I apologize to everybody for being at present unable to juggle my work/life balance so as to produce decent fanfictional wordage. Honestly I’m just so tired. Not of B&W, not that, but I need to get back to feeling like they’re the recreational recharge. A fillip of that will occur but then short out... anyway, here’s that most recent fillip. In the opening bit, some people gathered for what they thought was going to be breakfast, only to find that Myka and Helena were at odds in some way (or were they...?). I recommend checking that out to get a sense, however misleading, of what might be going on. This is of course for you, @greenharrow , continuing that @b-and-w-holiday-gift-exchange gift, and as always, I beg the indulgence of anyone else who might be trying to follow along as well.
Subterfuge 2
Upstairs:
Myka slips into her (their!) bedroom and gentles the door to, muting its usual clank-close to a polite, even discreet, metal-on-metal version of a throat-clear.
Helena is contemplating herself in the bureau’s mirror, but she turns at the noise, subdued though it is. A smile as subtle as Myka’s door-closing drifts across her mouth. “Did they ‘buy it’?” she asks, quietly sly.
Her tone has already raised the temperature in the room, but Myka tries to keep herself from heating in response. For the moment. “I’m not sure,” she says, certain that Steve would have no trouble with that utterance. “Lots of misdirection, anyway.”
“What did you tell them we argued about?”
Myka readies herself for the conveyance of more misdirection, but Helena preempts her: “Wait, more importantly: did you bring breakfast?”
The avidity is precious, no less so for being entirely predictable. Myka is not entirely abashed to display empty hands. “Pete told me I have oatmeal on my shirt. Does that count?”
“Thus by lack of specificity regarding portion size am I slain. Or rather, left to starve. Incidentally, why couldn’t we have fought over breakfast? In their presence, one or both of us storming out in a huff... far less misdirection required.” She crosses her arms, leans back a bit.
The relax of posture lessens the physical anticipation that is building, inevitably, between them; the grace of it is for Myka a relief. Almost always, but especially today, she needs more runway than Helena does. “Because neither of uns can sell that, not when we’re in the same room and not actually fighting. And even this time, Pete accused me of a cover-up. Said it’s always worse than the crime.”
“Is it? What was the crime, then? Presumably not ‘misrepresenting ourselves to steal time.’”
“It should’ve been that; ‘steal time’ sounds more crime-y. But actually they went with wasting time. That’s what they worked around to, once they got over being disappointed we aren’t becoming jewel thieves.”
“Oh but we could—”
Myka cuts off that glee with something that is not exactly regret. “We could not.”
“Are you certain?” That’s a wheedle.
Charming, but: “We don’t need to.”
That occasions a not-quite-pouty jut of lower lip. “Well of course no one needs to become a jewel thief. Unless one has no other way of making a living, I suppose. Which would seem odd, wouldn’t it... surely there would be other career paths. Although it isn’t inconceivable one might be coerced onto the nefarious path.” She pulls up, like she knows it’s a dangerous verbal wander.
Myka’s been trying, lately, to acknowledge, then shift, those rather than ignore them (as she tended to do in the past, for fear of pain). She’s glad to be able to perform that shift now. “What if I were to coerce you onto a different path? ‘Coerce’ loosely defined.”
“I believe you have done, haven’t you? But—as Pete would say, ‘back up’—why were jewel thieves invited to the party?”
Here we go. “Because of diamonds.”
“What about them?”
“Their metaphorical utility. The extent of it.”
“Ah. Our ‘argument,’ I presume? We do disagree about the most stimulating topics... diamonds as metaphors.” Helena shakes her head, an exaggeration of amazement, as that sly smile once again steals over her face.
“Their formation more than themselves,” Myka says, for accuracy... well. Accuracy only in the sense of keeping her stories straight.
“The production of the gem via pressure?”
I know something you don’t. It’s always a surprise. “Except that isn’t scientifically accurate.”
“Isn’t it?”
The avidity again. Myka would like to imagine she’ll “blow her mind” as Pete would have it, leading not to Helena being mad at her but grateful for new knowledge. And so: “I won’t go into detail, but it has to do with crystallization. Table salt–esque, but carbon in the mantle. From the mantle.”
“Precipitation? Distillation? More common, as processes... thus perhaps indeed of more pedestrian metaphorical utility. Was that your putative position? If so, I certainly understand why my failure to agree might have been considered a crime.”
The wrinkle in Helena’s brow is all it takes to suffuse Myka. “See,” she says, and now she’s the avid one, the one who can’t hold back. “This is why.” This is why. Steve would have no trouble with this either... which demonstrates, hugely and unfortunately, that she’s made him into her internal lie-o-meter. Obviously that has to stop.
“I can’t say that I do. See, that is. Why what?” That’s genuine confusion.
“You will. See, that is.” There a real satisfaction in being able to ape Helena, ape her to a purpose, even if that purpose has to remain obscured. For just a bit longer. “What I’ll say for now is, we have had that disagreement. In the past.”
“Have we?” That’s further confusion.
Speaking of metaphors: “Implicitly,” Myka says. “Diamonds. Pressure. Whether a difficult situation was necessary for a positive outcome.”
“You’ve eased my mind considerably. I’m not you of course, but I might nevertheless have been concerned about my failure to recall. And I do take your point, given my position as the... purveyor. Instigator? Of a number of difficult situations.”
The verbal wander again... and again, Myka has a different path to hand. Today of all days, a different path. “Anyway, come downstairs.”
Helena lowers her eyebrows and opens her hands. “The entire point of the subterfuge was to avoid the assemblage, was it not?”
And now Myka is just a bit giddy. “Was it? Anyway, they’re gone.”
Eyebrows reverse; hands do too. “Are they.”
Myka nods.
“Then why in the world would we go downstairs?”
“I have something to show you.”
Flirtatiously: “Couldn’t you show me something here?”
Myka’s certainly not immune to that tone, and under other circumstances... but no. “Not the same thing.”
“Aren’t you being strangely insistent about this?”
“In a way.”
“Is this ‘thing’ time-dependent?”
Productive... “In a way.”
“Are we playing Twenty Questions?”
“In a way?” Myka is giving Helena reasons to wonder, and Myka herself wonders, briefly, if she could have made a better plan... too late now.
“I suspect ‘animal, vegetable, or mineral’ would not yield a useful answer.” You have no idea, Myka thinks toward that, but Helena doesn’t receive the psychic emanation; rather, she says, “Do you feel well?”
Myka goes back to what was working: “In a way.” With a twist, one that she hopes will be enticing: “In another way, check back with me after a bit.”
“After what bit?”
Yes, she’s enticed, but trying not to seem so. “The bit that happens downstairs.”
The glory of the back-and-forth. If Myka didn’t also worship their physical connection, she’d be happy to talk like this forever. But this and that happiness aside: how well will she feel after that bit? No better than this, surely... but, perhaps, somewhat differently well than this? In another way, so to speak...
Impossible to predict.
Helena’s reaction to Myka’s leading non-answers, however, is not. She heaves an obviously fake long-suffering sigh and says, “I don’t know why I reward you for such nonsense... however, my curiosity is piqued. I suppose I had better accompany you downstairs after all.”
“I suppose so.” She offers Helena her left hand, palm up, as if inviting her to waltz; Helena places her right hand delicately—she can be so delicate when she chooses (with that hand, with her self entire)—inside the invitation, in acceptance.
Offering and accepting: Myka lets a certain hope rise that their hands, now together, are a precursor.
Happy @b-and-w-holiday-gift-exchange, @apparitionism! I agree with 100% with everything you said in your reply prompt, - what a headf*ck it is thumbing through B&W's Tumblr golden years and scrubbing through the show. I hope what I came up with here satisfies at least a fraction of that desire to go back in time!
Imagine these two living together in the 1940s (somehow, somewhere? And they were roommates....) - these are the kind of portraits they might have in their home. Myka's is in a contemporary 40s portrait style while HG prefers something a more nostalgic (fitting for her, I thought?). I just love how how happy they seem! (for more, click on the "read more" below)
Where this came from: I've been researching some mystery family photos (actual negatives!) from around the late 20s-early-mid 1930s and that lead me to transporting these two back in time. And my grandparents had some frames similar to these.
Plus, since there's already a Myka set in the 40s (looking amazing in "Big Snag"), I just needed a character JM played that was vaguely 1940s-ish. And much to my amazement, I found one, in an episode of Poirot!
I was having so much fun that I put a few other split-screen-ish images together, because...why not.? These are more "whammied into the 1940s" rather than living in them. JM looked so HG-esque with the necklace grab and suspicious eye roll, I had to do something with those screen grabs. Thanks for giving me a reason to dust off my photoshop-for-tumblr skills!
Sorry it took me so long to reblog this, my friend... that's no reflection whatsoever on its quality, I assure you. Anyway I'm hoping maybe my tardiness will give some folks a new look at it, because it deserves ALL THE LOOKS! Note: definitely click that "Keep reading," because it gets even better.
I'd like to imagine that they in fact did get whammied into the 1940s, or at least the literary version thereof: to my mind, that Big Snag episode should have involved Myka and Helena rather than Myka and Pete, thus giving Helena the "it was a love story all along" line, which I continue to resent as the heavy-handed setup it was for the whole heteronormative train wreck... how much sweeter it would have been if it had carried the right kind (that is, our kind) of subtext.
Hello @greenharrow , and best @b-and-w-holiday-gift-exchange wishes to you! The direction you gave @kla1991 to pass on to me included the fact that you “love soft stuff and happy endings,” so I’ve taken that portion to heart for your gift. This is set in a time when everything has improved from how the show left it: Helena is back at the Warehouse, agenting along, and she and Myka are together. All parties have put past relationships behind them and are forging better futures. This little story is but a trifle from said better future, but I hope it contains an amusing moment or two... I’ll acknowledge up front that it needs more work, but here we are. I’m trying my utter best to stop making giftees wait and wait and wait, so this one is “TBC” only because of my wanting to get the concluding scene a bit more right than the opening one (I did try to avoid the need for continuation at all, but again, here we are), and while you may not see the win in that, my new friend greenharrow, I bet one or two other folks do.
Subterfuge
Early on a Saturday morning at the B&B:
Myka is eating breakfast. Specifically, oatmeal. Steve is sitting beside her; he too is eating breakfast: specifically, Frosted Flakes, which technically belong to Pete, but of which he has just said to Myka, “I need the fortification.”
“Also I’ve heard they’re grrrr-eaaat,” she has just said back.
Now they are waiting for the onslaught.
And so it descends: Pete and Claudia clomp down the stairs, noising up the room, if not the entire world.
“Showtime,” Myka says, locking in, and Steve nods.
“Where’s H.G.?” Claudia asks.
“She had some stuff to do,” Myka says.
“What stuff?” Claudia skeptics.
“Warehouse stuff,” Myka says.
“Before breakfast?” That’s of course Pete, because in his world breakfast obviously outranks anything Warehouse-related. “That’s weird, because I never met anybody who loves breakfast more than H.G. does.” Well, also that. Myka has to concede, internally, that that’s probably true, as he whistles and goes one, “Never get between that lady and the A.M. buffet at a Holiday Inn, right Mykes?”
He is right. Myka hasn’t actually tried to, but she’s pretty sure none of the warm feelings Helena expresses about her at other times would come into play if she did. “She could have decided to wait,” Myka says, now offering “defensive.”
“Never mind how unbelievable that is,” Claudia says. “The important part is, why didn’t I know about this ‘Warehouse stuff’? And does she need help with it?”
“I don’t have good answers for those questions,” Myka says.
At that very moment—timing!—Helena breezes in, hello-ing everyone but Myka, then swans upstairs.
Silence falls.
