Warehouse 13 AU: Persist In Folly (3/9)
Jul. 13th, 2012 03:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seriousficTitle: Persist In Folly
Fandom: Warehouse 13
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 3,013
Characters/Pairings: Myka/HG
Previous: Part 2
Next: Part 4
Summary: Helena is a coward and Myka loves her.
Myka sat with H.G. She stroked her hair, as if framing it just so around her angelic face would cajole the life to return to her eyes. She petted Helena’s hand, longing for the warm, fervent grip of it once more. And she went to get Artifacts, because the work never stopped, even when this woman—this woman who’d come to define her life, without so much as a by your leave, without Myka so much as resenting it—laid in a hospital bed.
At their picnic, Myka had tried to stammer out an explanation: how Helena had risked everything just to retrieve it from the Escher Vault, because it was everything—all she had left of Christina. How at Yellowstone, weeping in Myka’s arms, the Regents’ men closing in, H.G. had slipped the necklace into Myka’s pocket. And how Helena had chosen to trade, to make Myka her life instead of Christina, because she couldn’t live halfway between Myka’s world and the world of the dead.
And then Helena’s eyes had rolled back into her head and she’d started to shake and it was night by the time the ambulances got there, red lights splashing through the darkness like splattering blood. And as terrible as it was, Myka couldn’t stop thinking that Helena was choosing not to wake up. Punishing her for finally going along with one of H.G.’s plots to dodge Christina’s death, this time by erasing it along with the child.
It was a small blessing that Myka actually was there when Helena had woken up. And like all blessings where H.G. was concerned, it came with a price.
“Helena! You’re awake!” Myka was going to tell her then; what H.G. meant to her, exactly how much. But Helena was having none of it.
“You didn’t answer my question.”
Under any other circumstance, Myka would’ve laughed at Helena’s stubbornness. Four days she’d been unconscious and she was single-minded enough to wake up with the same thought that had made her lose consciousness. Myka couldn’t disparage it too much. It was what she loved about Helena. “She’s your daughter.”
Myka told the story. It broke her heart, watching Helena’s face as she took the information like she was reliving it all over again, but she didn’t leave anything out. Then, she said nothing. She let Helena break it down into components of a problem. As big as it was, she would wait until Helena was done.
“You’re still here,” Helena muttered.
“What?”
“I tried to kill you. You’re still here.”
“You never tried to kill me,” Myka assured her. “You just… lashed out. You were hurt and you were trying to defend yourself.”
“And I knew you would never hurt me. So I didn’t lash out at you.”
Myka didn’t feel confident enough to take Helena’s hand, but she couldn’t stop her fingers from bunching in Helena’s bedsheets. H.G. saw—she saw everything—and rested her hand atop Myka’s.
When Myka looked up from that contact, Helena was crying.
“No,” Myka said automatically, wiping at Helena’s face.
“I’m a coward.”
“What?”
“I am a coward,” Helena reiterated, dead certain. “Because I can’t endure it. I can’t take back my memories of my daughter. They’d make me whole and I want nothing to do with them. I’d rather be this facsimile of Helena Wells, so long as I’m with you. I’d erase even this conversation, if I could. I’d reduce my daughter’s life to a footnote in my mind, even now. So I can be with you. And why not? Haven’t they always said of me that I’m a hedonist, a decadent and depraved woman? Let them be right. I’ve failed as a mother enough, not being able to defend her, why not make a complete mockery out of—”
“Stop,” Myka ordered, squeezing her hands to either side of Helena’s face like she could throttle the words as they came out of her mouth. “You weren’t a bad mother and you’re not a bad person. You just. You want to be happy. That’s a good thing. You want to live your life and help people and make me happy, too, right? And if the only way you can do that is… what you did, then you made the right call. I’m going to take care of you, H.G., but you have to help me. You have to trust me when I say that you did everything you could and you have suffered enough. So just stay. Give me a chance.”
