Except The Heart That Lit Me - Warehouse 13 (1/1)
TITLE: Except The Heart That Lit Me - Warehouse 13 (1/1)
AUTHOR: rhyfeddu
RATING: PG-13, a few references to some pretty nasty violence.
SUMMARY: presumed HG/Myka. Set between “Trials” and “3..2..1”.
Myka is back at the Warehouse, but is having trouble adjusting.
DISCLAIMER: As always, everything here belongs to other (much more wealthy) people. I'm just having fun.
A/N: Title is from “Dark Night of the Soul” by St. John of the Cross.
Also, I’ve been assimilated by the tumblr collective. If you want to check out my general obsessions and get the very occasional fic notices, find me HERE.
Myka reached beside her and tilted her bedside lampshade so just a little more light hit the book in her hand. She scooted further down and moved her shoulders from side to side until she burrowed herself into the oversized pillows propped up behind her.
Her eyes were burning from fatigue, but she knew she couldn't sleep just yet. She needed somebody else’s thoughts to fill her head.
She could hear the others gathered downstairs, the sounds of a corny Ed Wood movie seeping through the floorboards. And Pete shouting out random things at the screen and he and Claudia and sometimes Leena saying the lines along with the characters.
Myka had dodged movie night again. And they’d let her.
They were being very...careful with her since her return. They never said anything when Myka would suddenly excuse herself, or when she faded into the background as they playfully teased each other. And Pete no longer ruthlessly stole food from her plate when she was too slow to come to meals. Small things. Things they could all pretend they weren’t doing. But they were treating her differently. Still unsure. Afraid to spook her. Afraid she'd bolt again. Myka couldn't really blame them.
Because as much as she was relieved to be back, to be home, it was different. Because Myka felt in some kind of limbo, too. Like…her. Like she wasn't really all there, either, even if the others could see and touch her.
Myka took a very deep breath and tugged her straightened hair a little too hard and to the side and stubbornly, almost aggressively, cleared her mind and lifted the fabric bookmark from the page.
But a series of thumps outside in the hall made her screw up her face and huff out her breath in annoyance. She stared at the paneled door and her robe hanging off the hook and willed whoever it was on the other side to just go away.
But the thumps repeated and Myka realized it was the sound of a foot tapping the bottom of the door near the floor.
"Myka?" Claudia's cautious, muffled voice called out. "I'm sorry. I know it's late. It's just... It'll just take a minute, okay?"
Myka flexed her neck and worried her lip, firmly shutting the book. She wouldn't, couldn't ignore the young woman. "It's alright, Claude," she said as neutrally as possible. "You can come in."
There was a rattling of the doorknob, some light cussing, and then Claudia awkwardly came in, an old metal box wrapped in both arms, several feet deep and wide. Almost like a miniature trunk. It looked heavy.
Claudia leaned back against the door and closed it behind her. Then she shifted her burden, resting some of the weight on her hip.
Myka's brows lifted. "Do you...want to set that down?"
Claudia gave a grateful, low chuckle. "Hell to the yeah," she said, bending her knees until the box rested on the rug between them. "I gotta work on the cardio. I was huffing and puffing like the old man there for a...okay, then, right," she abruptly stopped at Myka's look.
"Did you break something again? Are you trying to hide it from Artie?"
"No, no, no, no...No," She said quickly. "No trouble. Nothing wrong. All good. Learned my lesson there. On'tday everway ayplay ithway ethay Artifactsway." Claudia's tongue nervously poked the inside of her mouth and her black fingernails flicked the metal studs on her vest. And then she just stared.
Myka kicked her covered feet straight out in front of her and allowed some impatience to creep into her measured voice. "What is it, Claude?"
The girl hesitated, then seemed to make some mental jump over the cliff. "Well, you know how Artie had me working on the Endless Wonder that is inventory today, right?" Myka nodded. "I found something I thought you'd want to see. That you should see. It was mis-stored, totally the wrong place. Don't think that was an accident," she added, muttering.
"Wait, you brought an artifact to Leena's? To my room?"
Claudia's hands flew up, palms out. "Nope, absolutely not. They're harmless. I checked and double-checked. They're just papers. They were apparently snatched and stored ‘cause they mention the Warehouse. Like alot." She dropped her hands. "Shelved to keep them away from prying eyes and inquiring minds and all. I guess."
"'They'?".
"They're...journals. Diaries, really. About Warehouse 12. Specifically ...um...” Claudia winced. “...They're HG's diaries."
Myka's eyes flicked at the chest on the floor like she could suddenly hear it ticking, her breath caught. "And what possible good would that do me?" The agent asked tightly.
"I dunno. I've looked some of them over, and uh..." The girl seemed at a loss, a hand loosely gesturing towards the box. "She's in there. The HG we thought we knew. She was real. It wasn't...all a lie."
Myka jerked her knees back up to her chest and resting her arms on them, she swiped at her face and resolutely looked at the foot of her bed. "I already know that," she eventually whispered.
Neither moved or said anything for a long time, Myka hating herself for feeling her own eyes start to well and the pattern of her quilt start to blur.
Then, as she sometimes could, Claudia became the adult that was always lurking and said softly, straightforwardly, "Look, I know you're still having a hard time with what happened. I really think this might help. I know you miss her. This is a way to spend time with the best of her. And to remember that there was a reason you saw what you saw in her."
After an even longer pause, Myka looked up. "Okay. Okay. I’ll…take a look. Sometime.”
The redhead flashed a large smile and quickly left the room, obviously relieved to end the conversation, and closed the door behind her so gingerly it was comical.
Myka glared at the small trunk. After maybe fifteen minutes, she whipped back the bed covers with a jerk and padded over to it, swallowed, then lifted the lid. There were dozens of leather bound books inside, neatly stacked spine up, apparently two stacks deep. Most looked almost mint. They’d been well cared for and obviously taken and stored in the Warehouse’s climate controlled recesses shortly after Helena had…left their employ.
Myka dipped her hand in and randomly took a volume out. Taking a breath, she opened it and Helena’s fluid handwriting greeted her. The words were interspersed with occasional rough sketches of ideas she’d had, contraptions she’d imagined and things of interest that she’d apparently encountered in her daily life. One sketch suggested an Asian styled arched bridge with a stream running beneath it.
Myka hadn’t even known Helena could draw.
Stuck between the bound pages were also newspaper and periodical articles of political or scientific interest. Quite a few were about the burgeoning suffragette movement.
Myka realized one of the loose pages was thicker than the others and lifted it out. It was a photograph. About twenty people of all ages were gathered outside. They were posing for the camera, but it was only with a loose, casual attention.