Myka waits it out, even as she ponders the mystery of even the briefest experience of Helena’s presence. That she gets to breathe, from moment to moment, in the presence of that presence will never cease to be a miracle. Warehouse-infused, and thus not without its difficulties; Myka’s no theologian, so for all she knows, that’s simply the way of miracles: Here, says the deity, but by the way, you might want to watch out for—
“That Warehouse stuff,” Pete interrupts into the void. “What exactly was it?”
“And did it involve getting whammied by an artifact that turned Myka invisible?” Claudia asks.
“I can see her,” Pete says. “She’s right there. She’s got a blob of oatmeal on her shirt. Or am I hallucinating?”
“To H.G.,” Claudia clarifies. “I mean you could also be hallucinating. What’s on my shirt?”
Pete waves a hand. “Whatever vampire band you’re into today. Wouldn’t she have asked why a blob of oatmeal was floating in the air where Myka usually sits?”
“My musical choices beat yours, boomer, but do you really think floating oatmeal moves the needle on the weird-o-meter? Around here?”
“No, but H.G. ignoring Myka does, so hey Mykes, what gives with that?”
Myka’s been waiting for it, and she’s prepared. As prepared as she can be. “We had a disagreement,” she offers.
That gets silence again, as well as glances between Pete and Claudia.
“Why’d you try to cover it up?” Pete asks.
“You’re honestly asking me that? After this interrogation?”
Pete shakes his head. “Not after it. As part of it. Because you know what they always say.”
“I could not begin to know what ‘they’ could possibly ‘always say’ in this situation.”
He taps his nose. “The cover-up’s always worse than the crime.”
It really is something, she thinks, that after this many years he can still surprise me. “There is no crime.”
“There’s definitely a cover-up though,” Claudia says. “Of a disagreement? Which was about...?”
This is what she’s been locked in for. “Diamonds,” she says.
Claudia clasps her hands, and her eyes go starry. “OMG!!” she exults.
Myka snorts, both because that’s exactly where she’d expected Claudia to go, and because it’s helpful. “Please.”
“Fine,” Claudia pouts, even as Pete waves his hands like a pick-me-pick-me crazed hyena.
Do hyenas have hands? Myka wonders, but “Yes, Pete?” she says, because why not. “Something to share with the class?”
“A heist!” he sings out.
“You’re so right,” she tells him, dry as the Badlands. “We’re quitting the Warehouse and becoming jewel thieves.”
“Bet that’s what the fight was about though: H.G. wanted to, and you turned her down. Because you’re the law.”
“H.G. fought the law,” Claudia says, “and the law... got ignored?”
“She’s the order too,” Pete says. “H.G. fought the law and the order, and so I’m wondering if she beat Dick Wolf.”
“So, but diamonds?” Steve asks. “Disagreement?”
Myka can’t thank him aloud, because normally she’d be glad that the conversation was derailing. So she says, “Yeah. How they form.”
Claudia scratches her head. “You disagreed about how diamonds form? I thought that was just... science.”
“It’s science,” Myka agrees, “but it’s not the thing people think they know, about subjecting carbon to extreme pressure; the science really, they’re pretty sure now, is that they form when carbon crystallizes out of superhot fluid. From the mantle. Mostly. Also they don’t even all form in the same way.”
“Well, blow my mind why don’t you,” Pete says. “So H.G.’s mad at you because you blew her mind about diamonds?”
“No. Because we disagree about whether the popular idea is a useful metaphor.”
“For...?” Claudia asks.
“Positive results from difficult situations.”
Claudia twists her face, then demands, of Steve, “Is she telling the truth?”
“She tends to,” Steve says.
Pete looks doubtful too. “Is that the story H.G.’d tell, if we got her down here?”
Myka says, “I can honestly say I have no idea.”
At which Claudia sniffs. “I don’t even need to check the lie-o-meter on that. Who ever has any idea about what story H.G.’ll tell?”
“By the way,” Steve says, mildly, “I’m not actually a lie-o-meter.” He has to offer a version of this reminder at least once a week, generally to Claudia and/or Pete; Myka knows he doesn’t mind it hugely, but. It’s like when they treat her as a memorization machine: an irritant.
“I’m getting a vibe,” Pete announces.
Myka braces herself.
“Or maybe it’s just me seeing what’s clear as day.”
She braces harder.
“Fighting about metaphors is the stupidest thing I ever heard.”
Bullet: dodged.
“It really is,” Clauda says. “Don’t you two have better things to do with your time?” Myka opens her mouth to take this golden opportunity to agree, but Claudia’s on a roll: “Don’t bother answering, because you absolutely do. Because you know what? Wasting time... that’s the crime,” she concludes.
“Plus it rhymes!” Pete enthuses.
“Not a selling point,” Myka tells him. “But you’re both right. I should go apologize.”
She tries not to look back, over her shoulder, to see what sort of landing has actually been achieved.
****
Myka’s decamping leaves Steve in charge of the situation.
Claudia looks at him and at Pete, searchingly. “Does she think we bought that?”
“The cover-up’s definitely stupider than the crime,” Pete agrees. “If there even was a crime at all.”
“Doesn’t Myka know we know how much she hates apologizing?” Claudia says. “She’s always sure she’s right. Like she never even really argues; she just says stuff and acts like everybody always already knows it’s true.”
“Even with H.G.?” Steve asks. “I think we don’t know enough about their relationship to make that judgment.”
Pete says, “I think we know way too much about their relationship. Thin walls. Thin floors. Thin ceilings.”
“So thin I’m surprised the Big Bad Wolf—or at least some South Dakota gust—hasn’t blown us down by now,” Claudia says. “What’s the over-under on how long it takes for them to start ‘making up’ from their pretend argument?”
“I’m going to the Warehouse,” Steve says, as abruptly as he can.
Claudia stares at him. “On Saturday? In the A.M.? Who do you think you are, H.G. in a fake fight with Myka?”
“I don’t want to trade bow-chicka-wow-wow bets with you two. And I also don’t want to go upstairs, because you’re not wrong about this place being the flimsiest.”
“Not the flimsiest,” Pete says, “because the flimsiest is Myka’s sad excuse for stealing time with her sugar bear.”
“Come with me,” Steve suggests. “It’ll beat sitting around here with earplugs in: I’ll let you play with the artifacts that need exercise.”
Pete gasps. “Sold!”
“They do tend to be the fun ones,” Claudia says, but she still looks a little pouty.
“And we can stop for doughnuts on the way,” Steve offers. He’s been keeping that in his back pocket, and fortunately, it seals the deal.
As they depart, Steve sends a thought both into the universe and upstairs, a little hope that Myka’s part of her plan will go as smoothly as his has.
Look at this drawing my fantastic niece made for me! (Not sure how I feel about her being so well acquainted with my fondness for Bering and Wells, but I suppose that's the price of having real conversations...) She gave me permission to share it, and anyway I'm too proud of her to keep her lovely gesture to myself.
Helloo B&W Gift Exchange Giftee! Getting in touch to ask: do have any specific asks for your gift? If not, no worries, I'm more than happy to whip up something special just for you. I make fan art (mostly) so that's the direction I'd be going in. Let me know what you think!
Hey there, Gifter! Nothing specific comes immediately to mind, though I should probably say out loud how very much I love (and miss) those Bering and Wells faces. You’d think that would make me want to go back to the episodes often... but there’s a sharp specificity to them by which I fear being pierced. I was talking recently with a fellow longtime B&W-fandom denizen, and we were remarking on the sheer difficulty of doing that kind of revisiting (sheer like a cliff face, or the fall therefrom). Given all that’s happened since, it can also feel like looking at and listening to one of those distant Ages from prehistory. So I guess if I had a request, it would be for you to do something that could remind me of the clear and valuable urgency of that Age; I want to find a way to palpate that again, feel its contours. Hold a reunion, if you will, but the restorative kind, not some sad reminiscence of forever-lost glory.
This probably sounds completely nuts, so please feel free to ignore me entirely. Anything you make, I’ll enjoy—and I’m sure the larger fandom will too. That’s why we’re all here, right?
Christmas just keeps on coming around again, no matter what else happens... and I keep starting seasonal stories that I lately have a hard time finishing. I’d say I’ll use 2026 to turn over several new leaves, but what are the odds? Anyway, here’s an idea I had. It’s a rickety little plane, but I’m imagining I can land it relatively soon. (There I go with the optimism. Foolish.) This is set in a post-series, generally canon-compliant chunk of time, with Helena back at the Warehouse. In my preferred scenario, Myka and Pete have realized the error of their girlfriend-boyfriend ways pretty fast, Helena has done the same with regard to whoever Giselle was, and Myka, in this Helena-is-back is trying not to let herself pine for what she might be able to have but is too scared to let herself believe is possible. How successful could she possibly be with such trying though? Let us see...
Persimmon
Myka bites into the persimmon, expecting resistance, but her teeth pierce their way easily into and through, bruising rich flesh. She should have foreseen the ease: the bright, fat orange berry had practically contused itself as its softness sank against her palm. New, new. “I’ve never tasted this,” she says as thick, perfumy pulp threatens to escape her mouth. “I’d remember.” She should be embarrassed, but she finds no space in her mouth, on her face, for that kind of restraint.
“What else haven’t you tasted?” comes the rejoinder. “I wonder...”
****
Two days earlier
When Myka walks into the Warehouse office, she finds Pete sitting in Artie’s chair. Just sitting. Sitting still.
It’s weird.
He looks up at her and somehow manages to sit even stiller.
Even weirder.
“Are you sick?” she asks.
“Feel fine,” he says.
“Then what are you doing?”
“Playing basketball.”
He’s... sitting in a chair. Unmoving. “Have you been whammied?” she demands.
He shakes his head.
“Then how are you playing basketball?”
Now he taps his temple. “I’m thinking real hard about playing basketball.”
“You never think real hard about anything. Also that’s not how it works.”
“Huh,” he says, taking his Watch Me Do The Thinker pose, which is what he usually does in order to pretend he’s thinking real hard. “So you’re saying that thinking real hard about a thing isn’t the same as actually doing the thing?”
Myka doesn’t know what’s going on... but something is. “Why do I feel like you’re setting me up?”
“Because you’re a really suspicious person. Sometimes you just need to take stuff at face value.”
“I tell you and tell you, that’s a mistake. Particularly here. You never listen. Are you sure you haven’t been whammied?”
“So what’s going on?” Obviously he is setting her up. All that’s left now is to find out why, and try to take it with a reasonably good attitude.
He grins. “Got your Christmas shopping done?”
“I got you that football shirt you asked for, if that’s what you’re hinting.”
“We call it a jersey, but thanks. What’d you get Claudia?”
“I got her the concert shirt she asked for. Did she put you up to this? And what are you, the Christmas police?”
“No. And no, that’s that weird elf we didn’t have when we were kids. Bet Claudia called it a concert tee though. For somebody who says she cares about words, you don’t seem to care a whole lot about words.”
“Is this going somewhere?”
“What’d you get for H.G.?” He says this with a little hitch: a here’s the setup giggle.
Oh. Great. Can’t we run through Steve, Artie, Abigail first? Even though they’re gone for the holiday, can’t we run through them? “Maybe she asked for a shirt too,” Myka grumbles.
“Bet she called it a doubloon if she did.”
“Do you mean doublet?” Maybe she can divert him from wherever he’s headed. “That’s not Victorian anyway. I was reading about one called a Garibaldi, named after a—”
“Doesn’t matter,” he interrupts, “’cause she didn’t ask you for a shirt. Bet she didn’t ask you for anything.” Wherever he’s headed: Myka doesn’t know, but she’s pretty sure she doesn’t want to go there with him. And yet diversion doesn’t seem even vaguely possible, as he continues, “Because even if she did ask you for a doubloon, I know what you should give her instead.”
“Good for you,” she tells him. “I don’t want to know.”
“Words.” He sounds impossibly self-satisfied.