It was a lot to ask that Helena smile at Myka’s words, but she managed a weak one. “It was wise of the Regents to leave me with you. You seem to be the better angel of my nature.”
“It’s not that,” Myka said. “It’s just that I love you. What that brings out is all you.”
Helena bit her lip before allowing herself to smile, brightly and fully. “Take me home, Myka. I’d hate to get a sponge bath here when the service is provided free of charge at the bed and breakfast.”
***
It was amazing how time floated by when you were happy. Pain lingered. Joy flew. The uglier assignments seemed to glance off Myka’s memory when she was with Helena. Every snag was easy, bowing to their partnership. There weren’t any thoughts of Sam when Helena was there to comfort her. Even Pete wasn’t annoying with Helena turning his jokes back on him.
Weeks slipped into months. Between Ferret Pete, a kitten Helena just couldn’t leave in Detroit, their ever-expanding library, and Helena’s science experiments, the B&B soon proved too small for them. Not to mention how they could hear Claudia and Pete’s Michael Bay Movie Night every Thursday. And God only knew what they heard on Date Night.
Myka found a little place in town that Helena insisted on calling a cottage, just because it was one-story, and as a million jokes went, they used U-Haul. Helena carried her over the threshold, but it had less to do with tradition and more to do with taking her straight to the bedroom.
Things were so good that Myka felt invincible in her happiness. Yes, like she had with Sam. Helena was so cool and collected that it became impossible to imagine something getting the best of them. So Myka simply ignored the mornings she woke up to a mad dash to the bathroom, spewing Helena’s cooking into the toilet bowl. Helena was such a sound sleeper she never noticed.
Then, because she did feel guilty about putting hoes before bros, as Pete put it (“I’m as much a ‘ho’ as you are a bro,” Helena sniffed), they went back to the B&B for Michael Bay Movie Night.
“It’s about an alien invasion,” Pete said of Transformers to Helena, who was still parsing ‘hoes before bros’. “Just like War of the Worlds.”
“Only better, because the Deceptions lose by getting shot in the face, not germs,” Claudia teased.
“That was my brother’s idea,” H.G. said hotly. “I defeated the Martians by planting an Artifact on their mothership, at great personal peril!”
Myka stroked her arm to calm her down. “Honey, he likes Michael Bay movies. It’s punishment enough.”
Leena came in with the nachos. She took one look at Myka and gave her the ‘see me in my office’ look. It only took five minutes of Baysplosions before Myka claimed a headache and excused herself. Leena followed, promising Pete chili dogs to throw off suspicion. “Are you on birth control?” she asked as soon as they were alone.
“What? No! Look, Helena is a lot of things, but she’s not a drag queen.”
“Something is very different about your aura. Do you have a pregnancy test?”
“I’m. A. Lesbian.”
“I’ll give you one of mine. Look under your bowl when I serve dessert. It’s this delicious flan, I think Helena will really like it… not important right now.”
***
“Holy crap.”
The test had a plus sign . That meant pregnant. She’d looked at the packaging, she watched TV, she knew how this worked. She looked at the package anyway. It totally meant pregnant.
“Holy crapping crap.”
How could this happen? She was responsible. She insisted on condoms. She used the pill. She had sex with women. What the hell kind of sperm could get past that? Had Superman knocked her up?
“Crappy crapping McCrap!”
She needed another test. This one was buggy. Maybe Pete had sabotaged it. A prank! And Leena was in on it. Pete must be blackmailing her. She’d go to the store, get another test, not be pregnant, and find out what Pete had on Leena. She came out of the bathroom and Helena was right there, staring, first at her, then at the test in her hand.
Shit.
“What are you doing here?” Myka asked, her face stuck in a suspicious grimace.
“Waiting,” H.G. said calmly. “You’ve been in there an hour. Why were you peeing on a stick?”
“It’s a pregnancy test.”