Several people’s faces were a little blurred from movement, as was one woman’s fair hair blowing in a slight breeze. It looked like a warm, pleasant day and they sat on a few wooden deck chairs and blankets layered on the grass. Myka could make out a pond behind them. They wore light colored clothing, probably linen. A few of the men wore suits that could only be called ‘Bohemian’ and the women’s clothes were considerably less constrictive than was common at the time.
Near the center was Helena, sitting on the grass, wearing trousers and a light blouse, her hair having largely blown free from her token bun. Standing between her legs and grasped with both Helena’s arms was a small child of about three, looking at the camera intently, one arm extending and pointing at it. Christina.
Helena was the only one not looking into the camera. Helena was looking in delight at her daughter.
Myka quickly slipped the photo back in the journal and slapped it shut. Not giving herself time to think about it, she carefully replaced the book and closed the lid. Then she shoved the trunk until it was wedged under a nearby desk. If you didn’t look for it, you wouldn’t know it was there.
She crawled back in bed and immediately turned off her lamp.
The next day, Pete and Myka were sent to Portland, Oregon because people were being miniaturized. It took them a week to find Tom Thumb’s pudding bowl. They left for a ping in Phoenix directly from there and it was nearly another week before they returned to the Inn.
Myka had thought about the trunk nearly every moment she was gone.
As soon as Artie was briefed and Leena had helped them tag and shelf the two newest additions, Myka had charted a direct path back to her quarters. When she flung her door open, she realized she’d been nursing a gripping fear that the trunk would somehow be gone. But she could still see the glint of metal beneath the desk.
She tugged it free and immediately starting pulling out the books. She carefully lined them up on the floor, using the desk’s legs as bookends, and put them in order by date.
When she was done, Myka had a brief moment while looking at the even row at her feet, when she considered how wrong it was to read someone else’s diaries. No matter how long ago they were written, they belonged to someone she knew.
But a small spiteful part of Myka decided that HG owed her an explanation that she wouldn’t otherwise give her. She owed her this.
The conscientious reader that she was, Myka told herself that she should start at the beginning, but she found her hand reaching for the very last book. It held Helena’s final days before bronzing, her final choices, that both allowed Myka to know her, and also eventually take her away.
She carefully opened the book and saw confusion and pain before reading a single word. Helena’s smooth writing had become ragged and hard to make out. The entries were sporadic bursts of desperation, no longer the regular and ordered account of her days. There were no more sketches.
Myka flipped through the volume. Towards the middle, there were several pages of itemized artifacts, methodically listing their characteristics, their hidden costs and their relative merits at returning Christina.
Rubbing hard at her forehead, Myka went back to the front of the diary. It began with Helena’s accounts of using her time machine. She apparently went back to witness her daughter’s death six separate times, before despairing of ever changing anything. She wrote in great detail about each attempt, her scientific mind trying to find some pattern, some variable she was missing that would ensure her success.
Helena was resolutely conducting an experiment around the worst moments of her life. As Myka read, she found her fingers caressing the words on the page as if they could give comfort.
I’m utterly unfair to Sophie. After this last attempt, after my return, I carelessly railed that no matter what martial skills I brought to these past events, Sophie’s plodding muscles wouldn’t respond quickly enough to change the outcome. Only the breaking of the poor girl’s face as I said this brought me out of my latest frustrated tear.
She, better than anyone, knows what I encounter each time I depart. She’s forced to watch over my inert form knowing this, all of it, and fearing that she will fail me directly, as she feels she failed me with my precious daughter’s welfare, knowing she couldn’t possible cope if my machine faltered.
I’m a complete cad to her, I realize, and yet lack the resources to reassure or answer her unwavering kindnesses in anyway. She who has been sister and family to me in ways my actual flesh and blood never have.
Meanwhile, I hide my guilty desires that at the very least Fate could allow me to fail so completely in my task in Paris, that Sophie might die as well, taking my transported soul with her and ending this, finally ending this. And at least giving me the consolation of joining the ether with my precious Christina beside me. Where I belong. Where I should have been in the first place. I find myself unable to look Sophie in the face when these thoughts occur. Perhaps my shame means I am not completely lost yet.
But this game seems truly fixed. No matter how different my actions, no matter the strategy, it ends, always ends, with myself trapped behind Sophie’s blue eyes as the brute brings his boot down on my baby’s head to stop her screams. The sound of that obscenity hammers in my head, constantly now, in sympathy with my heartbeat.
And my own screams resume where Christina’s were silenced each night during my dreams. I find myself resisting my bed more and more and yet know this toll only takes me further from the shores of sanity.
I don’t know what else to do, but the most forbidden. I must look to the artifacts.
If I can’t change the past, I must restore it. The means are at my grasp, something most couldn’t dare hope for, and I must take it.
What good does fighting the fantastical threats of this world do, when such mundane, petty evil - mere greed - is allowed to smother the light of my child’s life?
Myka reverently closed the book and held it against her chest. Then she cried until she was gasping for breath.
She resumed reading the next day and at the end of each day after, or at any free moment at all. She started to worry it was becoming a compulsion. But she was always careful to pull her distracted mind back to focus on her job when out in the field. The thought of making a mistake and risking Pete or anyone else was deeply frightening to her. Myka couldn’t pretend that reading Helena’s account wasn’t again stirring up feelings of culpability in losing Sam.
Then one morning, Artie directed her and Pete to investigate Ben Franklin’s key in upper New York state. For the first time, Myka slipped the diary into her overnight bag.
After a long day dodging lightning bolts and severe storms to retrieve the artifact, Myka begged off playing video games in a nearby monster arcade with Pete and slipped off to her room. The squeeze Pete gave her arm was at odds with the goofy grin he flashed her before they parted. She was about to finally say something, but Pete unknowingly deflected it with an anticipatory victory dance.
Back in her chain hotel room, she shoved the itchy polyester cover down to the foot of the bed, turned on the harsh ceiling light, and climbed into bed and took the book out.
I’ve come across a strange item that has struck some sympathetic chord in me. It answers each personal agony with an agony of its own, and seems to know all the miseries of this world. And it has found a familiar soul in me. It sings of understanding and offers an acknowledgment of all that pains me, and rather than continue to turn that pain inwards, it encourages an outward expression instead. It clearly sees revenge and retribution as comfort.
It holds my darkest intent as friend.
I retrieved it without Woolly’s assistance, a U-shaped piece of metal that a woman had recently used to bash in her husband’s head. Grasping it, I immediately felt compelled to hide it amongst my person when Woolly arrived. And while he turned over the dire domestic situation to Scotland Yard, I left with excuses and I have since taken the item home, and slipped it under the mattress near my head. I’ve forbidden the servants my room.
