Bering & Wells Secret Santa For Mykabering
Merry Christmas, @mykabering! You wanted a sf/fantasy AU without an overt holiday theme - I don’t know Korra well enough to do the specific AU you mentioned, but I think you’ll like this fusion with Penny Dreadful. :)
Title: Demimonde
Summary: A chance, but memorable, introduction at a party piques Myka Bering’s interest.
Notes: Penny Dreadful is a horror series set in 1890s London. It’s a bit hard to explain briefly, but, in essence, Vanessa Ives, a woman haunted by the supernatural for her gifts, attempts to hunt monsters with help from the likes of Mina Murray-Harker’s father, and such notables as Victor Frankenstein and Dorian Gray.
The scenes I adapted (somewhat loosely) are from 1x02 ‘Seance’ and 1x04 ‘Demimonde’.
Myka Bering steeled herself as she stepped from the carriage - she didn't deny that their attendance at the fete was necessary, but she'd rarely found such social engagements to be anything other than tedious or even downright unpleasant.
Jane Lattimer, knowing Myka well enough to very nearly read her thoughts, watched Myka for a moment with an air of patient amusement. The moment was broken when Jane reached out to adjust a stray curl of Myka's hair - it was Myka's turn to smile, then, as Jane had been doing that exact same thing since Myka was just a small child.
Myka's family - the Berings - and the Lattimer family had been neighbors for as long as Myka could remember. Their children - Myka Bering, Jeanie Lattimer, and Peter Lattimer - had all grown up together, hardly making any distinction between one household and another. It had been a glorious way to grow up - unfortunately, it had all suddenly come crashing down on them a few short years ago.
And that, Myka reminded herself, was why she was going to endure this tedious party with no complaint. Jeanie Lattimer was out there God only knew where, lost in the labyrinth of the supernatural demimonde, and Pete may as well have been equally lost as he traveled the globe searching for his sister.
The party being held tonight was being hosted in part by one Arthur Weisfelt, one of London's foremost experts on Ancient Egypt. Myka and Jane's most recent foray into monster-hunting - tracking a precious, rare lead on Jeanie's whereabouts - had led them to a nest of vampires, and they'd been stunned to find in the aftermath of the hunt that the vampires had had some sort of bony plating under their skin that was entirely covered in Egyptian hieroglyphs.
They'd met with Professor Weisfelt once already in hopes of translating the hieroglyphs. He'd done his best to oblige them, examining the photographs they'd brought him, but had found himself needing certain resources from his own office at home. Conflicting schedules had finally made it necessary to confer with him tonight, during a winter holiday fete he and his wife were holding - Jane had decided that it was also an excellent occasion for some much-needed distraction, and so here they were.
As was to be expected, Weisfelt was at the front door, greeting his guests as they arrived. His daughter Claudia was there beside him - given Vanessa Calder Weisfelt's impeccable reputation as a sublime hostess, Claudia was most likely filling in momentarily while her mother tended to some detail or other of the party. Myka had never met any of the Weisfelts before - with the exception of the Professor during the brief consultation at his office - but Claudia seemed quite bright and lively, and Vanessa Calder Weisfelt's reputation as a doctor preceded her.
Jane had timed their arrival so that they were the last to arrive to party - no point in being rude, or in causing their host to be so - and she and Professor Weisfelt excused themselves to the large nearby study almost immediately. When Myka had tried to follow, Jane had insisted that she allow Claudia to introduce her to Vanessa - part of that was a ploy to force Myka into socializing a little, but Myka also knew Jane well enough to understand that she was meant to use the introduction to feel out Vanessa Calder Weisfelt as a potential resource.
Claudia dutifully made the requested introduction, which Myka was pleased to discover was not boring or onerous at all. Vanessa was witty and charming and frighteningly smart, and Myka found herself unexpectedly engaged in the conversation as they discussed some of the newest scientific and medical theories. Claudia, it seemed, had intelligence and wit to match her parents, expressed as a deep and abiding love of technology, and had some fascinating ideas on how to improve and add to many current medical tools.