She has to concede that it makes a weird sort of sense. Conceptually. Myka has a flash fantasy of giving Helena all the words, all the jargon, argot, slang she missed while bronzed—Myka can tell when she’s confounded by contemporary terminology—and hearing her talk her way through the vocabulary, a word at a time, as Myka luxuriates in the music of it. But she would never say such a thing to Pete. “I told you, I don’t want to know. Like I said, you never listen.”
“Words,” he repeats. “And not ones for shirts.”
Myka steels herself, because she’s pretty sure he’s about to explain.
“I do listen. To what you’re not saying: how you feel. Because I know you’ve been thinking about saying it, thinking about it real hard, but like I said, thinking real hard about a thing isn’t the same as actually doing the thing.”
“You didn’t say that. I did.” Now she’s wishing she’d never said anything at all—that she’d seen Pete sitting still and given thanks for it: a Christmas miracle.
“Don’t change the subject,” he says.
Not a bad idea: “You hate her!” Myka tries.
He hand-waves that. “What’d I just say? Anyway I got over that. Literally a million years ago.”
Keep trying... “Figuratively. I don’t believe you, but figuratively a million years ago.”
“Correcting what people say.”
“What about it?”
“That’s where thinking real hard about a thing is the same as actually doing the thing.”
That does make her laugh a little. “Says the guy who was literally just correcting my words for shirts? Because, no it isn’t.”
“Proving my point. So say the words instead of just thinking real hard about them.”
“I’m thinking real hard about smacking you,” she tells him, which wins her a similar bit of laughter.
She knows he doesn’t hate Helena. But it’s a convenient excuse: I can’t say anything, because disaster for the team.
Trying to get accustomed to what Pete’s said. What he knows. He thinks he knows, and he sort of does, but he doesn’t, not really. Not fully. First, because it would hurt him to know fully. But second, because Myka herself doesn’t know fully.
Pete, meanwhile, is saying, “Yet here I sit, unsmacked. Is this my fault?”
“That you’re unsmacked? No, it’s my fault, because I’m an adult who can exercise restraint,” Myka says. “Luckily for you.”
“Not that. Not any of that, really. I mean, once bitten, twice shy.”
Oh. That. Aloud, she says, “You didn’t bite me.”
“Maybe that was the problem,” he muses.
“Don’t be weird.”
“If she bit you, you wouldn’t think it was.”
“What did I literally just say?”
“Beats me. Somebody who’s a lot smarter than me keeps saying I never listen.”
But it’s soft, how he says it, and Myka softens a little in response. He’s doing something good—something Christmas—something that he thinks will help her. Because he thinks she needs help.
He isn’t wrong. About that, he isn’t wrong.
****
Myka ponders all of this in her heart. Not in a sacrilegious way, just... pondering.
Pete isn’t wrong. But he isn’t right either.
Myka has always envied adept givers of gifts.
Equally, she’s envied recipients of gifts from such givers.
Such giving and receiving seemed—still seems—to bespeak understanding, knowledge, even intimacy, the latter at least with the workings of want and provision.
About anything, usually, but now: about what she should give Helena.
Pete isn’t right. He can’t be.
That would be the fulfillment of a wish, and Myka has been working overtime, particularly when she’s in Helena’s presence, to quash any bit of belief that wishes come true.
So Pete isn’t right. He can’t be.
But what if he is?
****
She’s pondering—still—on Christmas eve, sitting in the surprisingly-yet-blessedly silent living room, sinking into the sofa with a throw pillow over her face.
She hears footsteps approach.
So much for blessed silence. Please don’t be Helena is her first thought, followed swiftly by Or please do be Helena, and concluding with I have no idea what I’m pleading for.
“Are you sick?” she hears.
It’s Claudia.
“Or do you think I can’t see you?” Claudia continues.
“Pete lectured me about words and thinking,” Myka says through the pillow.
“That doesn’t sound like him. That sounds like you.” Claudia, unlike Myka (or Pete) is sick: she has a cold, and it’s mangling her usual tone, making her words seem wrenched from some chthonic depth.
“Am I that bad?”
“Only when you’re trying to change the subject,” Claudia says. “So let’s stay on topic: Pete’s at the Warehouse. I’m going there too.”
“The topic is who’s at the Warehouse? Or going to be?”
“No. Somebody’s got something for you.”
This is getting stranger by the second. “A Christmas present?”
Claudia pauses. “You’d think,” she finally says.
Myka moves the pillow down to her chin, because she needs to look; she has no idea what Claudia means. It’s a different sort of deep utterance than Mrs. Frederic would produce, but it seems commensurately weighty. Claudia’s congestion is probably leading Myka to attribute extra heft to it, but still...
Claudia’s face is no help. That could be due to the cold too—her nose is as red as Rudolph’s—but Myka is nevertheless left without a path to interpretation.
Nothing becomes any clearer as Claudia pulls a tissue from her jeans pocket, blows her nose (that seasonal nose), barks “Okay!”, and leaves the room.
After a bare few seconds, the front door slams, and Myka is alone, still without clarity.
After a few more seconds, Myka is not alone: Helena enters the room and says a soft “hello Myka.”
Something is about to happen.
Myka is still without clarity.
And she is reminded: I have no idea what I’m pleading for.
Happy Bering & Wells-mas 2025 to all you nerdsbians out there!!
It's been a rollercoaster couple of years for me....so I'm very pleased to have a moment to (remember how to) post to Tumblr and whip up a little holiday cheer!
It HAS been a million years. Or at least a couple of really really long ones... having seen this, though, I'm feeling majorly cheered. Here's to you, and to B&W, and to having been brought together.
I wish a hearty “where were we?” to anyone who may still be following along with this tale of trial-related shenanigans... of course everything associated with the Warehouse is a trial in some way or another, at least as far as I imagine Myka ideating the world in which she’s found herself. See part 1, part 2, and part 3 to sort-of understand where, in fact, we were/are. I continue to offer thanks to @amtrak12 for being patient (or maybe “resigned” is the better word) as this shambolic @b-and-w-holiday-gift-exchange gift unfolds. Or unwraps. Or whatever it is gifts do when they take a long time.
Court 4
It’s exactly how the nightly news had led her, when she was a child, to think a trial looked, to lodge it in her brain: here, now, before Myka’s eyes—or at least occupying her visual field—is a literal courtroom sketch, a broad-stroked, dashed-off pastel rendering of a space featuring an elevated bench, advocates’ tables, jury box... all of them empty, waiting.
But now the wait ends: the single drawing shifts once, then again, then morphs into a flip-book, one offering different angles, perspectives, even movement; as the space begins to populate, she sees Helena take her place at her table, sees herself do the same at her own, watches the two of them nod to each other with respect, the way well-matched (she and Helena are so well-matched) adversaries would do.
Even roughly pigmented, even with canvas-texture interference, Helena is a work of art.
But Myka has little time to contemplate Helena as museum-piece, for the flip-book begins to flip faster, the angle shifting again, as she and Helena rise... ah, the entry of the judge: robed, sober, ready to consider and then to render judgment. This is what she and Helena are here to receive.
Wait. Hold on... the judge—his build, his gait, his entire physical aspect—seems familiar.
He turns to face the court.
The judge is... Artie?
This can’t be the real trial. Can’t be.
This is... something else.
A dream?
****
Myka’s eyes are closed.
She hears a door open, then an exclaimed, “Hey Mykes!”
She readies herself to open her eyes and deal with whatever Pete needs, or thinks he needs—though she does, for a second, consider not opening her eyes, either pretending she hasn’t heard or confessing, “Pete, I’m tired.”
But before she can decide, she hears something else: “Pete!” It’s a harsh-barked, yet womanly, whisper.
Helena. She’s here too, in Myka’s... hotel room? Is this where she is, where they are? Must be.
Helena doesn’t follow her caution to Pete with further words, but Myka, eyes still unopened, indulges in imagining her silently calling attention to Myka’s possible nap.
The indulgence in turn leads her to ponder, further indulgently, a question she once read, and to which the Warehouse gives her recurring reasons to return: “Isn’t there always a possible elephant lurking just at the edge of the frame?” The edge of the frame, where anything, everything, could be happening... naps, but not only naps...
“Sorry,” Pete stage-whispers, followed by a receding version of the particular steps he takes when he’s being “quiet.”
Nothing else happens. But Myka feels Helena’s presence persist, like a weighted blanket’s comforting, protective hold.
This feels good, she tells herself, to mark it. But the mark itself feels... unearned? She probes it, sounding its depth, finding the slip: This feels too good.
She knows it; she knows it—but her knowledge is struggling against a strong force, one offering neither comfort nor protection, something holding her down, under; she twists against it, spinning, redirecting—
****
Myka’s eyes are closed.
She feels asleep. Almost. Mostly. Al-mostly. Conscious of hearing, not (yet?) seeing.
“What exactly happened?” That’s... Steve’s voice? Wait, why is Steve here, what is the timeline, when did Steve—
“You still haven’t said.” That’s Pete. “Why won’t you say?”
“Because you won’t allow me the opportunity.” And that’s Helena. Dignified. That tone: Myka believes, but does not know, that Helena uses it when her voice is the extent of her arsenal. When she has only tone to deploy. Helena goes on, “She stumbled.” This is said more gently; she must now be speaking to Steve. “She was looking for my locket.”
“Why would it be here?” Pete demands.
“This is the container aisle,” Helena and Steve say in unison.
“I bet you tripped her,” Pete accuses. Myka knows that tone too: it’s the surliness with which he resists any looming challenge, particularly one he’s likely to lose.
“And how do you imagine I would I have done that?” Helena asks. Weariness now. Flat.
“I don’t know!” Pete says. “Wake her up!”
This isn’t how it went before. When I was asleep, before. I liked it better then.
“I can’t! I’ve tried!” Helena: fretful.
(Definitely better before.)
“She isn’t lying, Pete,” Steve says.
“Then she should shut up! She isn’t even really here!” Pete shrieks. It’s almost—almost—enough to jolt Myka to full awareness.
“Thus rendering your opprobrium evidence of insanity, perhaps?” Helena retorts. That’s more like it; Myka relaxes again.
“She’s here enough to be telling the truth.” Steve again. Calming.
“I don’t care,” Pete says, still high key, but modulating. “She should go away.”
Surprisingly, there’s no rejoinder. Myka wants to see Helena’s face, but the want isn’t itself a jolt; she can’t muster the effort it would take to push herself to presence... she’s still so tired. And the pressure, the force, it’s still there, now more of a pull-across than a pus- down, as if some other place (of sleep?) is drawing her, physically claiming her...
An elsewhere-sense, some consciousness near but not her own, intrudes: Just a bit longer.
Apologetically?
****
The first witness called—by whom, Myka doesn’t know—is... also Artie?
“Objection,” Myka stands and says, but she’s not sure why, because objecting about Artie to himself can’t possibly be sustainable. “This seems very unfair.”
It seems also extremely Warehouse-y. But how, and why, and—
“Overruled,” Judge!Artie snaps.
Okay. Fine. She’s got to start getting herself somewhere, anyway, so as Pete would no doubt advise, she’ll go with it.
“Who retrieved the artifact in question?” she asks Witness!Artie.
“MacPherson and I.”
Unreliable... she hears, as a whisper in her ear, from that as-yet-unplaceable elsewhere. To getcha ready, she (re?)hears Pete saying.
“How would you characterize the artifact?” she asks.
“In what sense?” Witness!Artie asks this as if he’s probing where to deploy his unreliability.
“In the sense of what is the artifact?” It strikes her that at base, she is—has to be—arguing for the repatriation of all artifacts, regardless of what this one is. Which she still doesn’t know.
“Objection,” Helena says, though she is less than emphatic. Laconic, even: leaning back i her chair.
Is it wrong of me to want to see her leap to her feet, to hammer on the table?
Her want occasions a whisper: Movement... but like that?
“Grounds?” Judge!Artie asks; he, for his part, sounds eager, ready to sustain.
Helena doesn’t bother, even now, to rise. “What an artifact is is far too existential a question. Certainly for this witness to answer.”
