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.
One thing I've been thinking about while writing Daemon lately is that I don't actually think he's just falling in love with Alicent.
I think something much more dangerous is happening.
People often talk about Daemon's "mommy issues" as a joke, but I've always felt there's something deeper underneath them. I don't think what he's been craving his whole life is simply affection. He's been craving safety. Admiration without manipulation. Trust. A place that feels like home.
Everyone in his life has wanted something from him. But Alicent never tries to tame him.
She doesn't ask him to become a different man. She simply creates an environment where he wants to become one.
To me, that's a huge difference.
I also think that Daemon's love isn't only growing because of who Alicent is. It's growing because he likes the man he is when he's with her.
She makes him feel respected instead of merely tolerated. She trusts him with real decisions. she treats him like a partner. And because she is the reason he discovers that version of himself, he starts loving her even more.
That's why I don't think what he's feeling is just love anymore.
It's becoming adoration.
Not because he thinks Alicent is perfect, but because she's slowly becoming his emotional compass.
I think there's a subtle difference between "I love you" and "I love who I am when I'm with you."
The second one is far more powerful....and, if I'm being honest, far more terrifying.
Because if someone becomes the reason you like yourself... losing them doesn't just mean losing the person you love. It means risking losing the version of yourself that you finally learned to love, too.