Unfortunately, the party moved on around them, intruding on their quiet corner of the parlor far sooner than Myka would have liked. Vanessa and Claudia had been forced to excuse themselves to go mingle with the other guests - though not without extracting a promise that Myka would join them for tea or luncheon as soon as it was convenient for her - and Myka found herself standing alone in a quiet corner observing the other party-goers.
A few minutes later, the back of Myka's neck began to prickle as she got the sense that someone was watching her. To say that Myka had always had certain… sensitivities to the supernatural was putting it mildly, and she'd long ago learned to trust her instincts - even so, it took her a moment to track down her watcher, and a moment longer to confirm that it wasn't some cleverly concealed creature looking to attack her.
That wasn't to say that Myka's watcher was harmless. The person watching Myka so intently was a woman, slightly taller than average with dark hair, and dressed in a man's suit that had to have been specifically tailored to enhance her figure. She had striking features that spoke of good breeding, and might have passed for merely eccentric if it hadn't been for her eyes - she had eyes so dark as to be almost black, and something in them struck Myka straight through to the soul when their gazes met.
There was something deep and restless and dark behind those eyes, something that spoke to the exact same things in Myka, things that were kept very carefully buried. The woman, knowing now that Myka had spotted her, just smiled - a smile that said she felt the same connection that Myka did, and liked it - and started walking over.
There was something almost predatory in the way the woman moved, and Myka found herself unable to do anything but stand there and watch as the woman approached her. It was almost as if she were hypnotized or something, and she couldn't manage to break free until the woman finally spoke. "Hello. I'm Helena Wells."
Myka stared at the hand being extended to her and finally threw off her paralysis enough to reach out and shake it. She somehow also managed to recover her voice. "Myka Bering."
"A pleasure, Miss Bering," Helena Wells replied. "And, please, call me Helena."
Myka nodded her acknowledgment, but couldn't quite think of anything to say in return. This didn't seem to bother Helena, however, who just continued to study Myka with the same strangely unnerving intensity as before. "I couldn't help but notice your skepticism, even from across the room."
Myka just blinked in confusion. "My skepticism?"
"About the room," Helena clarified. Her accompanying grin did nothing to set Myka at ease. "The chinoiserie is rather bizarrely mixed, though it's not entirely unpleasant - I see Japanese, Siamese, Egyptian, Balinese…"
Helena arched an eyebrow as she nodded to one rather unfortunate piece. "That, I believe, is just last year's Panto of Aladdin."
Myka couldn't help it - she actually giggled at that. Helena joined her almost immediately, and it seemed to break some of the strange tension running between them. It didn't remove all of it, though, and Myka tried to hide her unease with small talk. "Are you a friend of the Weisfelts, Helena?"
"More of a passing acquaintance," Helena clarified. "Vanessa and I have a few mutual friends, and I've met young Claudia a time or two. Mine was more of a last-minute invitation on my brother Charles' account."
"Of course," Helena continued with a dramatic sigh, "he then decided he wasn't attending after all, leaving me to attend on his behalf with no escort."
Myka smiled a little at that - it seemed like something Pete would do. "You could have just said no."
"Oh, darling, I never say no." Helena smiled again, and something in that smile - and those words - made Myka blush even as her pulse crept up a notch.
Helena studied her for a moment. "I was wrong. It wasn't the room you were skeptical about."
Myka, despite the unease that wouldn't quite fade completely, found that she was actually enjoying Helena Wells' banter. "Please, enlighten me."
"You don't belong here," Helena said after a moment. "You watch everything, appraising it very carefully. But this is not a careful room, though there is much to appraise, and it can only divert you for so long - you don't like this room and are closed to what it represents. "
"And yet," Helena continued, lowering her voice and moving closer to Myka, "you are one of the few women in this house not wearing gloves. Your hands want to touch - but your head wants to catalog and categorize, and your heart is caught somewhere between the two."
Myka's breath hitched as Helena took one of her hands, unexpectedly strong and agile fingers stroking Myka's palm. "You were skeptical because you thought this was going to be a wasted evening, and uneasy because now you aren't so sure…"
They were so close now that their foreheads were almost touching. Stealing a kiss would require only the tiniest tilt of the head - and Myka, heart pounding, held her breath as she waited for Helena to make that move, somehow absolutely certain that she would.