Witness!Artie nods. Then he straightens in the box. “Wait a minute. Are you impugning my philosophical bona fides?”
Helena offers a blink of innocence, and Myka takes the opportunity to pile on: “And is that really grounds for an objection? Excessive existentiality?”
“It is if I say it is. And I say it is,” Judge!Artie harrumphs, clearly interested more in foiling Myka than in defending Witness!Artie’s epistemological prowess.
Well, that all went poorly. “Fine,” Myka says. “I’ll rephrase. Literally, what is this artifact?”
Oh all right, she receives from the elsewhere, a capitulating flounce.
Artifacts—and now she is certain this is all directed by an artifact—can be such divas.
Witness!Artie takes his time answering... but given the flounce, Myka knows it isn’t his time.
The pause stretches. This is beyond dramatic, Myka is thinking.
She must have been heard, for Witness!Artie raises a hand and points directly at her, focusing upon her an uncanny, unfamiliar gaze.
“A dreamcatcher,” he says.
Rendering: this renders Myka speechless. In the moment, but not in her head. So I am asleep. Aren’t I?
From elsewhere: If so...
****
Disorientingly, a new scene (though Myka is becoming soft-acquainted with these wrenching shifts): she is in a conference room, one from the same genre of space as the hearing room itself, its paneling, long table, and chairs seemingly obtained from the same warehouse.
Warehouse? The very thought... something is laughing at her.
Helena is here too, but Myka has no idea how to process that.
And is that more laughter? At Myka’s incapability?
“I don’t understand what’s happening,” she admits, hoping Helena will... be her guide? Help her manage a bit of processing? Just stand there and look irresistible? Well, she’s already doing the latter...
That is not helpful, she admonishes whatever is controlling these scenarios.
“A caesura?” Helena posits, further unhelpfully.
Oh, thanks. Did she say it aloud? But if this is a dream, what could it matter? “No, I mean in the trial,” she says, this time intentionally. “But I think it’s the Warehouse.”
Helena cranes her neck in her characteristically look-at-my-neck way. “Isn’t everything, in the end? Existentially?”
That’s both characteristically Helena and... not. Myka is questioning, questioning, but she has to concede, “Well, yes. But no, I meant the museum.”
“Think faster,” Helena says.
Now a non sequitur? “What? Why?”
An insistent wham-wham on the conference-room door answers her.
It certainly doesn’t speed her thinking; instead, it shifts her to a different what-why as she voices a weak “Who’s there?”
“The judge in this case!” It’s in stereo: Helena from inside the room, Artie—some version of him—outside.
Outside, with only a door, some flimsy (and probably imaginary) hollow-core wood-veneer—focus! “We can’t be seen together!” Myka whispers to Helena with as much emphasis as possible.
“Can’t we?” Helena responds, conversationally. “Then we’ll need to be invisible.”
“How? I’m not some scientist who made bad choices and went nuts, and neither are you.” She’s trying to be clever. Why sis he doing that, that and not... finding a closet to hide in? Finding a mallet to render herself truly insensate with? Finding some explanation that will make sense of a contrived court and a tenuous trial and a hypothetical Helena—
“Arguably, I am,” Helena says, because of course she is more clever, no matter how questionable her presence.
The racket at the door intensifies, battering-ram, inescapable. “Play along,” Helena advises.
“With what?” As if she were innocent...
But then Helena’s lips are at her neck, at her neck then traveling, up her jaw, to her ear, then ultimately finally at last on her mouth, opening there, and she is molten.
It’s a dream, it’s what she’s always dreamed, and the dream is, the dream will always be, to stay here in this, ignoring all else... for a time... a time of length... the temptation... but Myka wrenches away: “Someone will see! Someone will judge!”
No! Caesura! For you! This, no one will see! This, no one will judge!
And yet that other sense is wrong: Artie will see; Artie will judge... them. He always has, and now—now, here he is, barging in, judge and witness, exactly as Myka predicted, his face red and raging.
Myka feels her own face red and racked. This is not invisible. No mad scientist, but a man would not need to be rendered invisible here, not as he was in that manic scream masquerading as a novel... and Myka finds it painful, spiritually and even physically painful, the redness internal now, hot and rough and suffusing, to actively want to be invisible as a woman. Invisible as women. To want to, to need to, and to not know how to.
The floor refuses to swallow them.
Well. “Them.” Myka knows, too, that Helena is not really here, that her dream remains a dream, no matter how real its physical effect may have seemed. Did seem. Still seems, in aftershocks.
Paradoxically, she cannot similarly dismiss the physical effect of Artie’s hostility.
Maybe some people can shake off nightmares. Myka can’t.
Other-sense: No... this was for you!
Nevertheless Myka is certain, certain, certain that her wanting, her wanting and, worse, the ease with which it was read and extracted, will be weighed. And certainly not for her.
Hi! Years ago I read a bunch of your stories, (Studio etc. and many others). And even if that has been years ago I still know what happens (Studio was my fav.). But that only shows what a great, talented writer you - and how memorable the stories you have written - are. I wanted to ask how you got to be where you are now with your writing. If you’d be willing to share about your approach to plotting/editing and what made you so good at it. (I mean you obviously have a distinct talent one cannot learn, but maybe you can share some insights? If you’d rather not, I understand and still want to say thank you for your stories and the time and effort you’ve put into creating them and sharing them with us. (I’ve obviously commented on the fics too, but still.)
Hi Anon—
First, many thanks for your kind words, particularly about Studio, which remains close to my heart. (Of course all the pieces do, in their idiosyncratic ways.) I’m not much of a process-talker, but what I will say—this is no secret; I’ve mentioned it elsewhere—is that I write for a living. That’s mostly how I got where I am: I’ve written and revised and revised and revised in order to eat and pay the mortgage, and I know I’ve improved over time.
I’m tempted to rant about how just writing a lot, that in itself, generally doesn’t lead to improvement, that you need appropriate feedback, but I’d inevitably get over-the-top pedantic about that. What I’ll say instead is that, in my opinion, working through critique of your stuff from folks who read well develops the muscles that enable you to read that stuff well yourself. That’s where I hope I am in terms of how I plot and edit (aside from some self-indulgent tics I may not bother to censor when I’m writing for free on the internet). Also, editing-wise, I do lots and lots of dialogue passes. And then lots more. Recognizing and fixing janky rhythms and clangs in how people talk: that’s essential to the work I try to do. Actually this relates to the answer I gave to the lovely previous Anon who asked whether I wrote for other shows, in that one reason I don’t is that I need to fully “hear” the voices I’m trying to represent... and that requires a commitment to close listening. JK and JM themselves rewarded that commitment for me, WH13-wise; for, say, West Wing, Sorkin’s dialogue and how the actors performed it were the prizes. With regard to other texts, lately, my ears don’t seem to want to engage.
Hm. Why am I having this fit of volubility? I haven’t hit my head recently, so ??? In any case I appreciate the questions!
Do you write for other shows? I know B&W are fantastic muses but love your work so work and often find myself wondering how you’d adapt other shows.
Hi Anon—
B&W are truly quite the muses... since they came along, other shows haven’t really spoken to me in such a compelling way. I’m mostly grateful for it, in that JK and JM embodied those ladies so fully that I haven’t felt much need to look past them, but I have some regret, too, because part of my inability to move on has to do with both the ongoing shambolic disaster of US politics and the pandemic. In those twin ongoing wakes, narrative hasn’t been working correctly for me, and without access to the full spark of new stories, I’ve been on the one hand lost and fumbling, but on the other, clinging to B&W like they’re the one (joint) buoy the storm hasn’t grabbed up and shattered against the rocks.
Even so, you may have noted that folks from other shows make cameos, some of them extended, in my stuff. I confess to being particularly proud of Giselle, my West Wing crossover, because I wasn’t sure I could ape Sorkin's dialogue, but I think/hope I pulled it off. To an extent. There are some additional sort-of appearances of characters from other shows in certain stories, but none so extensive as the WW one.
Your question honestly made me think about where I need or want to go from here... maybe nowhere. I don’t know yet, but I appreciate your giving me reason to turn the thought over a few times with both hands. My best to you, as well as a wish that your encounters with new stories are going better than mine.
Happy [day after] American Thanksgiving, and happy Bering and Wells Holiday Gift Exchange sign-up opening day!
The gift exchange is open to anyone who wants to make a fic, art piece, gif, or any other fandom-related gift and exchange it with a fellow Bering and Wells fan. Here's the schedule:
Message or ask me via this blog or my personal account (@kla1991) anytime between now and the winter solstice, December 21st, and say you'd like to participate. Also say whether you're willing to open your askbox to anonymous messages or if you'd prefer courrier service to speak to your secret gifter.
On December 25th, you'll receive the username of someone else who signed up; this is your giftee! You should also double-check that your inbox is open and accepting anonymous messages on this day if you're participating that way.
Between December 25th and New Years, January 1st, you will anonymously communicate with your giftee to receive prompts about what type of fandom stuff you make and what type of gift they might like to receive. You'll also give prompts, if you have any, to your gifter! If at any point you have questions about how to do this, reach out to me.
You will then have from January 1st until Valentine's Day, February 14th, to create a gift, and they'll all be posted on tumblr on the 14th!
Sign-ups are also open to:
Maybes (folks who aren't sure they can participate but want to if they can--will be paired with someone else who says the same thing, so each of you know from the start that you may or may not get a gift)
Pinch Hitters (folks who are willing to make an extra gift if someone drops out mid-exchange)
Beta Readers (folks who are willing to beta read for gifters writing fic)
Brain-stormers (folks who are willing to chat with gifters to help come up with ideas)
Feel free to message me with any questions, and please spread the word!
So thankful to see this—despite the fact that I've still got a couple of parts to go on last year's gift. In my not-really defense, I'll cite Pope's "Hope springs eternal" (because, I guess, it does), and I'll add a bit more from that piece: "But ALL subsists by elemental strife; / And passions are the elements of life."
I'm glad that this Bering and Wells situation continues to be such an element... c'mon, let's do the thing!
As always, great gratitude to @kla1991 for the steering of this tribute to the ship.
In part 1 of this tale (way back in December!) I left Myka and Helena suspended in a post-S5 situation: Helena back as an agent, yet still involved (long-distance) with Giselle; Myka no longer with Pete, yet unwilling/unable to intervene in Helena’s situation. But late late late on Christmas Eve in the B&B, Myka encounters Helena watching the Yule Log—because, she reports, Pete told her to. As for why she’s following such an order—it’s complicated!—you’ll need to consult the aforementioned part 1. As for what’s transpiring... well, Myka has just been moved to offer some real words about something she and Helena have only moments ago begun to discuss for the first time: her abortive relationship with Pete. Myka’s admission? “We fought. Pete and I.” And what does that lead to? This part starts to say.
Real 2
It’s better, at least a little, at least Myka hopes so, than her too-glib “It didn’t take.”
Helena visibly considers the statement, and that’s a tick on the “better” side. Then she says, “I’m surprised. You’re both peacemakers.”
“Is that complimentary or derogatory?”
“Descriptive. Take it as you wish.”
It’s descriptive and discerning. So Myka says what’s true. “I tried not to fight. So, derogatory.”
“Because you felt you should have fought?”
“I felt we would have fought. Unless I worked hard to keep it from happening.”
“Fought about...?” Helena’s interrogative is gentle, but after a beat, she nods. “Ah. Let me guess.”
“No need,” Myka says, stating the obvious. “Anyway, we did. Only once, but once was enough.”
“To end the involvement?”
“Not immediately.” It should have, but Myka had been slow to know it. Slow, and a coward.
“What was the resolution?”
“To the fight? There wasn’t one.”
“Ah,” Helena says again.
But this one is too smug, too proud, too of course you couldn’t resolve it because I cannot be solved for—okay, maybe Myka’s projecting. Even so: “Don’t say it like that. You don’t know. You don’t know anything about it.” Helena doesn’t know—and she wasn’t even really the matter, because she wasn’t there. Only some ghost bearing—flaunting—her name. Uncanny non-matter, haunting everything.