It whispers laments to me during the night. I finally sleep, but have vivid, dark, destructive dreams. But I awaken refreshed, and determined, but for what, I know not.
Myka stared at the entry. She realized her breathing had become shallow and she forced more air in.
Something she’d almost forgotten surfaced from her memories. The moment Myka had taken the Trident away from Helena, in the heat of Yellowstone, she’d felt an almost electric surge run up her arm.
Even prone and bleeding on the ground, Artie had yelled out a warning and had fished with his good arm into his vest, producing some purple gloves and tossed them at Myka.
But later, on the drive back, Myka was so flushed with anger towards Helena that she was shaking with it and could barely look at her.
It wasn’t until they had returned to the Warehouse, and the Trident was properly neutralized, that Myka had felt the red haze start to lift. About the same time, Helena deflated and looked completely shell-shocked.
Now Myka wondered how none of them had made the connection, or commented on it.
It was sometimes easy to forget that the agents of Warehouse 12 didn’t have the neutralizer or gloves at their disposal and were often handling artifacts with no protection of any kind.
No wonder the agent casualty rate was even higher then.
Myka worried the edge of the page with her thumbnail. Did the Regents know how the artifact had inflated and twisted Helena’s despair, and just didn’t care? Or did they believe the Trident’s influence had already altered her character too much, in ways that wouldn’t fade with the worst of its effects? Myka huffed again in frustration that her elusive bosses never bothered to explain anything to them, no matter how deeply it affected their agent’s lives.
Myka’s stomach roiled with nausea.
She reluctantly set the book aside and glanced at the bedside clock and saw that it was 2AM. They would be catching a flight at 7AM. She killed the light and turned over.
When she awoke several hours later, her legs were tightly entwined with the sheets, from kicking and trashing while she slept.
On their flight home, Pete quickly settled in and closed his eyes. He was crashing. He’d been up all night at the arcade, and he’d bragged earlier about smoking some fourteen year old in a multi-game epic contest (Myka’s first thought was ‘Where were his parents?’). When Pete started softly snoring, Myka gingerly slipped the diary out of her carry-on bag and opened it.
I have researched, and I have determined that my new friend is a bifurcated part of the Minoan Trident. The list of its believed attributes is long. And exceedingly dangerous. But my connection to it seems to still my tongue’s ability to reveal its existence in my very home.
I have fortunately only been told of the particular hold such noxious drugs as opium can have over the flesh of its victims, and it seems this is similar. Yet this grips both my flesh and my soul and I don’t know how to break free of it. Truly, I have little desire to do so. And I no longer know from which of us that lack of purpose springs.
It appears to feed on and enlarge the darkness of one’s soul and so its hold is strong and will remain so while my own darkness stays a part of me. How can I hope to purge it? I have managed to attract one of the most dangerous curiosities in our Warehouse annals.
Myka squirmed in the hard airline seat. The diary skipped weeks and then had a simple, chilling entry.
I have found the bastards. It is finally repaid.
Myka closed her eyes, and tilted her head back against the headrest. After first encountering HG in London, after she’d killed McPherson and escaped, Myka had pulled all the Warehouse records available on HG Wells. Myka was drawn to understand this woman, and reconcile the works she’d read and loved as a child, and the lofty ideals they contained, with the woman she appeared to have become.
HG had had a long career as an agent, and Myka was impressed with the case files and all the tales they told. But soon Myka had come across the official record of how HG had tormented and killed the five men who had broken into her cousin’s home and abused her servant Sophie Siddal and then killed Christina. Myka had forced herself to read the complete report.
It was a dry, dispassionate clerk’s rendering of a horror show.
HG had used ancient torture methods culled from her knowledge of earlier cultures. She’d probably quite deliberately not used any artifacts, knowing that the Regents would find that the most objectionable. But she didn’t have to. Even in that cold retelling of it, the men had obviously suffered a slow and agonizing fate.
It had shaken Myka, but she was still left with a guilty sympathy for the woman. Myka resisted revenge, but certainly understood the impulse, especially after Sam’s murder. And HG wasn’t randomly killing innocents, but avenging the brutal death of a loved one. A child, no less.
Still, Myka had worried about the dangerous woman she’d read about, and that Artie continued to rail against, and this conflicted opinion lingered when she next encountered the woman while investigating the deaths on a wrestling team. But she’d seen nothing of the unhinged maniac she’d expected, just an obviously wounded, lost soul.
And Myka had wanted to trust her. In some ways, because no one else did. And she supposed Helena had recognized that. And in part - how large a part still bothered her - took advantage of that.
Closing the book and gripping it hard in her lap, Myka deeply sighed and stretched her neck. She jumped just a little when Pete spoke next to her.
“You alright, Mykes?”
Pete’s eyes were soft and encouraging.
“Um, yeah. I think so. Just tired. Alot on my mind.” Pete just nodded his head slowly and with a little exaggeration. Myka squinted. “Claudia told you, didn’t she?”
Pete gave a small shrug. “She was just worried. Wanted me to keep an eye out for you.” He reached over and playfully flicked her arm. “Like I do anyways.”
Myka suspected she hadn’t been too subtle, and her constant shuffling away to her private library had probably been painfully obvious to her partner from the beginning. Myka’s lips quirked gratefully and she put her left arm through his on the armrest and scooted until she could rest her head on his shoulder.
“I’m going to sleep for awhile, too,” she murmured.
“Good thinkin’,” he said.
The diary stayed in Myka’s lap the rest of the way home.
It was much later that night before she was back in her room, in bed, with the book in her hands.
My vengeance on the men who murdered my Christina has been discovered.
I believe the change in Cataranga and Wolcott’s aspect towards me would have once concerned me, but presently, strangely, it does not. Still they both unexpectedly came to my defense when I would offer none myself, and the Regents have decided to rule it an understandable aberration of my character.
I interpret that to mean they still have use of me, and are willing to look away from any ruthless unpleasantness in my personal life.
Cataranga and I had a terrible argument afterwards. The cynicism and hypocrisy of the Regents has become unbearable to me and I can’t understand how my wise Mentor excuses their own excesses. He urgently confessed great concern for me, for which I had no patience. I told him I found myself perfectly capable of looking after my own welfare, even if the constabulary of France and Great Britain could not, nor any of my supposed allies in the Warehouse. His response was to maintain his complete faith in my better nature, and belief that it would win out, perhaps especially now with some sort of resolution to my loss.
I had the most unspeakable urge to take his skull in my hands and slam it against the stone wall next to us.