The moment was shattered almost immediately, however, as the announcement went out that dinner was ready. Myka was frozen with awkwardness and embarrassment, but Helena just smiled that unsettling smile of hers. "Come along, darling. I'm ravenous…"
Unfortunately, Myka and Jane weren't seated anywhere near Helena at the dinner table - or perhaps fortunately, at least for Myka's nerves. The rest of the evening was lost in an odd sort of haze broken only by random momentary encounters with Helena in the course of the obligatory dancing and party games - still, Myka must have acquitted herself well enough, as Jane made no complaints afterward.
It was some time before Myka encountered Helena Wells again, by which point Myka had honestly almost forgotten about their strange first meeting - Jane had recruited a few new faces to their hunt, and they'd even been able to capture a young vampire with possible ties back to Jeanie Lattimer.
Myka had also been rapidly approaching the conclusion that she herself was being specifically targeted somehow. She'd been a target (or just an attractant) for supernatural forces since childhood, but never on the scale that she'd been subjected to lately - it got worse and worse the closer they got to Jeanie Lattimer, and there was something in Jane Lattimer's eyes that said she knew something about that that she wasn't sharing.
Exhausted, anxious, and feeling very frayed around the edges, Myka had gone out to get some air, ultimately finding herself sitting on a bench outside the gates of a nearby Catholic church. Her family was Catholic - so was she, if you asked her - and the church bells and the hustle and bustle summoned up childhood memories of ritual and predictability and safety.
Unfortunately, given her gifts and experiences and intellectual bent, she'd wandered off onto her own path, blending her Catholicism with other influences that were often not even Christian, and she frequently felt ill at ease on church ground these days.
The weather had actually quite nice thus far, insomuch as it could be for winter in London, and Myka had managed to find at least some measure of peace and quiet. There had been one terrifying moment when a random child had struck up an exceedingly odd conversation with Myka about having recently lost her mother, during the course of which Myka began to fear the child was not even human, but the little girl had simply been lonely and grieving, and possessed of a vocabulary beyond her years.
It was as Myka was laughing at her own paranoia that she spotted Helena Wells, still dressed in men's clothing in defiance of all convention, leaving the same church that she'd been sitting there watching. Her curiosity unusually piqued, Myka was on her feet and following Helena before she even realized it. Helena was on foot, which made it easy enough, and didn't go very far - like many others that day, Helena availed herself of the warmth and beauty of a nearby greenhouse that was open to the public.
Myka trailed quietly behind Helena for several minutes, watching as Helena stopped to examine various plants and flowers. When Helena stopped to smell a particularly colorful and heady batch of orchids, Myka decided that it wouldn't be long before her presence was noticed, and that she might as well announce herself.
Even so, she did it quietly and hesitantly, not wanting to disrupt Helena's peaceful stroll. "Miss Wells?"
"Miss Bering!" Helena didn't turn away from the orchids she was examining, but she sounded quite pleased at Myka's presence - something in her tone called forth the unsettling smile she'd favored Myka with at the Weisfelts' party.
"What an unexpected pleasure, darling," Helena continued as she turned to face Myka. As expected, she was wearing the exact same smile that Myka had predicted. "Do you have an interest in botany?"
That smile didn't exactly make Myka feel safe, but she knew that Helena had no intent to harm or threaten her, so she tried to make herself relax. "A little. I've read a lot of books about it, but I'm terrible at actually keeping plants alive."
Helena's smile finally shifted to something a little less unnerving. "Oh, then let me show you something extraordinary, darling!"
Helena's enthusiasm as she took Myka's arm and began to lead her through the greenhouse was very nearly that of a scientist discussing their favored field, and Myka suddenly recalled Helena's reputation as a woman enamored of science and engineering - and very little concern about being labeled eccentric for it. It was charming, really, and Myka was rather impressed by Helena's knowledge and eloquence as she held forth on the subject at hand.
Helena picked up speed as she spotted a rather pretty display of purple flowers a few meters away. "You see, darling, what I truly love about flowers is their duplicity."
Myka blinked at that, not quite following her meaning. "Their duplicity?"