Helena said nothing. Just rolled her lower lip under the upper.
“Helena, I swear I didn’t cheat on you. I don’t know how this happened, but I would never—”
H.G. held up her hand. Myka fell silent. “You believed in me after I tried to kill you. Do you really think I wouldn’t believe you for something as small as this? In the last week, I’ve seen living dolls, elephant-controlling tankards, and literary critic pens. This is nothing. Besides, there’s precedent.”
Myka sighed in relief. She felt invincible again, enough to giggle. “This happened at Warehouse 12?”
Helena took her by the arm, dislodging the test in a waste bin, and leading her to sit on Helena’s work-desk. Producing some diagnostic tools from a drawer, she examined Myka. “Prior to that. By a couple millennia.”
Myka was not often shocked. At the moment, she was flabbergasted. “You mean… JC?”
Helena tilted her head to the side in smirking confirmation. “The Virgin Myka. Has rather a ring to it, don’t you think?”
Myka couldn’t help the trace of good cheer entering her voice. “I don’t think we’re cut out to be religious figures.”
“Nonsense. I have the mind of Athena and you have the beauty of Aphrodite. And the other way around, as well. Why couldn’t we raise the Second Coming of Christ?” Helena asked, looking honestly perplexed. “What better parents could the little so-and-so want?”
“Maybe someone a tad more humble?” Myka suggested, still feeling her heart flutter on its way to relief.
“I’m the most humble person I know. I just really am that great.”
Myka smiled. It was hard to gainsay her. “So? Am I in a family way?”
“No idea. But there’s no obvious sign of growth or distress, so I doubt you’ll blow before we see the good doctor.”
“That was a possibility?”
“I didn’t want to worry you, dear.” Poised over Myka’s temporarily flat stomach like she could see into it, and further, to the birth itself, Helena bestowed a kiss on Myka’s belly button. Helena had kissed Myka many, many times, but always with passion. Just then, Myka only felt love. Somehow, it was more intense.
Helena pulled back as if chastened, momentarily uncomfortable in her own armored skin. “Just imagine it, Myka. If he could feed the five hundred, we’re certainly never run short of smoked salmon.”
Myka laughed along with her. “And we’d never have to dress him in those dorky water wings. If he started to drown, he could just stand up.”
“He’d never cry over a childhood pet. If his dog died, he could just bring it… back to life.” Helena’s expression soured. Myka reached out, took her hand, but she was already miles away. No, worse. Years.
This time Myka felt Helena pull away, like the temperature in the room had just dropped. She wasn’t looking forward anymore, to a newborn baby and loving mother. She was looking back, trying to make her halved past whole with just her intellect. It was so much like the Helena of old, only this time her regret was the dead agents. It seemed almost unspeakable to Myka—having Helena remember her crimes but not her motives.
Helena always had armor on. Sometimes, she chose to lower her visor instead of taking off her gauntlet and giving Myka a hand to hold—the kind of moment that killed Myka instead of the kind she lived for.
Helena stood. “There really isn’t time to waste jabbering. I should call Dr. Calder at once. You stay here. Best not to exert yourself, even this early in the… condition.”
Another moment Helena would only face alone, and there was no getting through that particular armor. No matter what her circumstances, Helena was the most stubborn woman Myka had ever known. She’d relied on herself for so long that Myka doubted Helena would ever fully trust herself to someone else.
So Myka waited for her happiness to wipe that moment of doubt off the slate. It was a long time in coming.
***
Myka was given pregnancy leave, an ATF agent was recruited to pick up the slack, and the guidelines for handling the Chachapoyan Fertility Idol on Aisle 41D were made much more stringent.
***
"Mr. Jinks!" as Helena delightedly called him in a Dickensian tone, was claimed by Pete as a bro. Pete promised that when Myka gave birth, the two of them would smoke cigars for all of them. (One of the moments that, when Jinks turned out to be gay, made Pete wince in hindsight.)
