of Myka’s lips.
The fires of hell will be a relief after such endless cold, Helena tells herself. There’s no escaping that fate, as far as Helena is concerned, so there can’t be all that much harm in keeping Myka in blissful ignorance for now.
Just one more day, she keeps telling herself. She’ll tell Myka tomorrow. Maybe. For now, she has one more day to savor Myka’s warmth.