"Well, their hidden depths, at any rate," Helena amended as they reached their destination. "Here, look at these."
The star-shaped flowers were a rich vibrant purple with equally vibrant yellow centers, and the large tapered leaves were a deep green. Myka didn't yet see whatever it was Helena was seeing, though, and her uncertainty was reflected in her voice. "They're beautiful."
Helena smiled at her. "Oh, you can do better than that, darling. What do your senses tell you?"
Opting to start with smell, Myka closed her eyes and leaned forward to inhale the cloud of scent coming off the flowers. "The scent is delicate, but subtle, with a hint of berry. It… smells like a jungle, though, not a forest…"
Myka inhaled again. "I could imagine it as a perfume on some woman's neck, or maybe as part of some decadent dessert… It would taste as sweet as it smells..."
When Myka opened her eyes, Helena was staring at her with an expression somewhere between pleased and surprised. That spark between them flared back to life as she smiled at Myka. "Atropa Belladonna, darling. Better known as deadly nightshade."
"No!" Myka couldn't help smiling back - she'd never have guessed that nightshade looked so lovely in its natural state.
"I'm afraid so," Helena confirmed with mock sagacity. "The black berries are highly poisonous, as is the rest of the plant."
Myka's smile widened just a touch. "You're a veritable font of useful information, Miss Wells."
Helena laughed outright at that, as Myka had intended. "I daresay I've never been accused of being useful before."
"But do you see what I mean, darling?" Helena asked as they started walking again. "It's the adder beneath the rose - the danger beneath the beauty."
Helena paused to smell another batch of beautiful flowers that Myka also recognized as poisonous. "Flowers can seem so lovely, so enticing - and yet, there's this dark thing just beneath the surface waiting to entrap the unwary. Like so many things, they are rarely what they appear to be."
Helena grinned at Myka then, adopting a lighter, teasing tone. "After all, darling, which of us doesn't have our secrets?"
They found themselves approaching a small group of fellow wanderers, and Helena almost bounced a little in her excitement. "Here's what I wanted to show you!"
The throng shifted, and they were able to get closer. Unlike the other plants and flowers, this one was roped off and had an attendant standing guard, eyeing everyone rather nervously. It seemed rather excessive for a single orchid bloom, even such an unusual one.
"Rothschild's Slipper," Helena explained. "You can tell by the pinstriped petals surrounding the solitary plain petal. It's the rarest orchid on earth, and therefore the most expensive. We were quite lucky to get an exhibit."
Myka had to admit that that certainly explained the extra precautions. She recalled having read something about the species somewhere. "It only grows on one mountain in Borneo, and can take fifteen years to bloom."
"Imagine, darling," Helena said, "all that time perfecting itself - a lifetime for six perfect flowers…"
Myka peered at the flower again. Its petals still seemed fresh and healthy. "How long do you think it will bloom?"
"Not long enough," Helena replied, allowing herself to wax a little further philosophical.
"Is it poisonous?" Myka couldn't resist teasing a little.
"Unfortunately not, darling," Helena teased back.
The Rothschild's Slipper was the final exhibit in the greenhouse, and the path from there led them back to the greenhouse entrance. Myka wasn't quite sure what to do at that point - as much as Helena Wells unsettled her, she truly enjoyed Helena's company and didn't want the excursion to end.
Helena apparently had other obligations, however. "This has been an unexpected pleasure, Miss Bering, but I'm afraid I have another engagement. I do hope you'll excuse my rudeness in leaving you here."
There was a teasing note behind Helena's sudden formality, and Myka couldn't help teasing a little in return. "There's something more interesting than botany?"
"I'm off to the theater tonight," Helena explained with a grin. "More beautiful illusion…"
Myka just grinned back, feeling happier and lighter than she had in a long time. As she stood watching Helena turn and walk away, Myka was already half-wondering if another stroll through the greenhouse - even without Helena - would help maintain and enlarge on that feeling.
Almost as if reading her mind, Helena turned back around to face her, walking backward with her hands clasped behind her back. "Do enjoy the flowers, darling."
Myka, smiling and shaking her head in bemusement, could have sworn she heard Helena's laughter over the crowd as she went to get back in line.