***
Myka read every book she could find on pregnancy and put together a list on the pros and cons of a natural birth before Mrs. Fredric sat her down and reminded her of the time she'd cried a little after getting a papercut. "Take the damn drugs."
***
Helena wrote a short story about a pregnant woman on a train. She named the protagonist Mr. Jinks.
***
They bought a crib, a stroller, toys, baby food, diapers, and allowed Pete to go shirtless while he went about the "manly business" of building a nursery. Myka often caught Helena looking around it for a sharp edge.
***
Claudia found a Shakespearean guide to learning the alphabet on eBay and snatched it for Myka at the last minute.
***
Artie didn't complain when Myka somehow ended up wearing a pair of his jeans, declaring them very comfortable.
***
Helena knew it was bad for her, and obviously it was bad for Myka and their baby. But she didn’t have it so easy. Myka got to lie down and do research all day. That was like paying Lattimer to watch pornography. And speaking of her partner, just because he watched The L Word did not make him an expert in her sexual orientation. She watched women’s soccer because she was British, not because she was bisexual, crivvens!
After a particularly long, dull mission in which Pete kept trying to convince her that scissoring was a thing lesbians really did, like bikini-waxing, she got home, skipped the front door, and sat down against the tree in back to enjoy a smoke.
She had reduced just over a third of the fag to ash when Myka leaned out the window. “Put that out!” she ordered in her least-sexy strident voice.
“I’m not done yet. It’d be wasteful. The economy—”
“The baby!” Myka countered.
British accent or not, there was no arguing with Myka when she got like that. Even though the baby was yards away, inside a house—and a womb—Helena snubbed the cigarette out. “You used to think it was hot when I smoked.”
Myka waved her hand in front of her face, as if Helena’s secondhand smoke was making a last-ditch kamikaze run on her. “Oh, I’m sorry, did they have What To Expect When You’re Expecting in Victorian England? Because if they did, maybe you’d know that nicotine during pregnancy causes four percent of non-inbreeding flipper babies. Do you want a flipper baby? Were they considered good luck before World War 1?”
Helena made a big show out of stubbing her cigarette out even more. “I know what you’re going through, Myka, but you’re rather—”
“No you don’t! You have no idea!”
Myka was so angry she didn’t realize her mistake for a moment, and Helena wasn’t about to give her an explanation. She stood there, head held high, and let Myka excoriate herself.
“Oh god. Oh, I’m so sorry—” She came out of the house, moving the awkward weight of her pregnancy as quickly as she could to H.G., hugging her and rubbing her back. “It’s these hormones, they turn me into Bitchzilla—”
“No, you were right. You’re always right. I don’t know what it’s like.”
“I am a crazy pregnant lady idiot and you are going to go inside and put your feet up so I can make it up to you by fixing you custard and watching Gossip Girl with you.”
“I don’t care for that crass American garbage,” Helena said haughtily, almost able to go unsoothed by Myka’s plying fingers. “I just need to know if Dan and Blair get together, as they’re meant to.”
Myka giggled, kissed Helena, and led her inside, moves as disarming as any in kempo. But even with the girl next to her on the couch, arm around her shoulders, hand down on her belly just in case the baby kicked for the first time, Helena didn’t feel settled. She should be the voice of experience. She’d been through this in her home century, when medicine was so very primitive. She should know which Artifacts to use in an emergency. She should be the one comforting Myka, not the other way around.
She knew her memories had driven her to do vile things, but if she could just take back her memories of being pregnant, then she’d be able to help Myka through this, just like a good partner should. Like a wife should.
Fandom: Warehouse 13
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 3,013
Characters/Pairings: Myka/HG
Previous: Part 2
Next: Part 4
Summary: Helena is a coward and Myka loves her.
