Chapter 3-Present day

A/N the passage Myka quotes is from The sleeper Awakes. I don't own that nor do I own the characters they are the priority of the H.G. Wells estate and Syfy respectably.

"Frightened of what? And how could you know that so young?" Myka scrunched up her nose and shook her head, confused. She shifted to lie next to her lover, lining up their bodies like cogs in a watch.

"Of me, I think" Helena shifted pulling her lover closer. She was monetarily distracted by her lovers eyes and the feeling of her sweater against her hands. Textures and sensations were still a bit much after so long in her blue prison.

Myka, sensing this, turned to her "You know I'd never have let you stay there. It was wrong. They were using you Helena. Even in the most horrible of prisons the inmates can choose their thoughts" She stroked the inventor's face gently.

Helena didn't respond. She was thinking of the images the Regents had conjured from her mind how she had closed her (eyes? mind? She was still unsure what to call her holographic self) trying to keep the images within. The sensation of those images being pulled from her had been somewhere between a violation and the feeling oddly of drowning. As though her thoughts were air. . That had almost broken her. Lying immobile in bronze she had at least controlled her thoughts, dark and repetitive though they had been.

"Helena?" Myka's voice brought her back to the present. "Don't do that, ok? Don't go were I can't follow you"

"I'm here, sweet" Helena smiled.

"Good" Myka turned away then back. "You didn't answer my question"

"I don't know how I knew. It was merely something I sensed"

"The shadow of his disapproval in the back of your mind" Myka was standing now and the words seemed to resonate from the ground rather then her mouth. Then she turned around and the illusion was broken

" I need a sparring match. If you don't want to I'll have to fight Pete."

"As much as I would enjoy seeing Agent Lattimer writhing in pain I shall gladly accept you."

"Helena. The two of you need to move past this."

"He was cruel. He walked through me!"

"You gave his girlfriend Lizze Borden's Compact"

"While under the influence of a artifact!"

"You will never convince him of that" They came down the B&B stairs and Leena, seeing the glow of mingled red and royal blue, smiled. "Hi Myka. Hi Helena"

"Hi Leena"

"Hello Leena"

"where are you two off to?"

"Sparring match" Myka gave her a quick smile.

As they got into the car to go to the gym, Helena turned to her lover. "You don't seem very distraught, my love if I may venture an opinion"

"Yeah well, it hasn't hit me yet"

"Ah. I see so you're plan is to 'hit' Helena raised her long fingers in air quotes, a gesture that felt utterly alien to her, "me before it hits you. Jolly good"

Myka snorted "We have got to update your slang, sweetie"

"All in good time, dear"

The patterned movements, the ritual, calmed the girl down all the fear could finally uncoil

In movement I found emotion's release

Each image flashed pat her and she dismissed it. Within the rhythm of this it didn't matter

Tracy looking over her shoulder at me as she walks out the door to be with some boy

Swish.

"your father has his own way of doing this please Myka just-" the pain in her mother's eyes

Swish.

If I turn my head will he be there watching? If he is will he be approving or closed down lips in a thin line-

"Myka"

Myka looked up as Helena's voice cut though her memory.

"Darling you've been staring at your shoes for twenty minutes. I am aware of great innovations in this century but I don't believe self-tying shoes is one of them"

"Sorry" Myka tied briskly and the two moved out into the room reserved for sparring.

"A penny for your thoughts. Or perhaps I should revise that vulgar cliché and say a shilling"

"You mean a pound. The money's changed." Myka emerged from the in suite bathroom wrapped in a green bathrobe. Helena had given up asking about Myka's aversion to nudity. Despite her attraction to her own gender she had never thought of nudity as sexual in and of itself.

"The sediment remains the same no matter the coinage."

"I don't know if I can articulate." Myka sat down wrapping her bathrobe tighter around her body. Helena moved away a little, answering Myka's unspoken request for space in which to expand her emotions. "Please attempt it?"

Myka answered instead with a question "Did you ever feel your father disliked you?"

Helena pondered. "Disliked? No. He had no idea what to do with me. As you might imagine I was not a typical Victorian young lady"

Myka was nodding her head. "My dad and I.. I had his love of books from the beginning. I wanted to know everything. he saw that hunger and it froze him. That hunger was.. unfeminine somehow. Tracy he could deal with her, her twittering laugh and her dresses, her boyfriends," Myka paused gulped "-girls were supposed to be like that. When I went into the Service he was proud. At least I think he was. Mom said he was. But I never heard it from him" she broke down fully, into the sort of sobs that come from deep within the gut. Helena moved closer, wrapping both her arms around Myka's shaking body. She did not speak. Then, as Myka's sobs slowed into ragged breathing:

"When I was twelve I found where my father had stored his cricket bat and ball. I was just messing about with it, I didn't recall expect to hit the ball with the bat I'd no experience after all. But by some lucky chance I did, a powerful swing and the ball sailed across the yard and over the railing into the street. I was horrified of course. Now I would have to race into the street and retrieve it. But before I could move my father was there and retrieved it."

Myka was sitting blot upright now, eyes fixed on Helena's face.

" The expression on his face was, to me at the time unreadable. It was only after I had a chi- her breath caught- "child of my own that I understood his look, that mingling of fear and pride. We stood in tableau for a minute and then he said-

"I wish you had been a boy" Myka's voice was clear and ringing as if reciting something from memory. Helena turned to her "How did you know that?"

Myka met her gaze. "my father used to say it."

The two women sat still for a moment then moved at the same instance as though choreographed, clinging to each other as if pulled together by a gravity only they could feel. Neither was certain who began the kiss only that it was deep and slow and when it broke, both women were smiling. "Baby" Myka whispered and stroked Helena's check.

" I love you so much my sweet. The moment I met you I knew we were bound"

Myka wiped her eyes then laughed. "The very moment? You mean when I was pointing a gun in your face?"

"Well perhaps a bit later. You understand the sentiment do you not?"

"Yes of course."

They shifted to lie down on the bed, twined around each other. Myka spoke softly:

"I am a lone wolf wandering though a world in which I have no part I am wifeless, childless.. Who is it that speaks of the childless as the dead twigs on the tree of Life? It is your world , you accept it you rejoice in it , it worms and supports and delights you. And for me? The whole world is the garment of my misery."

Helena smiled. " I wrote that, dear."

Myka grinned back. "I know." "Helena-"

"yes?"

"For all your- she paused-"strangeness I love you. So much. The pain you must have felt. I can't ease that and I'm sorry. All I can do is be there when the darkness comes to push it back."

"you would do that?" Helena's eyes were like bruises dark and acing.

"I promise. I'll help you find light, no matter what it takes"

-end-