Shaking, I left abruptly and found myself on the floor of my rooms, cradling the Minoan artifact as I once had Christina. Now that my darkest desires had been answered, it seemed the Trident was inducing greater designs in me. Part of me reveled in this unspoken conversation and another looked on in abject horror.
Somehow, that latter aspect managed to stow the object into two pillow cases and call Charles to my home. I directed him, with explicit instructions to only handle the object with thickly gloved hands, to attach the metal to the coffin of my child, and forbid anyone else to ever open the crypt.
The object yet calls to my divided mind, even separated by distance, and my hope is that should its call draw me to it again, it will sit nestled next to the remains of the only thing that could convince me of its wrongness.
Christina will stop me. Her memory has been the only thing to sustain me thus far, and it will prevent me from shaming her.
Myka blinked and skimmed through the next few pages. The entries became almost normal, and there were several months of the usual reports of acquiring artifacts and investigating abnormalities.
Helena mentioned several times the continued strained relations with her colleagues, who still reached out to her. Occasionally, Helena would again make mention of a promising artifact, one that might bring Christina back to her. But in many ways, it appeared Helena had given up.
Then, one short entry caught Myka’s eyes.
We recently recovered some ancient parchments, which revealed some evidence of the location of our lost Warehouse 2. This should be a moment of great accomplishment for us. Yet I couldn’t share in the excitement and wonder of my fellow agents. My gaze was fixed on Cataranga’s eyes, which seemed equally fixed on me, and he was as fearful as I have ever seen him.
Had this Cataranga somehow known about the Helena and Trident? Or had he simply feared any of the other many dangerous artifacts he thought would be housed there?
Annoyed with the unanswerable, Myka roughly flicked to the next page. At the top started a fresh entry.
I’ve killed Wolcott. I’ve become the very villain I’ve spent years opposing.
It makes no difference that it was unintended, as I had no real thought to his safety when I used the Phoenix’s Cauldron. He had discovered me, and was urging me not to employ it, warning me of the dangers, as I once would have lectured him.
His gentle face was so trusting that I wouldn’t actually proceed. His belief apparent that the best of me had not been extinguished along with my daughter’s breath. His faith that reason could still find a foothold in my mind plainly writ on his face.
But I was single-minded and selfish. I knew this was my last, best chance. And I knew having been discovered yet again, that I would finally be barred from the Warehouse. I was close, so close, and it would work and it would all be worth it. They would see and perhaps forgive, but it wouldn’t matter because I would have my child, my baby pressed once again against me. I knew that the weight of her, the smell of her in my arms, would somehow absolve me and heal me of this madness.
But instead the flames of the Cauldron unexpectedly swelled and overtook Wolcott and there was just an instant, a fraction of time, when I saw Woolly’s face turn to shock and fear, and that visage has been burned into me.
He was the best of us, or what we purport to be. One of the purest souls I’ve known and undeserving of such an end, and at the hands of one he trusted above all else.
My failures compound, and I’ve proven myself useless and a failure on every level.
My greatest asset, to imagine something other than things are, to be able to alter materially what exists and bend it to my needs, has proven my greatest liability. I’ve thought I could tinker with life and death, as well, and make it a tool for my desires.
I await the Regent’s decision.
I’m being held at my home and have stayed in my rooms for days now as they debate. My two servants, my only friends left me, are here and having a sort of living wake for me. Their faces are stricken and there are sounds of tears when they leave my rooms. I’ve failed them as well, I know.
If I had half the courage of even one of the noble wretches that exist in this city, I would answer my failings as they do, and slip away as I know I could, and fling myself off Waterloo Bridge.
But I find that some sliver of hope has somehow survived. And I have written a proposal and forwarded it to the Regents, a plan whereby they should subject me to the bronzing process.
Perhaps all I need is rest, some dreamless sleep, to stop the fevered turns of my mind, so that I may restore myself to myself. So I can be useful again. And if not find happiness, at least find contentment with that. If I can wait this storm out, If I can see and touch the glorious future I know is coming, perhaps this will all be weathered, as it seems impossible to now. Perhaps it will all matter in ways I don’t understand now.
I just can’t comprehend the point of any of this.
But perhaps the Regents will lack the cowardice that resides in me, and make the ultimate pronouncement for me. Either way, it will only be a relief.
I must stop the thoughts. My mind, of which I’ve held such hubris, has only betrayed me and I’ve become truly frightened of myself. And worse, I have wasted my life’s potential to help bring about the future I so crave.
Myka pressed her palm against the open page, sickened to realize Helena had so misunderstood the bronzing process. Swallowing down the lump lodged in her throat, Myka flipped through the next few pages. There were about twenty or so left and they were all blank.
As she was shutting the volume, she spotted a small rectangle of paper wedged in the very back. It was ivory colored and the size of a business card. She turned it over and saw a terribly familiar Egyptian symbol printed on the other side, along with the initials ‘JM’.
Myka’s eyes flew to the row of diaries still on the floor, as if she could see McPherson’s ghostly fingerprints soiling Helena’s thoughts and words.
He had read them first.
Decades ago, he’d found them and read them and that was how he knew of Helena and why he’d tried to use her against the Warehouse. He must’ve thought he’d found a kindred spirit, someone equally eager to see the Regents and their agents fall.
McPherson had read the diaries. And he had registered all Helena’s resentments and rage, but none of her hope and lingering humanity.
Myka sat crossed legged on her bed for nearly an hour and gazed in sorrow at the evidence of Helena’s life and thought of all the many ways and times that it could have ended much differently.
Her eyes wet, she finally crawled out of bed and stood, and very deliberately took McPherson’s card and tore it into as many small pieces as she could and threw it in the trash.
Myka knew she would eventually go back to the beginning volumes and relive Helena’s first joyous days as a Warehouse apprentice, and meet and grow to know her daughter Christina and experience the brilliance of HG’s nimble mind in action.
But first she needed to write a report.
Myka went to her desk and pulled out several pieces of fresh paper and sat down and began to write an abbreviated account of what she’d read, her assessment of it, and McPherson’s suspected involvement.
It seemed appropriate for it to be handwritten.
Myka wanted a friend’s testimony to be presented to the current Regents. She wanted it added to the lifeless, hard facts in the large pile of papers the Warehouse held on Helena G. Wells. She wanted more of the complicated truth to be told. That no matter what Helena came to believe herself, she wasn’t simply a villain.
Myka desperately wanted that on the record.
Several weeks later, the Warehouse got a lead on an object that sounded a low, loud devastating noise and appeared to disintegrate anyone nearby, and Myka remembered a similar account in one of HG’s official case files.
Standing outside the diner’s window, watching Pete shove more pie into his mouth, Myka hesitated only a moment, and then cracked open her Farnsworth to tell a scowling Artie she wanted to make a request of the Regents.