“I know it was about me,” Helena says.
“That doesn’t justify whatever else you seem to think you know.” Myka hadn’t liked who she was when she and Pete were together, and she hadn’t liked who Pete was either. But this Helena, the person sitting here today, never met that Myka or that Pete. And this Helena was never ever interior to, or even a witness to, the dysfunctional dynamic Myka and Pete had wrought together.
“I concede,” Helena says, with a bow of head. “Intimacy. For example, Giselle and I—”
“No. Please.”
“Surely if I have to know about you and Pete, you can—”
“I can’t,” Myka says, and if Helena thinks less of her for this—so what? That will cause her less pain than having to hear whatever words would follow intimacy for example Giselle and I. “Not when you’re...”
“Involved,” Helena finishes for her.
There’s nothing more to say, not after that. In silence they sit, regarding the flames that don’t consume.
Burning and burning and burning.
It seems foolish now, even ironic, but Myka had once thought that’s what love might, should, ideally be: a fire that doesn’t destroy. That just... is. In perpetuity.
So much for that idea. She thinks herself back to only days ago, to the point at which Claudia had asked Helena, “So when do we get to meet your lady friend?”
Claudia hadn’t even glanced at Myka as she articulated the question. Testimony to how far everything had traveled—from Tamalpais, from even Myka’s leaving the Warehouse. Myka wasn’t, now, even a factor.
That Helena had given a noncommittal answer made it worse, as if time for such meeting would be infinitely available... and thus, for Myka, infinitely torturous.
She forces herself back farther now, to a similarly torturous but opposite pressure: a factor that Myka certainly, and Pete apparently, had tried to pretend wasn’t one. Until they couldn’t... “we fought,” yes, but it was nastier, more specific, than even that admission allowed.
Completely alone at the B&B, the two of them, in the kitchen, for the first time in some time not compelled by the presence of others to hide their... problems? But “hiding their problems” wasn’t really what they’d been doing by putting on happy faces; they—or at least Myka—had been trying to steady, so as to ultimately unmake, a shearing geological fault by sheer force of it’s-better-this-way will. When that will collapsed, it cratered all of the ground into an on-and-on collapse, a harsh, sour, unnatural disaster of anger and accusation.
Myka finally said, in utter weariness, “What do you want from me.”
“To make me feel like you’re not cheating on me,” he said, but not in the attention-mongering whine he’d been using. These words were genuinely pained, battered by that unignorable factor.
Being so honest must have unnerved him: while in his initial shrill snit he’d paradoxically been bodily, solidly confrontational, now he became fidgety, pacing, sitting down, standing. Sitting again. He pushed his fingers through his hair, that longer hair, which Myka didn’t like; it seemed a calculated reach for boyish charm that landed instead as a flail, an untrained windmilling backstroke in search of past waters.
Past waters: a clash in a kitchen. Myka’s mind had then sliced back to a long-ago kitchen-set fight, one with her father—but no, the fight had been all hers, all internal. He’d been telling her that she had to take Tracy’s shift in the bookstore that weekend, and Myka was making a silent, meticulous argument as to why her own plans to read Nabokov were just as important as Tracy’s to lead cheers at a basketball game. But Tracy’s activities were, to Myka’s introvert father, exceptional and thus worthy. Myka’s were familiar, boring, and thus easily supersedable.
However: even deep as she had been in both the fight with Pete and the father-memory-cut (Nabokov! Nabokov!), she had seen she’d got the throughline wrong. The kitchen setting wasn’t it; rather, the damage done by comparison, that was the blade. She’d never expected to turn into her father, of course never wanted to, but there she was with Helena-over-Pete uppermost in her mind, just like Tracy-over-Myka had preoccupied her father. Attending to (in her case yearning for) the exceptional, rather than really seeing (in her case being satisfied with) the familiar.
She ideated and discarded several responses to Pete’s “cheating” beg, ranging from “I’m not cheating on you” through “I can’t be cheating on you; the person I would cheat with isn’t here” to “I am cheating on you.”
They were all true.
She finally settled on, “I don’t know how to do that.”
“I thought you were the smart one,” Pete sneered in return.
It was something her father might have said.
“No wait that’s her,” he sneered on.
Yes, Myka had wanted to agree, smart. Because she’s not here. But her mouth found only attenuated ash, an aftertaste of the fire that had burned when Helena—smart to be gone, so smart—was here.
No fire now. Nothing to feel.
“I can’t talk to you when you’re like this,” he ended, the words a coarse blow.
The irony of such a grievance was yet another clout. “I can’t talk to you at all,” she said, as her head and heart pounded a dull refrain of get out get out get out. She bore it as Pete said nothing, bore it as he did nothing but stare, bore it until it became unignorable, and then she did get out: out of the argument, out of that present kitchen and all the past it imposed.
It had taken her far too long to understand that the get out drumming had been there all along, the accompaniment to the entire Pete situation. It too became unignorable... and even then, in the end, Pete mostly did the getting out for her, though she had to suffer the weight of his disappointment, which again put her in mind of burdens her father imposed on her. But then again, she had made Pete suffer the weight of Helena. So as for her father and burdens, she was multitasking: the better to see him and be him.
It had been entirely dispiriting.
So is the unholy silence, right now, between her and Helena. “Why was watching the Yule Log your other choice?” Myka noises into that lack of sound, seeking comfort, or something, in a dichotomy not her own.
“I don’t know,” Helena says.
Myka believes her, but... the logistics. On what channel, here in South Dakota, is she watching it, anyway? Myka directs her attention to the lights on the additional electronic boxes in the vicinity of the television. The cable tuner display is blank, as is that of the DVR. On the oldest component, however, a blue “play” arrow is illuminated.
Now Myka knows something is entirely afoot. “Seriously? A videotape?” she scoffs, and she would raise her voice and demand, “Pete, get down here!”, but she has absolutely zero interest in adding his actual presence to this difficult situation he’s wrought. Particularly as she’s just revisited the rough edges (not yet scars) of the fight.
She does, however, eject the tape from the VCR and deposit it in a static bag, from which she is unsurprised to see sparks fly. “What did it do to you?” she asks Helena. “How do you feel?”
“You watched it with me,” Helena points out. “How do you feel?”
“Exhausted,” Myka blurts. She tries for a softening quirk of lip in apology. “But that’s not new.”
Helena raises her eyebrows, then closes her eyes. “Oh god so am I. Also not new.”
If the artifact’s effect were to elicit honesty about overwhelming fatigue, surely they would have exchanged such words before now. Nevertheless, a spent calm settles briefly upon them both; they inhabit that fatigue for a moment, then another, as if breathing its shared burden together.
But they are not, in fact, together. “I should go,” Myka says, reminding herself of it. It’s necessary. It hurts.
A little huff escapes Helena, a sigh and/or the first syllable of a laugh. “You’re giving up on me...” she says. A statement and/or a question.
Myka responds the same way: “What choice do I have...”
Helena closes her eyes again. “Any of many. Choices abound.”
Myka snaps, “Don’t be cryptic. You’re involved. I’m trying to stay out of that.”
“Your attempt is noted,” Helena says, and the schoolmarm is back. “But involvements aren’t static. Yours wasn’t.”
Trying for the same formidability, Myka says, “Yours has been. Since you came back. That tells me all I need to know.”
“All you need to know. Which includes nothing about the other party to the involvement.”
“Why does that matter?”
“Have you never been in a situation in which breaking with someone might cause harm? And refrained on that basis?”
That sends Myka careering into a ditch of petulance: about harm, about people on whom Helena might be inflicting it, about who should take precedence in any refraining-from sweepstakes.
Trying to drive herself up and out, back into something like reason, she says, “Only once.” Pete, she means, but then she realizes that’s inaccurate. Also Sam. Differently, but also Sam.
“But so, that once,” Helena presses, pushes, “for that while, you did refrain.”
It swipes Myka right back into the ditch, where she explodes, “So what are you saying? Honestly, what are you saying? That you’re going to break up with her... when? When she can take it? And were you ever going to mention this?” Her voice is rising, along with her agitation.
“You indicated no interest in the situation. No interest, in fact, in anything about me. Relative to the situation or otherwise. “
“Don’t you dare try to tell me that lack of indicated interest wasn’t mutual,” Myka fumes.
“Given the stilted nature of our final interaction in Boone, and given your subsequent—I might have called it politesse, but now I see it as a lack of candor—surely you can understand a certain reluctance on my part.”
“A certain reluctance,” Myka mimics, and she snorts. “Sure. But given all of Boone, and given your subsequent involvement, I bet you can understand why there was even more reluctance on my part.”
“Why there was. And now?”
“Don’t parse me. You’re the one who’s involved.”
“And that disqualifies me from attempting to ascertain your meaning?”
“Shut up.” Maybe that, intemperate as it is, can end this intolerable back-and-forth.
The look Helena slides her way—technically obeying the dictate—is an insouciant lift of eyebrow coupled with a purse of lips that’s utterly enraging. And inflaming. Every single blood vessel in Myka’s body fills, her face heating, viscera roiling, hands swelling, rising. She could do this, right this second: push Helena back against this sofa and—
She thinks those hands back down. Crosses her arms. Maybe Helena is trying to provoke her into acting and maybe she isn’t, but Myka is not going to be the person someone cheats with. Not again.
Then she makes the mistake (no, the inevitability) of looking at Helena again, Helena who is leaning forward, her hands gripping her knees.
They are without question feeling—fighting—the same impulse.
Would fighting it out loud help or hurt? Myka has to try something, so she says, “This isn’t right. It shouldn’t be artifactual.”
Helena breathes out through her nose in audible frustration. “Well, it would be, regardless. How else, in the end, am I here?”
Conceding that... it would be conceding. So Myka objects, “But if something happens now.”
“Oh,” Helena says, like Myka just said the most unexpected thing. She sits back and breathes in. “I take your point. Proximate versus ultimate.”
It’s a release. And a relief. A bodily disappointment, to be sure, but also a relief.
But also annoying. “I do not want to have to smack you,” Myka says, in part to mask her appreciation. “But I’m seriously inclined to do it, and it will most likely be satisfying.”
“Perhaps the artifact’s effects include disposing one to violence?” Helena jousts.
“No, I’ve been thinking for some time that smacking you would be satisfying.” She hasn’t. But she should have been. Should have been thinking that rather than miring herself in mortification.
Helena shakes her head. “I don’t believe you,” she says, as if disappointed.
“Maybe the effects include Steve-ifying you,” Myka acknowledges.
“If that’s so,” Helena says, the artifice abruptly seeming to leave her voice, “I’ll ask this: where are we?”
Myka looks at Helena to try to ascertain whether her ears are deceiving her. Or whether Helena is, although her face seems veneer-free. Seems.... but Myka has no good answer. “On the sofa, Steve. Other than that, I don’t know.”
“On the sofa together?” Helena says. It’s no prod; rather, a tentative assay.
“No. At the same time.” This answer isn’t good either, but it’s accurate.
“Would it be possible to be on the sofa—or anywhere—together?”
“I’m not the one who can answer that,” Myka says. More accuracy. “Steve,” she adds, to hammer home the truth.
“Stop calling me Steve,” Helena sulks out—but with a touch of light.
“Stop trying to make me commit when you won’t,” Myka whips back, responding to the light without thought or censor.
Helena freezes. “That is...” she begins, then stops. Offended? Ended?
Now Myka freezes.
“Fair,” Helena concludes.
A concession from Helena? Regarding someone else’s read of a situation in which she was doing her Wellsian best to gain the advantage? Myka’s blood begins to rise again, but she says a calm, “Thank you.”
“You are welcome. Though not quite yet.”
Quit giving me hope, says every contrary bit of Myka’s heart. The rest of her is busy creating a new spreadsheet to track that hope.