Myka sat with H.G. She stroked her hair, as if framing it just so around her angelic face would cajole the life to return to her eyes. She petted Helena’s hand, longing for the warm, fervent grip of it once more. And she went to get Artifacts, because the work never stopped, even when this woman—this woman who’d come to define her life, without so much as a by your leave, without Myka so much as resenting it—laid in a hospital bed.
At their picnic, Myka had tried to stammer out an explanation: how Helena had risked everything just to retrieve it from the Escher Vault, because it was everything—all she had left of Christina. How at Yellowstone, weeping in Myka’s arms, the Regents’ men closing in, H.G. had slipped the necklace into Myka’s pocket. And how Helena had chosen to trade, to make Myka her life instead of Christina, because she couldn’t live halfway between Myka’s world and the world of the dead.
And then Helena’s eyes had rolled back into her head and she’d started to shake and it was night by the time the ambulances got there, red lights splashing through the darkness like splattering blood. And as terrible as it was, Myka couldn’t stop thinking that Helena was choosing not to wake up. Punishing her for finally going along with one of H.G.’s plots to dodge Christina’s death, this time by erasing it along with the child.
It was a small blessing that Myka actually was there when Helena had woken up. And like all blessings where H.G. was concerned, it came with a price.
“Helena! You’re awake!” Myka was going to tell her then; what H.G. meant to her, exactly how much. But Helena was having none of it.
“You didn’t answer my question.”
Under any other circumstance, Myka would’ve laughed at Helena’s stubbornness. Four days she’d been unconscious and she was single-minded enough to wake up with the same thought that had made her lose consciousness. Myka couldn’t disparage it too much. It was what she loved about Helena. “She’s your daughter.”
Myka told the story. It broke her heart, watching Helena’s face as she took the information like she was reliving it all over again, but she didn’t leave anything out. Then, she said nothing. She let Helena break it down into components of a problem. As big as it was, she would wait until Helena was done.
“You’re still here,” Helena muttered.
“What?”
“I tried to kill you. You’re still here.”
“You never tried to kill me,” Myka assured her. “You just… lashed out. You were hurt and you were trying to defend yourself.”
“And I knew you would never hurt me. So I didn’t lash out at you.”
Myka didn’t feel confident enough to take Helena’s hand, but she couldn’t stop her fingers from bunching in Helena’s bedsheets. H.G. saw—she saw everything—and rested her hand atop Myka’s.
When Myka looked up from that contact, Helena was crying.
“No,” Myka said automatically, wiping at Helena’s face.
“I’m a coward.”
“What?”
“I am a coward,” Helena reiterated, dead certain. “Because I can’t endure it. I can’t take back my memories of my daughter. They’d make me whole and I want nothing to do with them. I’d rather be this facsimile of Helena Wells, so long as I’m with you. I’d erase even this conversation, if I could. I’d reduce my daughter’s life to a footnote in my mind, even now. So I can be with you. And why not? Haven’t they always said of me that I’m a hedonist, a decadent and depraved woman? Let them be right. I’ve failed as a mother enough, not being able to defend her, why not make a complete mockery out of—”
“Stop,” Myka ordered, squeezing her hands to either side of Helena’s face like she could throttle the words as they came out of her mouth. “You weren’t a bad mother and you’re not a bad person. You just. You want to be happy. That’s a good thing. You want to live your life and help people and make me happy, too, right? And if the only way you can do that is… what you did, then you made the right call. I’m going to take care of you, H.G., but you have to help me. You have to trust me when I say that you did everything you could and you have suffered enough. So just stay. Give me a chance.”
It was a lot to ask that Helena smile at Myka’s words, but she managed a weak one. “It was wise of the Regents to leave me with you. You seem to be the better angel of my nature.”
“It’s not that,” Myka said. “It’s just that I love you. What that brings out is all you.”
Helena bit her lip before allowing herself to smile, brightly and fully. “Take me home, Myka. I’d hate to get a sponge bath here when the service is provided free of charge at the bed and breakfast.”