AUTHOR: rhyfeddu
RATING: PG-13, a few references to some pretty nasty violence.
SUMMARY: presumed HG/Myka. Set between “Trials” and “3..2..1”.
Myka is back at the Warehouse, but is having trouble adjusting.
DISCLAIMER: As always, everything here belongs to other (much more wealthy) people. I'm just having fun.
A/N: Title is from “Dark Night of the Soul” by St. John of the Cross.
Also, I’ve been assimilated by the tumblr collective. If you want to check out my general obsessions and get the very occasional fic notices, find me HERE.
Myka reached beside her and tilted her bedside lampshade so just a little more light hit the book in her hand. She scooted further down and moved her shoulders from side to side until she burrowed herself into the oversized pillows propped up behind her.
Her eyes were burning from fatigue, but she knew she couldn't sleep just yet. She needed somebody else’s thoughts to fill her head.
She could hear the others gathered downstairs, the sounds of a corny Ed Wood movie seeping through the floorboards. And Pete shouting out random things at the screen and he and Claudia and sometimes Leena saying the lines along with the characters.
Myka had dodged movie night again. And they’d let her.
They were being very...careful with her since her return. They never said anything when Myka would suddenly excuse herself, or when she faded into the background as they playfully teased each other. And Pete no longer ruthlessly stole food from her plate when she was too slow to come to meals. Small things. Things they could all pretend they weren’t doing. But they were treating her differently. Still unsure. Afraid to spook her. Afraid she'd bolt again. Myka couldn't really blame them.
Because as much as she was relieved to be back, to be home, it was different. Because Myka felt in some kind of limbo, too. Like…her. Like she wasn't really all there, either, even if the others could see and touch her.
Myka took a very deep breath and tugged her straightened hair a little too hard and to the side and stubbornly, almost aggressively, cleared her mind and lifted the fabric bookmark from the page.
But a series of thumps outside in the hall made her screw up her face and huff out her breath in annoyance. She stared at the paneled door and her robe hanging off the hook and willed whoever it was on the other side to just go away.
But the thumps repeated and Myka realized it was the sound of a foot tapping the bottom of the door near the floor.
"Myka?" Claudia's cautious, muffled voice called out. "I'm sorry. I know it's late. It's just... It'll just take a minute, okay?"
Myka flexed her neck and worried her lip, firmly shutting the book. She wouldn't, couldn't ignore the young woman. "It's alright, Claude," she said as neutrally as possible. "You can come in."
There was a rattling of the doorknob, some light cussing, and then Claudia awkwardly came in, an old metal box wrapped in both arms, several feet deep and wide. Almost like a miniature trunk. It looked heavy.
Claudia leaned back against the door and closed it behind her. Then she shifted her burden, resting some of the weight on her hip.
Myka's brows lifted. "Do you...want to set that down?"
Claudia gave a grateful, low chuckle. "Hell to the yeah," she said, bending her knees until the box rested on the rug between them. "I gotta work on the cardio. I was huffing and puffing like the old man there for a...okay, then, right," she abruptly stopped at Myka's look.
"Did you break something again? Are you trying to hide it from Artie?"
"No, no, no, no...No," She said quickly. "No trouble. Nothing wrong. All good. Learned my lesson there. On'tday everway ayplay ithway ethay Artifactsway." Claudia's tongue nervously poked the inside of her mouth and her black fingernails flicked the metal studs on her vest. And then she just stared.
Myka kicked her covered feet straight out in front of her and allowed some impatience to creep into her measured voice. "What is it, Claude?"
The girl hesitated, then seemed to make some mental jump over the cliff. "Well, you know how Artie had me working on the Endless Wonder that is inventory today, right?" Myka nodded. "I found something I thought you'd want to see. That you should see. It was mis-stored, totally the wrong place. Don't think that was an accident," she added, muttering.
"Wait, you brought an artifact to Leena's? To my room?"
Claudia's hands flew up, palms out. "Nope, absolutely not. They're harmless. I checked and double-checked. They're just papers. They were apparently snatched and stored ‘cause they mention the Warehouse. Like alot." She dropped her hands. "Shelved to keep them away from prying eyes and inquiring minds and all. I guess."
"'They'?".
"They're...journals. Diaries, really. About Warehouse 12. Specifically ...um...” Claudia winced. “...They're HG's diaries."
Myka's eyes flicked at the chest on the floor like she could suddenly hear it ticking, her breath caught. "And what possible good would that do me?" The agent asked tightly.
"I dunno. I've looked some of them over, and uh..." The girl seemed at a loss, a hand loosely gesturing towards the box. "She's in there. The HG we thought we knew. She was real. It wasn't...all a lie."
Myka jerked her knees back up to her chest and resting her arms on them, she swiped at her face and resolutely looked at the foot of her bed. "I already know that," she eventually whispered.
Neither moved or said anything for a long time, Myka hating herself for feeling her own eyes start to well and the pattern of her quilt start to blur.
Then, as she sometimes could, Claudia became the adult that was always lurking and said softly, straightforwardly, "Look, I know you're still having a hard time with what happened. I really think this might help. I know you miss her. This is a way to spend time with the best of her. And to remember that there was a reason you saw what you saw in her."
After an even longer pause, Myka looked up. "Okay. Okay. I’ll…take a look. Sometime.”
The redhead flashed a large smile and quickly left the room, obviously relieved to end the conversation, and closed the door behind her so gingerly it was comical.
Myka glared at the small trunk. After maybe fifteen minutes, she whipped back the bed covers with a jerk and padded over to it, swallowed, then lifted the lid. There were dozens of leather bound books inside, neatly stacked spine up, apparently two stacks deep. Most looked almost mint. They’d been well cared for and obviously taken and stored in the Warehouse’s climate controlled recesses shortly after Helena had…left their employ.
Myka dipped her hand in and randomly took a volume out. Taking a breath, she opened it and Helena’s fluid handwriting greeted her. The words were interspersed with occasional rough sketches of ideas she’d had, contraptions she’d imagined and things of interest that she’d apparently encountered in her daily life. One sketch suggested an Asian styled arched bridge with a stream running beneath it.
Myka hadn’t even known Helena could draw.
Stuck between the bound pages were also newspaper and periodical articles of political or scientific interest. Quite a few were about the burgeoning suffragette movement.
Myka realized one of the loose pages was thicker than the others and lifted it out. It was a photograph. About twenty people of all ages were gathered outside. They were posing for the camera, but it was only with a loose, casual attention.