Helena stands up and says, “I’ll see you soon.”
“Will you?” The cells are filling up quickly.
“Ideally.”
Which leaves Myka to stew in the fact that nothing is ever ideal.
Neither time nor tide... in ironic illustration, she waits for Helena’s footsteps to fade. Then she takes the bagged tape upstairs to confront Pete.
Myka, for her part, has apparently decided to go with “as straightforward as possible” for her attitude.
“Okay,” she says as she’s walking into the conference room, as if they had somehow been interrupted in mid-conversation at some earlier point, “I’m sure gaslighting me this morning was fun, but if you could just tell me what you want—”
“What I want?” Helena asks. “What makes you think I want anything?” She pulls her hand through her hair, very deliberately, then shakes her head so that the glossy waves fall back into place. Because while Myka did not like Helena’s fingers in her hair, she had seemed extremely pleased to weave her own fingers into Helena’s.
This is the VERY DEFINITION of fantastic, and I'm beyond delighted to see this lovely, um, movement. Both Helena and I are in the process of losing our cool in the pocket... vast thanks to you, @lonely-night , for bringing them to life so beautifully. I miss them so much.
To @amtrak12 , who obviously has the patience of a saint, I offer the next part of this @b-and-w-holiday-gift-exchange gift. As begun in part 1 and part 2, it’s a vaguely in-universe story in which Myka and Helena are in some fashion being pitted against each other in court.... but that scenario, and everything surrounding it, is of somewhat unclear definition. Why might that be? All will be revealed eventually, I promise, and there are a few hints here in this part. Overall, I hope there’s at least a little enjoyment in the excruciatingly slow ride.
Court 3
Now Artie is waving folders around: “Legal!” he says, flourishing one in his right hand, and then, as if to distinguish by name the one in his next-raised left, “briefs!”
With a little look-at-me shimmy, Pete says, “But what about legal boxers?” Like he’s the first person ever to make such a joke.
“Fisticuffs?” Helena asks, a little plaintive.
So, okay, maybe he’s the first ever to make such a joke in front of Helena. who deserves not to be left in the dark, even by a joke that only Pete thinks is funny. “He means—” Myka starts, but it occurs to her, just in time, before she fully embarks, that she does not want to talk about distinctions between types of underwear with Helena Wells. Or with H.G. Wells. Or with anybody, really, but in particular not with either of those eminences.
But she likes “fisticuffs.” As a word. So: “Never mind,” she says, following up with, “I like ‘fisticuffs.’” To the four surprise-widened pairs of eyes that slew her way—hallelujah, the distraction worked—she finishes, “As a word.”
Artie’s eyes narrow. “Here’s a word: unforgettable. Be that, both of you. On both sides. So nobody questions anybody’s legitimacy when it’s time to take possession.”
Take possession. Why does everything he says make Myka think inappropriate thoughts?
But also: being unforgettable certainly won’t be a problem for Helena.
“How could anyone forget Agent Bering?” Helena asks, in unknowing yet ringing counterpoint, with a tone that Myka desperately wants to be correct in hearing as unironic. (Which may or may not stretch fully to “sincere.”)
“You got that backwards,” Pete tells her. “It’s ‘how could Agent Bering forget anyone.’ Or anything. And the answer is, she couldn’t.”
“Couldn’t she,” Helena says, looking at Myka. Looking intently, like Myka’s leapt a quantum of consequence, and is that good or bad?
Myka doesn’t want to find out. Not now. “We don’t need to get into that,” she says.
Helena blinks at her. “What do we need to get into?”
It sounds suggestive only because, Myka assures herself, everything Helena says sounds suggestive.
No, wait, that’s terrible. Try again: only because Helena can make anything sound suggestive.
No, that’s bad too: it puts the blame on Helena, whose intent can’t be assumed.
So, back to the first: everything Helena says sounds suggestive... to Myka. That’s at least accurate. Accurate and damning.
And speaking of damning, she’s let Helena’s question sit unanswered too long... but, for good or ill, Artie steps into the breach.
“Working the case,” Artie says, stepping into the breach, and is he saving Myka or damning her further? “That’s what—that’s all—you need to get into.”
“All...” Helena echoes, drawing the word out, sinuous syrup in Myka’s ear. Damning, damning, damning.
“Also court,” Claudia says, the “t” an obstructive retort, as if to stop any such flow. “You need to get into that.” Another shot, for emphasis.
But Claudia’s plosives won’t be putting up barriers once Myka and Helena do.
****
Steve likes to wander the aisles of the Warehouse. If he’s being honest with himself (although sometimes he’s not honest with himself, if only because he can in fact lie to himself without pain; it gives him a little zing of illicit pleasure, like not quite triggering an allergy) he feels more at home here in this building that should be overwhelming than he does in the B&B. In this building, he’s anonymous; at the B&B, everyone wants to, or feels that they already, know him too well—too well too soon. He hadn’t signed up for that.
Not that he’d known in any way whatsoever what he was signing up for.
Not that he’d even affirmatively “signed up” for anything.
Should he have seen this life-wrench coming?
On his first day of fifth grade, the teacher, working her way through the alphabet of last names, had asked each student if they had thought about what they wanted to be when they grew up. After praising the ambition of Tony Gentry, who wanted to be the President of the United States and also a rock star, she’d moved on to Steve. “Steve Jinks? Ideas?”
“An advice columnist,” he’d answered promptly, with certainty.
His teacher had raised her eyebrows at that and pronounced it “very interesting,” but she didn’t press the point, instead moving on to the next name. “Jennifer Josten? Your thoughts?” Jennifer had declared an interest in lepidoptery, which then had to be defined for the class, thus fully washing away Steve’s answer... probably for the best, as he’d thought even in the moment.
When his mother asked how that first day went, he told her what he’d said. Unlike his teacher, she followed up: “Why an advice columnist?”
So he had to give reasons. His first one: he liked the words. Advice columnist. They were full and fun to say, and they made the job sound full too.
Then he worried that he was being presumptuous (a word he’d recently learned, though less recently than “lepidoptery”), making like he had some innate (ditto) ability to do such a full job. So he explained that it wasn’t that he thought he knew so much about people and their problems. But he liked the idea of having answers, ones that went beyond “lie” and “truth.”
His mother agreed that answers—nuanced ones—were good. And thus Steve also learned the word “nuanced.”
In retrospect, he suspects he’d been hoping that becoming an advice columnist meant being gifted with answers (other than “lie” and “truth”), wisdom from some advice-ether to which only such columnists had access.
His eventual Buddhism had, and has, served as the real version of that imagined advice-ether, offering him glimpses, even occasional grasps, of more-nuanced answers.
It’s possible, though, and maybe even likely, that answers of similarly greater nuance are to be glimpsed, and even occasionally grasped, here in this Warehouse. Steve’s found moments of unexpected peace in its immensity, and unexpected power in the peace.
But today, even more unexpected, he finds, or rather nears, un-peace, an aural variety, its location and source taking a moment to clarify: the container aisle, from which blares Pete’s voice, angry, demanding, and in response, a woman—but not Myka, not Leena, not Claudia. Not even Mrs. Frederic. An unknown woman in the Warehouse? Arguing with Pete?
Steve is not an advice columnist, which he’s had cause to semi-regret during his brief Warehouse tenure: all these misfit toys (a category from which he doesn’t exclude himself) need advice, and he’s totally unqualified to give it. So he does for a moment entertain the idea of turning away from Pete’s ire, avoiding whatever today’s kerfuffle is.
But he has a job, and while it’s not “advice columnist,” it often seems to lean toward something like “kerfuffle-handler.”
So he turns in the direction of the noise.
****
Layers, Myka thinks. Helpful in South Dakota. The winters, anyway.
Layers. This over that. This, then that. Again?
Pete sits her down and cues up Witness for the Prosecution.
You made me watch this already. Myka doesn’t say this aloud, but it’s... true? He did. Before. Before what? “Why are you doing this?” is what she does say.
“To getcha ready,” he enthuses. “For court. See, what’s a big deal here is Dietrich.”
“Well, sure,” Myka says, because when wouldn’t Dietrich be a big deal?
“Not because of that. I mean, sure, always because of that,” and he is looking at her like he might have just decoded some undercurrenty dit-dot-dash of what she never says aloud, “but. For right now: her testimony. Unreliable.”
“You mean like Rashomon.” Which he has also made her watch. Already. Before.
“Nope. That’s different versions. Everybody’s got different versions. This is about who to trust.”
He must mean Helena... he must be pushing her to not trust. Must mean, must be. Must must must.
But even as she resists that pressure to not, she can’t deny that Helena has an appeal that is by a certain measure Dietrich-esque, and thus what she can’t resist a quick riffle-shuffle, just for the thrill... Morocco (white tie and tailcoat...), Shanghai Express (chiaroscuro with Anna May Wong her mirror...), even Touch of Evil (into every life a little Well[e]s must fall...)...
“Are you showing movies to Helena too?” she asks, as much to talk herself down as to really find out. Helena, Pete, movies... would there really be time for that?
But how is there time for this?
“Why would I?” Pete asks.
“To get her ready? Too?”
“But I want you to win,” he says. “Whatever’s happening.”
Whatever’s happening. “Who’s unreliable?” Myka asks. She wants to know. Whatever’s happening.
She doesn’t really expect an answer, and Pete lives down to that: “Don’t ask me,” he says, busying himself with the DVD remote.
But whom should Myka ask?
Herself?
****
When Steve rounds the corner, both Pete and the woman—she’s beautiful, her face a pale marvel, but it’s her hair, a wash of darkest ink, that strikes him—look his way and immediately clam up.
The sudden silence spooks him. As does the fact that at their feet lies Myka, and she’s... taking a nap? She’s on her side, her head pillowed on her arms, like she’s illustrating “sleep” in the dictionary. It’s more than odd, but then again this is the Warehouse, where stranger naps have no doubt been been taken.
Steve certainly isn’t one to begrudge Myka, or anybody else, the rest they need, but...
...the silence continues, as if enforced.
Steve is patient, but uncanniness makes him antsy. So to the woman, who seems nonthreatening (she’s just standing there, arms crossed), Steve ventures, “Hi?”
“Hello,” she responds. Her voice, now not angry, is low. Rich.
“Right,” Pete says, a put-upon pout. “I always think everybody knows everything. Steve, H.G. H.G., Steve.”
“Delighted,” says the newly identified H.G. to Steve. “Who are you?”
“Same,” Steve responds. “And same?” There’s surely something he should be getting, but—
Pete sighs, still put-upon. “I always think.” To the woman, he says, “He’s the new guy they brought in to replace Myka, after you made her leave.” Then he turns to Steve. “H.G. Think about it.” Like Steve is a complete idiot.
And he is: immediately, realization. The embarrassment burns him, heating his gut, blooming on his face. “H.G. Wells,” he says, and tries to cover at least a bit of his flush by understating, “Claudia mentioned.”
Claudia has in fact woven tale after tale, all in the service of illustrating what she initially described as “H.G.’s good-guy-to-bad-guy-to-goodish-guy-to-who-knows-what status, with Myka all-in then crushed then mostly just sad and Pete really pissed off about all of it, but anyway we got you out of the deal, Jinksy, and maybe someday we’ll get H.G. back for real too, because honestly I miss her basically like I’d miss air.”
Steve adds to his understatement with, “She reveres you, by the way.”
“And I her,” says H.G., with a weirdly formal head-bow. “Not at all by the way.”
“Good choices all around, it seems like,” Steve says.
H.G. smiles, and he is rewarded.
“Meanwhile, Myka was unconscious!” Pete informs the world, full up again with all that anger Steve had wanted to turn away from.
The way she talks... not trying to compete, but secure in her ability to. Steve feels himself proving his kinship with Claudia. More so than with Pete
“Who cares what you think?” Pete fumes, confirming Steve’s sense. “And you’ll say anything anyway.”