***
It was amazing how time floated by when you were happy. Pain lingered. Joy flew. The uglier assignments seemed to glance off Myka’s memory when she was with Helena. Every snag was easy, bowing to their partnership. There weren’t any thoughts of Sam when Helena was there to comfort her. Even Pete wasn’t annoying with Helena turning his jokes back on him.
Weeks slipped into months. Between Ferret Pete, a kitten Helena just couldn’t leave in Detroit, their ever-expanding library, and Helena’s science experiments, the B&B soon proved too small for them. Not to mention how they could hear Claudia and Pete’s Michael Bay Movie Night every Thursday. And God only knew what they heard on Date Night.
Myka found a little place in town that Helena insisted on calling a cottage, just because it was one-story, and as a million jokes went, they used U-Haul. Helena carried her over the threshold, but it had less to do with tradition and more to do with taking her straight to the bedroom.
Things were so good that Myka felt invincible in her happiness. Yes, like she had with Sam. Helena was so cool and collected that it became impossible to imagine something getting the best of them. So Myka simply ignored the mornings she woke up to a mad dash to the bathroom, spewing Helena’s cooking into the toilet bowl. Helena was such a sound sleeper she never noticed.
Then, because she did feel guilty about putting hoes before bros, as Pete put it (“I’m as much a ‘ho’ as you are a bro,” Helena sniffed), they went back to the B&B for Michael Bay Movie Night.
“It’s about an alien invasion,” Pete said of Transformers to Helena, who was still parsing ‘hoes before bros’. “Just like War of the Worlds.”
“Only better, because the Deceptions lose by getting shot in the face, not germs,” Claudia teased.
“That was my brother’s idea,” H.G. said hotly. “I defeated the Martians by planting an Artifact on their mothership, at great personal peril!”
Myka stroked her arm to calm her down. “Honey, he likes Michael Bay movies. It’s punishment enough.”
Leena came in with the nachos. She took one look at Myka and gave her the ‘see me in my office’ look. It only took five minutes of Baysplosions before Myka claimed a headache and excused herself. Leena followed, promising Pete chili dogs to throw off suspicion. “Are you on birth control?” she asked as soon as they were alone.
“What? No! Look, Helena is a lot of things, but she’s not a drag queen.”
“Something is very different about your aura. Do you have a pregnancy test?”
“I’m. A. Lesbian.”
“I’ll give you one of mine. Look under your bowl when I serve dessert. It’s this delicious flan, I think Helena will really like it… not important right now.”
***
“Holy crap.”
The test had a plus sign . That meant pregnant. She’d looked at the packaging, she watched TV, she knew how this worked. She looked at the package anyway. It totally meant pregnant.
“Holy crapping crap.”
How could this happen? She was responsible. She insisted on condoms. She used the pill. She had sex with women. What the hell kind of sperm could get past that? Had Superman knocked her up?
“Crappy crapping McCrap!”
She needed another test. This one was buggy. Maybe Pete had sabotaged it. A prank! And Leena was in on it. Pete must be blackmailing her. She’d go to the store, get another test, not be pregnant, and find out what Pete had on Leena. She came out of the bathroom and Helena was right there, staring, first at her, then at the test in her hand.
Shit.
“What are you doing here?” Myka asked, her face stuck in a suspicious grimace.
“Waiting,” H.G. said calmly. “You’ve been in there an hour. Why were you peeing on a stick?”
“It’s a pregnancy test.”
Helena said nothing. Just rolled her lower lip under the upper.
“Helena, I swear I didn’t cheat on you. I don’t know how this happened, but I would never—”
H.G. held up her hand. Myka fell silent. “You believed in me after I tried to kill you. Do you really think I wouldn’t believe you for something as small as this? In the last week, I’ve seen living dolls, elephant-controlling tankards, and literary critic pens. This is nothing. Besides, there’s precedent.”