Several people’s faces were a little blurred from movement, as was one woman’s fair hair blowing in a slight breeze. It looked like a warm, pleasant day and they sat on a few wooden deck chairs and blankets layered on the grass. Myka could make out a pond behind them. They wore light colored clothing, probably linen. A few of the men wore suits that could only be called ‘Bohemian’ and the women’s clothes were considerably less constrictive than was common at the time.
Near the center was Helena, sitting on the grass, wearing trousers and a light blouse, her hair having largely blown free from her token bun. Standing between her legs and grasped with both Helena’s arms was a small child of about three, looking at the camera intently, one arm extending and pointing at it. Christina.
Helena was the only one not looking into the camera. Helena was looking in delight at her daughter.
Myka quickly slipped the photo back in the journal and slapped it shut. Not giving herself time to think about it, she carefully replaced the book and closed the lid. Then she shoved the trunk until it was wedged under a nearby desk. If you didn’t look for it, you wouldn’t know it was there.
She crawled back in bed and immediately turned off her lamp.
The next day, Pete and Myka were sent to Portland, Oregon because people were being miniaturized. It took them a week to find Tom Thumb’s pudding bowl. They left for a ping in Phoenix directly from there and it was nearly another week before they returned to the Inn.
Myka had thought about the trunk nearly every moment she was gone.
As soon as Artie was briefed and Leena had helped them tag and shelf the two newest additions, Myka had charted a direct path back to her quarters. When she flung her door open, she realized she’d been nursing a gripping fear that the trunk would somehow be gone. But she could still see the glint of metal beneath the desk.
She tugged it free and immediately starting pulling out the books. She carefully lined them up on the floor, using the desk’s legs as bookends, and put them in order by date.
When she was done, Myka had a brief moment while looking at the even row at her feet, when she considered how wrong it was to read someone else’s diaries. No matter how long ago they were written, they belonged to someone she knew.
But a small spiteful part of Myka decided that HG owed her an explanation that she wouldn’t otherwise give her. She owed her this.
The conscientious reader that she was, Myka told herself that she should start at the beginning, but she found her hand reaching for the very last book. It held Helena’s final days before bronzing, her final choices, that both allowed Myka to know her, and also eventually take her away.
She carefully opened the book and saw confusion and pain before reading a single word. Helena’s smooth writing had become ragged and hard to make out. The entries were sporadic bursts of desperation, no longer the regular and ordered account of her days. There were no more sketches.
Myka flipped through the volume. Towards the middle, there were several pages of itemized artifacts, methodically listing their characteristics, their hidden costs and their relative merits at returning Christina.
Rubbing hard at her forehead, Myka went back to the front of the diary. It began with Helena’s accounts of using her time machine. She apparently went back to witness her daughter’s death six separate times, before despairing of ever changing anything. She wrote in great detail about each attempt, her scientific mind trying to find some pattern, some variable she was missing that would ensure her success.
Helena was resolutely conducting an experiment around the worst moments of her life. As Myka read, she found her fingers caressing the words on the page as if they could give comfort.
I’m utterly unfair to Sophie. After this last attempt, after my return, I carelessly railed that no matter what martial skills I brought to these past events, Sophie’s plodding muscles wouldn’t respond quickly enough to change the outcome. Only the breaking of the poor girl’s face as I said this brought me out of my latest frustrated tear.
She, better than anyone, knows what I encounter each time I depart. She’s forced to watch over my inert form knowing this, all of it, and fearing that she will fail me directly, as she feels she failed me with my precious daughter’s welfare, knowing she couldn’t possible cope if my machine faltered.
I’m a complete cad to her, I realize, and yet lack the resources to reassure or answer her unwavering kindnesses in anyway. She who has been sister and family to me in ways my actual flesh and blood never have.
Meanwhile, I hide my guilty desires that at the very least Fate could allow me to fail so completely in my task in Paris, that Sophie might die as well, taking my transported soul with her and ending this, finally ending this. And at least giving me the consolation of joining the ether with my precious Christina beside me. Where I belong. Where I should have been in the first place. I find myself unable to look Sophie in the face when these thoughts occur. Perhaps my shame means I am not completely lost yet.
But this game seems truly fixed. No matter how different my actions, no matter the strategy, it ends, always ends, with myself trapped behind Sophie’s blue eyes as the brute brings his boot down on my baby’s head to stop her screams. The sound of that obscenity hammers in my head, constantly now, in sympathy with my heartbeat.
And my own screams resume where Christina’s were silenced each night during my dreams. I find myself resisting my bed more and more and yet know this toll only takes me further from the shores of sanity.
I don’t know what else to do, but the most forbidden. I must look to the artifacts.
If I can’t change the past, I must restore it. The means are at my grasp, something most couldn’t dare hope for, and I must take it.
What good does fighting the fantastical threats of this world do, when such mundane, petty evil - mere greed - is allowed to smother the light of my child’s life?
Myka reverently closed the book and held it against her chest. Then she cried until she was gasping for breath.
She resumed reading the next day and at the end of each day after, or at any free moment at all. She started to worry it was becoming a compulsion. But she was always careful to pull her distracted mind back to focus on her job when out in the field. The thought of making a mistake and risking Pete or anyone else was deeply frightening to her. Myka couldn’t pretend that reading Helena’s account wasn’t again stirring up feelings of culpability in losing Sam.
Then one morning, Artie directed her and Pete to investigate Ben Franklin’s key in upper New York state. For the first time, Myka slipped the diary into her overnight bag.
After a long day dodging lightning bolts and severe storms to retrieve the artifact, Myka begged off playing video games in a nearby monster arcade with Pete and slipped off to her room. The squeeze Pete gave her arm was at odds with the goofy grin he flashed her before they parted. She was about to finally say something, but Pete unknowingly deflected it with an anticipatory victory dance.
Back in her chain hotel room, she shoved the itchy polyester cover down to the foot of the bed, turned on the harsh ceiling light, and climbed into bed and took the book out.
I’ve come across a strange item that has struck some sympathetic chord in me. It answers each personal agony with an agony of its own, and seems to know all the miseries of this world. And it has found a familiar soul in me. It sings of understanding and offers an acknowledgment of all that pains me, and rather than continue to turn that pain inwards, it encourages an outward expression instead. It clearly sees revenge and retribution as comfort.
It holds my darkest intent as friend.
I retrieved it without Woolly’s assistance, a U-shaped piece of metal that a woman had recently used to bash in her husband’s head. Grasping it, I immediately felt compelled to hide it amongst my person when Woolly arrived. And while he turned over the dire domestic situation to Scotland Yard, I left with excuses and I have since taken the item home, and slipped it under the mattress near my head. I’ve forbidden the servants my room.