“She’s telling the truth though,” Steve says, because she is. “To me, Myka looks... asleep. Comfortable, even?”
H.G. nods. “That was my thought when—”
Pete breaks in, loudly, “Asleep?!? But I’m yelling!”
“We know,” Steve says, and he hears H.G. say the same, right in tune, and what is he to do with this instant accord? Is it disturbing? Or... flattering?
“She never sleeps through me yelling!” Pete yells on.
Myka, for her part, sleeps on.
Steve finds himself hoping that when the yelling stops—as eventually it must, even with Pete—H.G. will be able to express the as-yet-unarticulated when of her thought about Myka asleep.
He additionally hopes that builds to something like advice.
****
Who’s unreliable?
Myka, that’s who. Why else would Artie have sent Pete along with her and Helena on this retrieval, when he has no role to play in court?
Obviously she requires a chaperone.
Tamalpais was so different. Claudia is a lot of things, but “chaperone” isn’t among them, and anyway she was preoccupied with confronting her own insecurities, leaving Myka generally free to...
... well, to confront her own. While pretending not to, because of the incessant pressured wish to be present for every moment with Helena, whether collegial or clashy or both.
Paradoxically, looking is what Myka’s viscera remember of all that shared presence: for while their physical interactions made serious impressions, the gazes meant. They signified. They offered up the why of the physical.
And that why is obviously the reason for Pete’s presence. Myka supposes “backup” must have been, must be, the ostensible rationale for it, but that’s almost as troubling. Why wouldn’t she and Helena be each other’s backup? Why would they need more? It’s not like this is even a conventional, and thus possibly dangerous, retrieval.
She’s reminded of that as she stands before the bathroom mirror in a hotel room, dressing for court: buttoning up, smoothing down. This suit has always been what she would wear for such an occasion, this eyeliner and blush always what she would apply. As evidence. Of preparation.
Pete gapes at her when she emerges. “Are you wearing makeup?”
Why is he in her room? “I’m going to court,” Myka says. Did he forget?
“Who? The judge?”
Dangerous, dangerous... she knows who. So she says “What?” Playing as dumb as she can.
“And you’re supposedly the word nerd...” He shakes his head. Has he bought it? Surely even word nerds are allowed to plead (to feign) ignorance on occasion. “But seriously, do they judge on hotness now?”
Of course: at that moment, Helena sweeps in, as if doors and locks and privacy are nothing but easily disproved hypotheses. “I certainly hope so,” she says, and she too is buttoned up, smoothed down, yet perfectly so, the strictures fitting simple... also evidence, but of a dream Myka has been waiting till this very moment to dream. She looks Myka over... also not unrelated to several dreams Myka has been waiting, or in fact not waiting, to dream. “At the very least, I relish the competition.”
“I guess it’s time,” Myka says, hoping to send the idea of that sort of competition on its way. (Not that she knows where “on its way” would be. Probably some sort of boomerang trajectory, given everything.) “Time,” she repeats. “For court.”
“Court-ing!” Pete yelps, and Myka wants to sink into the hotel-room carpet, never mind what else those abused fibers have absorbed.
Helena takes it in her stride, not even raising an eyebrow. As she would. “Yes, it is,” she says, an affirmation of its being time, and/or actual courting being involved, and/or every possible jot of meaning in between.
Affirmation... why not affirm it all? All, all, legal boxers and all, because this is about (a bout?) competition, which Helena has said she relishes. Which Myka is ready—absolutely ready—to relish too.
Hi @amtrak12 —here, on the occasion of the B&W-meeting anniversary, I have the next part of your @b-and-w-holiday-gift-exchange gift, which is turning out overall to be a slower-than-slow unspooling that has something to do with lawyers and arguments and ownership. Herein, the plot thickens. Or maybe just clots, or perhaps congeals. Anyway, events—or “events”?—occur. Following, sort of, what happened in part 1. (Contributing to my usual sluggish pace is the fact that it’s been a rough several months, for me at least. I hope everyone’s holding tight to whatever helps...)
Court 2
Leena stumbles. She is sitting in Artie’s Warehouse office, waiting for Claudia to finish some database update or other, and yet her entire being manages to lose its footing. To stumble.
“Are you okay?”
The question from Claudia startles Leena out of her first response to the lurching sensation: trying to ascertain whether she should have been more attentive, all day, to the background hum of artifactual grumbling. They always want attention, artifacts do, but has today been—and is this moment in particular—about attention? Or has some hapless item found itself in genuine distress?
“Seriously, are you okay?” Claudia asks again, again startling Leena, enough that instead of what would usually be a measured “yes,” she voices an awkward “huh?”
“You look like somebody kicked your puppy. Or wait...” Claudia squints. “More like your puppy did a thing and you don’t know if you should give it a treat or say ‘bad dog.’”
“You do cut right to it,” Leena says, because Claudia has.
“I’m discerning.” She squints again. “Is that what I mean? Myka would know.”
“Even if it isn’t, you are. And yes, she would.”
Claudia beams, likely on both accounts. “Thanks! Probably. So what’s up with your puppy?”
“I can’t tell,” Leena admits. “Something dramatic. And the real question is, which puppy?”
“I can’t help here. First, because I don’t know what we’re talking about, and B, because I was never one of those kids who wanted a puppy. But mostly because my helping skills are pretty much always under construction.”
Don’t run yourself down, Leena would admonish, but whatever those artifacts are up to is the more pressing issue, and anyway Claudia generally shrugs off explicit direction to acknowledge her value... unless, interestingly, it’s Myka who delivers it. So she goes slightly more opaque and functional: “Come with me. We can both figure out what we’re talking about, and maybe you can hammer at those skills.”
“Where are we going?”
Leena closes her eyes and concentrates on the disquiet, trying to orient. “Container aisle,” she determines. “Can’t narrow it down more than that.”
They reach the floor and walk for a bit. Then Claudia says, like she’s been thinking about it, “Container aisle? I’d rather go to the Container Store.”
“Need more organization in your life?”
“In Pete’s life.”
Leena waits for it.
Claudia delivers, “Because when I go to steal DVDs and games from his room I’d like to able to find them.”
It’s not the best. Leena waits again. This time, Claudia doesn’t deliver, instead saying, with a little mournful pout, “What’s the container aisle for, anyway? Boxes? Bottles? Tupperware?”
“Some of all of those. Generally, artifacts that hold. Catch and hold, or just accept to hold.”
“Hold. Hold... stuff?”
“Yes?” Leena isn’t sure what Claudia means by “stuff.” She’s often a little unsure about what Claudia intends words to mean, and she suspects she’s not the only one. Except for, perhaps, Myka? And possibly Steve? Still, Claudia does flummox Steve...
“But everything holds stuff,” Claudia says. “It’s what makes a thing a thing. A thing is just a stuff container.”
“Philosophy. Impressive.” Leena says it quietly, so as to keep Claudia’s ego in check, yet she’s delighted. However: “Things are stuff containers mostly by an accident of metaphysics. The aisle stores things designed for holding.”
“So this is the aisle we’d put the Warehouse itself in. If we could do that kind of freaky recursion function... or does that only work the other way, where it’d be recursion for the Warehouse to hold the containers?”
“The aisle’s already itself holding more than one Joseph Cornell box. That’s enough recursion for me.” Leena keeps her tone casual, but she’s further delighted that Claudia is so obviously thinking. Seeing connections and associations: it’s what she’ll need. For the future... Leena stops herself; she doesn’t want to be disturbed, today, by the future. There’s enough to puzzle out in the present, given her stumble, given what now seems to be an increasing disgruntlement in the artifacts’ hum.
And given the fact that the container aisle always gives her pause, for she does have particular friendships here. Certainly those Cornell boxes; artifacts that have true auras thrill her, especially when said auras have been so meticulously constructed. Leena wishes she could have met Cornell, could have sat him down so as to parse his ability to engineer these compact works of acquisition, accumulation: little Warehouses, all of them. Only a few are actual artifacts, but that’s more than most artists could dream of generating. If they ever did so dream... but it’s better that they don’t.
She also casts a regularly kind eye (and ear) on the Wurlitzer 1015 jukebox, because it’s a favorite of Mrs. Frederic from her past, and any window into Mrs. Frederic’s (relative) youth is inherently interesting; this jukebox likes to play the Marcels’ 1961 “Blue Moon” unprompted, and Leena has never gathered sufficient nerve to ask if it might have been a tendency of Mrs. Frederic herself to select the platter that catapulted the constellation of record and container-player to artifact status.
And then there’s the—
“Oh my god,” Claudia says, loudly but more deadpan than seems warranted, given the... unexpected situation? absurdist tableau? catastrophic scene? that now confronts them, and Leena blames her rumination on her aisle-friends for having distracted her from the sensory tsunami of auras that threatens, in this overpowering instant, to drown her.
****
“The artifact currently belongs to a... let’s call it a museum,” Artie is saying. “Well. ‘Belongs.’ I suppose we should say, ‘resides in.’ Hence the case. The argument.”
“Is this about repatriation?” Myka asks. It’s what she associates with museum objects and court fights—but in the next instant she sees she’s let slip from her grasp the idea that she’s supposed to be waiting, inferring. She seizes, freezes. Can everyone see the “oh no!” thought bubble above her head?
Luckily, no one seems to notice, so she forges on: “If so, I think I’d be more convincing making the case for it. Than Helena, I mean.”
“Why?” Helena asks.
“Because you’re British,” Myka says, but she can’t stop there; a babble is building, and with no dam in sight, she burbles on, “so no offense, but there was a lot of honestly indefensible taking and holding of other cultures’ stuff. And you’d be likely to bring that whole thing to mind... so, really, it’s because you sound British.”
“English,” Helena corrects.
“A distinction without a difference,” Myka says, and this time she achieves a levee; she congratulates herself on for once being succinct. Clichéd, but succinct.
“Now I’m offended.”
Oh god. “All I meant was—”
“I’m teasing.”
Her smile fills Myka’s vision. And the prickly pleasure Myka finds in being teased, in being the object of Helena’s smooth humor, fills her soul.
Artie’s voice breaks in, a buoyancy-deflating puncture: “It’s possible she’d be more effective. Implicitly acknowledging the error—no, the criminality—of colonial ways.” He gives Helena another pointed look.
This one’s nationalized, generalized, and Myka tries to dispute it that way: “Americans aren’t angels.” She realizes—too late?— that she’s undercutting her own initial reasoning. No saving that now. “But also, arguing that whatever museum I’m pretending to represent should keep it? I’m not comfortable with that.” As the words leave her, a that’s right shiver—unexpected, unusual—ripples her spine.
Artie says, “And the Warehouse cares intensely about your comfort level, so... oh wait. No. It doesn’t.”
Pete glances at Myka, then says, “Let her off the hook, man. I’ll do it.”
It’s sweet.
But she wants to strangle him for it—because adversaries. She should have kept her mouth shut. A good rule to live by, as she thinks about it. Wait, but is saying she should have done something actually a rule? She can’t live by something she should have done, can she?
“You’ll lose,” Artie says... answering her thought? No, reproving—informing—Pete.
“So what?” Pete says. “Then H.G. wins and we all come home.”
“Let me rephrase: you’ll look like you intended to lose. Judges get tetchy about tanking.”
Claudia mock-gasps. “Oooh, might get disbarred.”
“And then I’d be crying.” Pete says, brushing away imaginary tears. “If I was barred in the first place.”
Artie says, “Your tears won’t move a judge, who might throw the case out entirely, and then where would we be?” He doesn’t wait for an answer: “Without the artifact.”
“If nobody wins, everybody loses,” Claudia intones, sounding like the Delphic oracle. Or Socrates? Something classical, obfuscatory. Obstructionary?