Myka sighed in relief. She felt invincible again, enough to giggle. “This happened at Warehouse 12?”
Helena took her by the arm, dislodging the test in a waste bin, and leading her to sit on Helena’s work-desk. Producing some diagnostic tools from a drawer, she examined Myka. “Prior to that. By a couple millennia.”
Myka was not often shocked. At the moment, she was flabbergasted. “You mean… JC?”
Helena tilted her head to the side in smirking confirmation. “The Virgin Myka. Has rather a ring to it, don’t you think?”
Myka couldn’t help the trace of good cheer entering her voice. “I don’t think we’re cut out to be religious figures.”
“Nonsense. I have the mind of Athena and you have the beauty of Aphrodite. And the other way around, as well. Why couldn’t we raise the Second Coming of Christ?” Helena asked, looking honestly perplexed. “What better parents could the little so-and-so want?”
“Maybe someone a tad more humble?” Myka suggested, still feeling her heart flutter on its way to relief.
“I’m the most humble person I know. I just really am that great.”
Myka smiled. It was hard to gainsay her. “So? Am I in a family way?”
“No idea. But there’s no obvious sign of growth or distress, so I doubt you’ll blow before we see the good doctor.”
“That was a possibility?”
“I didn’t want to worry you, dear.” Poised over Myka’s temporarily flat stomach like she could see into it, and further, to the birth itself, Helena bestowed a kiss on Myka’s belly button. Helena had kissed Myka many, many times, but always with passion. Just then, Myka only felt love. Somehow, it was more intense.
Helena pulled back as if chastened, momentarily uncomfortable in her own armored skin. “Just imagine it, Myka. If he could feed the five hundred, we’re certainly never run short of smoked salmon.”
Myka laughed along with her. “And we’d never have to dress him in those dorky water wings. If he started to drown, he could just stand up.”
“He’d never cry over a childhood pet. If his dog died, he could just bring it… back to life.” Helena’s expression soured. Myka reached out, took her hand, but she was already miles away. No, worse. Years.
This time Myka felt Helena pull away, like the temperature in the room had just dropped. She wasn’t looking forward anymore, to a newborn baby and loving mother. She was looking back, trying to make her halved past whole with just her intellect. It was so much like the Helena of old, only this time her regret was the dead agents. It seemed almost unspeakable to Myka—having Helena remember her crimes but not her motives.
Helena always had armor on. Sometimes, she chose to lower her visor instead of taking off her gauntlet and giving Myka a hand to hold—the kind of moment that killed Myka instead of the kind she lived for.
Helena stood. “There really isn’t time to waste jabbering. I should call Dr. Calder at once. You stay here. Best not to exert yourself, even this early in the… condition.”
Another moment Helena would only face alone, and there was no getting through that particular armor. No matter what her circumstances, Helena was the most stubborn woman Myka had ever known. She’d relied on herself for so long that Myka doubted Helena would ever fully trust herself to someone else.
So Myka waited for her happiness to wipe that moment of doubt off the slate. It was a long time in coming.
***
Myka was given pregnancy leave, an ATF agent was recruited to pick up the slack, and the guidelines for handling the Chachapoyan Fertility Idol on Aisle 41D were made much more stringent.
***
"Mr. Jinks!" as Helena delightedly called him in a Dickensian tone, was claimed by Pete as a bro. Pete promised that when Myka gave birth, the two of them would smoke cigars for all of them. (One of the moments that, when Jinks turned out to be gay, made Pete wince in hindsight.)
***
Myka read every book she could find on pregnancy and put together a list on the pros and cons of a natural birth before Mrs. Fredric sat her down and reminded her of the time she'd cried a little after getting a papercut. "Take the damn drugs."
***
Helena wrote a short story about a pregnant woman on a train. She named the protagonist Mr. Jinks.
***
They bought a crib, a stroller, toys, baby food, diapers, and allowed Pete to go shirtless while he went about the "manly business" of building a nursery. Myka often caught Helena looking around it for a sharp edge.