It whispers laments to me during the night. I finally sleep, but have vivid, dark, destructive dreams. But I awaken refreshed, and determined, but for what, I know not.
Myka stared at the entry. She realized her breathing had become shallow and she forced more air in.
Something she’d almost forgotten surfaced from her memories. The moment Myka had taken the Trident away from Helena, in the heat of Yellowstone, she’d felt an almost electric surge run up her arm.
Even prone and bleeding on the ground, Artie had yelled out a warning and had fished with his good arm into his vest, producing some purple gloves and tossed them at Myka.
But later, on the drive back, Myka was so flushed with anger towards Helena that she was shaking with it and could barely look at her.
It wasn’t until they had returned to the Warehouse, and the Trident was properly neutralized, that Myka had felt the red haze start to lift. About the same time, Helena deflated and looked completely shell-shocked.
Now Myka wondered how none of them had made the connection, or commented on it.
It was sometimes easy to forget that the agents of Warehouse 12 didn’t have the neutralizer or gloves at their disposal and were often handling artifacts with no protection of any kind.
No wonder the agent casualty rate was even higher then.
Myka worried the edge of the page with her thumbnail. Did the Regents know how the artifact had inflated and twisted Helena’s despair, and just didn’t care? Or did they believe the Trident’s influence had already altered her character too much, in ways that wouldn’t fade with the worst of its effects? Myka huffed again in frustration that her elusive bosses never bothered to explain anything to them, no matter how deeply it affected their agent’s lives.
Myka’s stomach roiled with nausea.
She reluctantly set the book aside and glanced at the bedside clock and saw that it was 2AM. They would be catching a flight at 7AM. She killed the light and turned over.
When she awoke several hours later, her legs were tightly entwined with the sheets, from kicking and trashing while she slept.
On their flight home, Pete quickly settled in and closed his eyes. He was crashing. He’d been up all night at the arcade, and he’d bragged earlier about smoking some fourteen year old in a multi-game epic contest (Myka’s first thought was ‘Where were his parents?’). When Pete started softly snoring, Myka gingerly slipped the diary out of her carry-on bag and opened it.
I have researched, and I have determined that my new friend is a bifurcated part of the Minoan Trident. The list of its believed attributes is long. And exceedingly dangerous. But my connection to it seems to still my tongue’s ability to reveal its existence in my very home.
I have fortunately only been told of the particular hold such noxious drugs as opium can have over the flesh of its victims, and it seems this is similar. Yet this grips both my flesh and my soul and I don’t know how to break free of it. Truly, I have little desire to do so. And I no longer know from which of us that lack of purpose springs.
It appears to feed on and enlarge the darkness of one’s soul and so its hold is strong and will remain so while my own darkness stays a part of me. How can I hope to purge it? I have managed to attract one of the most dangerous curiosities in our Warehouse annals.
Myka squirmed in the hard airline seat. The diary skipped weeks and then had a simple, chilling entry.
I have found the bastards. It is finally repaid.
Myka closed her eyes, and tilted her head back against the headrest. After first encountering HG in London, after she’d killed McPherson and escaped, Myka had pulled all the Warehouse records available on HG Wells. Myka was drawn to understand this woman, and reconcile the works she’d read and loved as a child, and the lofty ideals they contained, with the woman she appeared to have become.
HG had had a long career as an agent, and Myka was impressed with the case files and all the tales they told. But soon Myka had come across the official record of how HG had tormented and killed the five men who had broken into her cousin’s home and abused her servant Sophie Siddal and then killed Christina. Myka had forced herself to read the complete report.
It was a dry, dispassionate clerk’s rendering of a horror show.
HG had used ancient torture methods culled from her knowledge of earlier cultures. She’d probably quite deliberately not used any artifacts, knowing that the Regents would find that the most objectionable. But she didn’t have to. Even in that cold retelling of it, the men had obviously suffered a slow and agonizing fate.
It had shaken Myka, but she was still left with a guilty sympathy for the woman. Myka resisted revenge, but certainly understood the impulse, especially after Sam’s murder. And HG wasn’t randomly killing innocents, but avenging the brutal death of a loved one. A child, no less.
Still, Myka had worried about the dangerous woman she’d read about, and that Artie continued to rail against, and this conflicted opinion lingered when she next encountered the woman while investigating the deaths on a wrestling team. But she’d seen nothing of the unhinged maniac she’d expected, just an obviously wounded, lost soul.
And Myka had wanted to trust her. In some ways, because no one else did. And she supposed Helena had recognized that. And in part - how large a part still bothered her - took advantage of that.
Closing the book and gripping it hard in her lap, Myka deeply sighed and stretched her neck. She jumped just a little when Pete spoke next to her.
“You alright, Mykes?”
Pete’s eyes were soft and encouraging.
“Um, yeah. I think so. Just tired. Alot on my mind.” Pete just nodded his head slowly and with a little exaggeration. Myka squinted. “Claudia told you, didn’t she?”
Pete gave a small shrug. “She was just worried. Wanted me to keep an eye out for you.” He reached over and playfully flicked her arm. “Like I do anyways.”
Myka suspected she hadn’t been too subtle, and her constant shuffling away to her private library had probably been painfully obvious to her partner from the beginning. Myka’s lips quirked gratefully and she put her left arm through his on the armrest and scooted until she could rest her head on his shoulder.
“I’m going to sleep for awhile, too,” she murmured.
“Good thinkin’,” he said.
The diary stayed in Myka’s lap the rest of the way home.
It was much later that night before she was back in her room, in bed, with the book in her hands.
My vengeance on the men who murdered my Christina has been discovered.
I believe the change in Cataranga and Wolcott’s aspect towards me would have once concerned me, but presently, strangely, it does not. Still they both unexpectedly came to my defense when I would offer none myself, and the Regents have decided to rule it an understandable aberration of my character.
I interpret that to mean they still have use of me, and are willing to look away from any ruthless unpleasantness in my personal life.
Cataranga and I had a terrible argument afterwards. The cynicism and hypocrisy of the Regents has become unbearable to me and I can’t understand how my wise Mentor excuses their own excesses. He urgently confessed great concern for me, for which I had no patience. I told him I found myself perfectly capable of looking after my own welfare, even if the constabulary of France and Great Britain could not, nor any of my supposed allies in the Warehouse. His response was to maintain his complete faith in my better nature, and belief that it would win out, perhaps especially now with some sort of resolution to my loss.
I had the most unspeakable urge to take his skull in my hands and slam it against the stone wall next to us.
Shaking, I left abruptly and found myself on the floor of my rooms, cradling the Minoan artifact as I once had Christina. Now that my darkest desires had been answered, it seemed the Trident was inducing greater designs in me. Part of me reveled in this unspoken conversation and another looked on in abject horror.