“Not the Elgin Marbles,” Myka says next. “Please, no.” Other than their classicality, she isn’t sure why she’s brought the into the discussion... is it simply that it’s the biggest repatriation case she knows of—maybe even literally? Now as she thinks about it, though, surely it’s too big. Artie wouldn’t want to generate that kind of publicity, would he? She and Helena wouldn’t be able to fake their way into a case like that, would they? Then again, the two of them in the news... what news they would be...
“Agreed,” Helena says. “Please.”
Myka hadn’t expected the immediate backup—though she’s unsurprised to learn that Helena knows of those disputed rocks—but she’ll take it. She wishes she could reach out a hand and... what? Stroke Helena’s arm in thanks?
Well, why can’t she? Nothing classically obstructionary stands in her way.
So she does.
Helena slides a look her way, not with surprise (of course not); rather, with some cognate of the that’s right ripple.
Which in turn produces a recursive ripple, a catch-hold-echo of right... right... right...
“Artifactually inert,” Artie says as it fades. “As far as we know.”
“Better safe, though,” Claudia enthuses, “so let’s bring those babies in! Pete can carry ’em.”
Pete snorts. “Not even with these guns. Big rocks carved pretty are still big rocks.”
Since when does Pete know anything about the Elgin Marbles? But Myka is being uncharitable. Probably. And besides, she would rather let them have the dispute, for it lulls her back into her earlier reverie, that compelling scenario of she a judge and Helena an advocate... no: a supplicant.
Her reverie... but that not-really (if-only) supplicant interrupts it, saying, “So, not the marbles.” This makes it clear that Myka’s continued expressions of ignorance about “it” have not mattered in the slightest... apparently “it” was never identified? Neither Artie nor anyone else is holding a file, which Myka chooses to interpret as positive, for who could, in such absence, have read anything about whatever’s at stake?
Myka is safe.
And yet she’s not safe at all, for Helena chooses that moment to reach out a reciprocal hand toward Myka. It finds her right biceps, setting off electrical sparks and short-outs and terror—Artie will see! Pete will see! Claudia will see! and as the worst disaster: even Helena will see!—then trailing down to her elbow, fortunately a less sparkily reactive location.
Still. she is not safe at all. Because, among other potential catastrophes: what if Helena tries something like that in court?
****
Pete’s stalking the Warehouse aisles, looking for Myka; she’s been down lately, and he hates it when she takes off like this, like she needs to hide in a cave and lick some wounds she’s trying to pretend she doesn’t have.
But also: he has a vibe.
Sometimes, if a vibe isn’t too insistent, he can shove it onto the Vibe Bench. When he was a kid, he used to talk them away like that, saying it out loud: “Ride the pine, vibe!”
This one he can’t make sit down, and honestly? It comes down to how Myka-vibes sometimes remind him of Mom-vibes, the way they scream IMPORTANT!
Which is why he doesn’t really grok where he’s finding his way to, and that’s why he’s genuinely shocked, practically out of the vibe, by what he sees when he takes a hard turn into the aisle that’s clearly today’s Vibe Hub: it’s H.G., standing there like she belongs or something, like she’s never been gone, like she can just hang out and it’s no big deal.
But it’s definitely some kind of deal. “What are you doing here?” he demands.
She looks like she wants to bite him in half, but she wraps her arms around herself like she’s keeping that in check, like otherwise she’d actually do it. “Conducting a symphony,” she spits. “Weaving a tapestry. Piloting a dirigible. As if any answer could satisfy you.”
She’s totally not wrong. It’s almost funny how totally not wrong she is.
But then he notices that she’s unfolded her arms, that she’s gesturing at the floor. He looks down, down at that cold concrete Warehouse floor, and nothing nothing nothing is funny or even almost, because there, lying there out cold, is Myka. His vibe charges back into the game, and rage takes over: “What did you do?”
Happy @b-and-w-holiday-gift-exchange , @amtrak12 ! What I have for you is the start of a story—it would have been a more lengthy start, but work and other concerns perfect-stormed me into an unanticipated time crunch. Excuses, excuses... I know, and I regret it. However! What I don’t regret at all is how your many great ideas inspired me; you’ll see which of those I began with (tweaked a bit!), and as this gift keeps on giving, you’ll find I worked in several other possibilities as well. Here’s hoping they combine into a whole that—over time—brings you some moments of enjoyment. (Many thanks to @kla1991 , of course, for the continued heroic herding of the fandom cats.)
Court
Breakfast, Myka has lately decided, or determined, or realized, is her favorite meal of the day. The reason is not that there is lately a new person at the breakfast table, but rather...
Okay. Yes. That is the reason.
Every morning, she waits for the reason to appear, here at breakfast, to remind her: of importance, of why it (she) is her favorite. Today begins the second week of this lovely new ritual—an anniversary of sorts, one she would like to be cherishing (H.G. Wells, Agent Wells, Helena Wells, at the breakfast table every morning for two weeks!)—but instead, she is being assailed by Pete’s distracting habit of pawing through the box of Lucky Charms, extracting the marshmallows, tossing them into the air (up through which they ascend, and down through which they tumble, in seeming slow motion), and catching them on his tongue like purposeless candy snowflakes. Or not catching them, at which point he scrabbles for them on the floor.
It’s viscerally offensive. Why doesn’t Leena tell him to stop it?
Oh. Leena isn’t here. Why isn’t—
But then Myka is again distracted, and even more viscerally offended, when Artie huffs in and declares, “I need lawyers.”
“You’re being sued for excessive curmudgeonation,” Claudia says with a sigh. “Had to happen someday.”
“I’m surprised we don’t have any,” Myka says, pretending that she can ignore what she’s waiting for.
Pete misses another marshmallow. “We’ve got a doctor but no lawyers?” he asks from under the table.
Claudia raps on it, right above his head. “We’ve got no accountants either, big guy, but I never saw anybody get surprised about that.”
“A blue moon!” he exclaims as he emerges, popping it into his mouth. “Because Artie’s worse than any accountant. Plus everybody thinks we’re accountants on account of being IRS.”
“I heard what you did there,” Claudia says.
Artie snorts. “Everyone did, unfortunately. But you’ve managed to bring me to my point.”
“Score!” Pete enthuses. “Maybe.”
“Thinking,” Artie says.
Pete deflates. “Aaaand I’m out. I don’t really do that.”
“Noted,” Artie says, looking over his glasses. “And you are out. This assignment requires making people think you’re a lawyer.”
“Mykes, I bet you’re up,” Pete says.
“I was pre-law,” Myka says, but with an internal I say things like this too often twinge.
“Two lawyers,” Artie continues.
Pete deflates again. “Aaaand you’re down. Even you can’t be two lawyers.”
“Agent Wells,” Artie then says. Music, that title and name are, which is certainly more than Myka would normally think of any words Artie utters.
Pete, however, gapes: “She can?”
With exquisite, yet hardly surprising, timing, Helena sweeps in. “Of course I can.” To Claudia, she asides, “What am I claiming the ability to do?”
Myka wishes she were the one Helena would so casually tap on the shoulder for a sidebar. Speaking of lawyers.
“Be two lawyers at once,” Claudia says.
Helena shrugs. “Haven’t tried. Certainly willing to.”
“Maybe you can be yourself and your evil twin,” Claudia proposes, which wins her an interested blink, plus raise of chin, from Helena.
Artie harrumphs at Claudia. “Don’t give her ideas.” Then he makes the same noise in Helena’s direction. “Though I don’t see how we’d tell one from the other.”
Helena’s face takes on an aspect with which Myka is thrillingly familiar, a “try me” challenge; it is the expression she wore—the memory flashes to life in Myka’s head—as she stepped close, closer, closest to Myka in that office in Tamalpais, and for the briefest instant, re-breathing Helena’s breath as her own, Myka loses the present plot...
...which she knows because when her hearing retunes, Pete is saying, “Aha. How do you gay-run-tee a win?”
Helena says, “Play both sides.”
They nod knowingly at each other. Myka seethes with jealousy at their consonance.
“Nevertheless,” Helena says, “couldn’t we simply steal it?”
Myka doesn’t know what “it” is, but she’ll infer, she’ll get back on board; she just needs to make sure she doesn’t blink out into some Helena-inspired reverie again.
“That’s the evil twin talking,” Claudia says, “because you’d end up in court for a whole different reason than ‘I’ve got the legal right to this artifact!’ Myka versus ‘No, I do!’ H.G.”
“We do try to avoid running afoul of the law,” Artie mumbles.
“That’s new,” Helena says.
“To you,” Artie snarks.
Myka always wants to step in; never knows how. Everything with Artie and Helena, speaking of sides, is double-dutch... which, honestly, Myka knows nothing about except as metaphor. She tries, “But we aren’t actually lawyers. And I’m pretty sure that runs afoul of the law.”
“Save your objections for court,” Artie says, ignoring the contradiction.
It’s what Myka would have wished him to say, so she admonishes herself about gift horses, trying to push the concern from her mind.
And then she forgets to try, for Helena catches her gaze, assessing then smiling, sly, then saying a single, satiny word: “Adversaries...”
The syllables envelop Myka as if embroiling her, paradoxically, in a conspiracy.
She hadn’t thought of the situation that way, but suddenly she sees it sees it sees it—then she sees it further, sees herself and Helena free of the Warehouse, if only for the length of a trial, if only in the space of a court, existing as adversaries with stakes high but not mortal... it’s an arena in which she might fight Helena and win... or at least play to a draw, for Myka knows she is good with precedent, with bringing the previous to bear on the present... then again, applying the volumes of information always available to her can be laborious—and Helena is, among other things, quick. Objection! Myka can hear her saying, feel her leaping to say, in response to some carefully crafted question from Myka. And the judge, any judge, would be captivated, would ignore Myka’s ensuing sputter entirely, would sigh “sustained,” chin in hand, gazing.
Myka considers casting herself as the judge, rather than as the now-hapless adversary. “In my chambers, Miss Wells,” she could order. Order! (In the court!)
She clicks back in as Claudia looks from Helena to her, back to Helena, back to her, tennis match–style. “Sparks are gonna fly,” Claudia pronounces, like it’s Solomonic wisdom... and maybe it is.
This, Myka thinks—printed in words, a silent-film intertitle in her head, each word appearing as she ideates it—is going to be fantastic.
TBC
Preview of coming attractions:
Pete to Myka: Are you wearing makeup?
Myka, exasperated: I’m going to court.
Pete: Who? The judge?
Myka: What?
Pete: And you’re the word nerd... but seriously, do they judge on hotness now?
Helena, who walks in looking like a dream: I certainly hope so. [She looks Myka over.] At the very least, I relish the competition.
Hi! I'm your warehouse 13 gift exchange gifter! I mainly write fanfic, any ratings, I'd prefer writing shippy fluff or humor to angst but feel free to give me any prompts you're interested in and I can see whether I can do something with them :) if you have several ideas to pick from that would be great! I also make moodboards and edits if you'd prefer something like that, maybe headers to your own fics? Or I could make a podfic of your fic. Just let me know! :)
Greetings of the season to you, gift exchange gifter, as well as huge thanks to you for hanging in there with this small but mighty fandom! I’m delighted to hear that you prefer writing humor to angst, because I’m a huge fan of comedy; anything screwball and/or slapstick is likely to put a smile on my face. In that vein, here are a few B&W questions that might spark funny (or possibly tragicomic) answers: Would there ever be a situation in which one or both of them would be compelled to herd peacocks, or maybe to perform a stand-up routine? Does one or both have a fear of puppets? Might one or both feel supremely confident in having deduced the working of an artifact, yet have to face the consequences of having been completely wrong? Might they have to crash a wedding, or a funeral, or both in rapid succession? Could one or the other get trapped in a completely incongruous location... the overhead compartment of an airplane, say, or the case for an upright bass?
No pressure on you to respond to anything I’ve burbled out here. Whatever inspiration strikes you, I hope you’ll pursue it, because the creation of more Bering and Wells stuff to hang out there in the world is by definition an excellent gift.