***
Claudia found a Shakespearean guide to learning the alphabet on eBay and snatched it for Myka at the last minute.
***
Artie didn't complain when Myka somehow ended up wearing a pair of his jeans, declaring them very comfortable.
***
Helena knew it was bad for her, and obviously it was bad for Myka and their baby. But she didn’t have it so easy. Myka got to lie down and do research all day. That was like paying Lattimer to watch pornography. And speaking of her partner, just because he watched The L Word did not make him an expert in her sexual orientation. She watched women’s soccer because she was British, not because she was bisexual, crivvens!
After a particularly long, dull mission in which Pete kept trying to convince her that scissoring was a thing lesbians really did, like bikini-waxing, she got home, skipped the front door, and sat down against the tree in back to enjoy a smoke.
She had reduced just over a third of the fag to ash when Myka leaned out the window. “Put that out!” she ordered in her least-sexy strident voice.
“I’m not done yet. It’d be wasteful. The economy—”
“The baby!” Myka countered.
British accent or not, there was no arguing with Myka when she got like that. Even though the baby was yards away, inside a house—and a womb—Helena snubbed the cigarette out. “You used to think it was hot when I smoked.”
Myka waved her hand in front of her face, as if Helena’s secondhand smoke was making a last-ditch kamikaze run on her. “Oh, I’m sorry, did they have What To Expect When You’re Expecting in Victorian England? Because if they did, maybe you’d know that nicotine during pregnancy causes four percent of non-inbreeding flipper babies. Do you want a flipper baby? Were they considered good luck before World War 1?”
Helena made a big show out of stubbing her cigarette out even more. “I know what you’re going through, Myka, but you’re rather—”
“No you don’t! You have no idea!”
Myka was so angry she didn’t realize her mistake for a moment, and Helena wasn’t about to give her an explanation. She stood there, head held high, and let Myka excoriate herself.
“Oh god. Oh, I’m so sorry—” She came out of the house, moving the awkward weight of her pregnancy as quickly as she could to H.G., hugging her and rubbing her back. “It’s these hormones, they turn me into Bitchzilla—”
“No, you were right. You’re always right. I don’t know what it’s like.”
“I am a crazy pregnant lady idiot and you are going to go inside and put your feet up so I can make it up to you by fixing you custard and watching Gossip Girl with you.”
“I don’t care for that crass American garbage,” Helena said haughtily, almost able to go unsoothed by Myka’s plying fingers. “I just need to know if Dan and Blair get together, as they’re meant to.”
Myka giggled, kissed Helena, and led her inside, moves as disarming as any in kempo. But even with the girl next to her on the couch, arm around her shoulders, hand down on her belly just in case the baby kicked for the first time, Helena didn’t feel settled. She should be the voice of experience. She’d been through this in her home century, when medicine was so very primitive. She should know which Artifacts to use in an emergency. She should be the one comforting Myka, not the other way around.
She knew her memories had driven her to do vile things, but if she could just take back her memories of being pregnant, then she’d be able to help Myka through this, just like a good partner should. Like a wife should.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2012-07-14 02:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-14 02:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-15 04:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-11 09:18 pm (UTC)That being said...HOLY CRAP! WHAT? HOW? PREGNANT?! hnohOUGOUdshbgfOBNDSOSLJ daaaghouhjbl! *brain explosion or 'baysplosion'* (hehe)
Favorite line: How could this happen? She was responsible. She insisted on condoms. She used the pill. She had sex with women. What the hell kind of sperm could get past that? Had Superman knocked her up?
This chapter was so very adorable. But that very last paragraph left me feeling very unsettled. Like, the kind of unsettled one gets when a favorite character gets a really really bad idea and you know they are going to act on it. But alas, better to read than to speculate. So off I go to the next chapter!
~RoseSama35~