Somehow, that latter aspect managed to stow the object into two pillow cases and call Charles to my home. I directed him, with explicit instructions to only handle the object with thickly gloved hands, to attach the metal to the coffin of my child, and forbid anyone else to ever open the crypt.
The object yet calls to my divided mind, even separated by distance, and my hope is that should its call draw me to it again, it will sit nestled next to the remains of the only thing that could convince me of its wrongness.
Christina will stop me. Her memory has been the only thing to sustain me thus far, and it will prevent me from shaming her.
Myka blinked and skimmed through the next few pages. The entries became almost normal, and there were several months of the usual reports of acquiring artifacts and investigating abnormalities.
Helena mentioned several times the continued strained relations with her colleagues, who still reached out to her. Occasionally, Helena would again make mention of a promising artifact, one that might bring Christina back to her. But in many ways, it appeared Helena had given up.
Then, one short entry caught Myka’s eyes.
We recently recovered some ancient parchments, which revealed some evidence of the location of our lost Warehouse 2. This should be a moment of great accomplishment for us. Yet I couldn’t share in the excitement and wonder of my fellow agents. My gaze was fixed on Cataranga’s eyes, which seemed equally fixed on me, and he was as fearful as I have ever seen him.
Had this Cataranga somehow known about the Helena and Trident? Or had he simply feared any of the other many dangerous artifacts he thought would be housed there?
Annoyed with the unanswerable, Myka roughly flicked to the next page. At the top started a fresh entry.
I’ve killed Wolcott. I’ve become the very villain I’ve spent years opposing.
It makes no difference that it was unintended, as I had no real thought to his safety when I used the Phoenix’s Cauldron. He had discovered me, and was urging me not to employ it, warning me of the dangers, as I once would have lectured him.
His gentle face was so trusting that I wouldn’t actually proceed. His belief apparent that the best of me had not been extinguished along with my daughter’s breath. His faith that reason could still find a foothold in my mind plainly writ on his face.
But I was single-minded and selfish. I knew this was my last, best chance. And I knew having been discovered yet again, that I would finally be barred from the Warehouse. I was close, so close, and it would work and it would all be worth it. They would see and perhaps forgive, but it wouldn’t matter because I would have my child, my baby pressed once again against me. I knew that the weight of her, the smell of her in my arms, would somehow absolve me and heal me of this madness.
But instead the flames of the Cauldron unexpectedly swelled and overtook Wolcott and there was just an instant, a fraction of time, when I saw Woolly’s face turn to shock and fear, and that visage has been burned into me.
He was the best of us, or what we purport to be. One of the purest souls I’ve known and undeserving of such an end, and at the hands of one he trusted above all else.
My failures compound, and I’ve proven myself useless and a failure on every level.
My greatest asset, to imagine something other than things are, to be able to alter materially what exists and bend it to my needs, has proven my greatest liability. I’ve thought I could tinker with life and death, as well, and make it a tool for my desires.
I await the Regent’s decision.
I’m being held at my home and have stayed in my rooms for days now as they debate. My two servants, my only friends left me, are here and having a sort of living wake for me. Their faces are stricken and there are sounds of tears when they leave my rooms. I’ve failed them as well, I know.
If I had half the courage of even one of the noble wretches that exist in this city, I would answer my failings as they do, and slip away as I know I could, and fling myself off Waterloo Bridge.
But I find that some sliver of hope has somehow survived. And I have written a proposal and forwarded it to the Regents, a plan whereby they should subject me to the bronzing process.
Perhaps all I need is rest, some dreamless sleep, to stop the fevered turns of my mind, so that I may restore myself to myself. So I can be useful again. And if not find happiness, at least find contentment with that. If I can wait this storm out, If I can see and touch the glorious future I know is coming, perhaps this will all be weathered, as it seems impossible to now. Perhaps it will all matter in ways I don’t understand now.
I just can’t comprehend the point of any of this.
But perhaps the Regents will lack the cowardice that resides in me, and make the ultimate pronouncement for me. Either way, it will only be a relief.
I must stop the thoughts. My mind, of which I’ve held such hubris, has only betrayed me and I’ve become truly frightened of myself. And worse, I have wasted my life’s potential to help bring about the future I so crave.
Myka pressed her palm against the open page, sickened to realize Helena had so misunderstood the bronzing process. Swallowing down the lump lodged in her throat, Myka flipped through the next few pages. There were about twenty or so left and they were all blank.
As she was shutting the volume, she spotted a small rectangle of paper wedged in the very back. It was ivory colored and the size of a business card. She turned it over and saw a terribly familiar Egyptian symbol printed on the other side, along with the initials ‘JM’.
Myka’s eyes flew to the row of diaries still on the floor, as if she could see McPherson’s ghostly fingerprints soiling Helena’s thoughts and words.
He had read them first.
Decades ago, he’d found them and read them and that was how he knew of Helena and why he’d tried to use her against the Warehouse. He must’ve thought he’d found a kindred spirit, someone equally eager to see the Regents and their agents fall.
McPherson had read the diaries. And he had registered all Helena’s resentments and rage, but none of her hope and lingering humanity.
Myka sat crossed legged on her bed for nearly an hour and gazed in sorrow at the evidence of Helena’s life and thought of all the many ways and times that it could have ended much differently.
Her eyes wet, she finally crawled out of bed and stood, and very deliberately took McPherson’s card and tore it into as many small pieces as she could and threw it in the trash.
Myka knew she would eventually go back to the beginning volumes and relive Helena’s first joyous days as a Warehouse apprentice, and meet and grow to know her daughter Christina and experience the brilliance of HG’s nimble mind in action.
But first she needed to write a report.
Myka went to her desk and pulled out several pieces of fresh paper and sat down and began to write an abbreviated account of what she’d read, her assessment of it, and McPherson’s suspected involvement.
It seemed appropriate for it to be handwritten.
Myka wanted a friend’s testimony to be presented to the current Regents. She wanted it added to the lifeless, hard facts in the large pile of papers the Warehouse held on Helena G. Wells. She wanted more of the complicated truth to be told. That no matter what Helena came to believe herself, she wasn’t simply a villain.
Myka desperately wanted that on the record.
Several weeks later, the Warehouse got a lead on an object that sounded a low, loud devastating noise and appeared to disintegrate anyone nearby, and Myka remembered a similar account in one of HG’s official case files.
Standing outside the diner’s window, watching Pete shove more pie into his mouth, Myka hesitated only a moment, and then cracked open her Farnsworth to tell a scowling Artie she wanted to make a request of the Regents.