Author's Note: Hey lovey people! A bit of a pick up after that kick-in-the-gut that was the finale. Not totally fluff, but we're getting better. At least a whole better than the past few...

Chapter Seven

Falling

Adapt or perish, now as ever, is nature's inexorable imperative

-H.G. Wells

Myka's return had been many things. It'd been an out of character hug from Claudia, who denied it later on. It'd been meaningful high-five and a, "glad you're back," from Pete. It'd been squeals, and handshakes, and a little bit of crying. It'd been an almost undetectable smile from Artie as he walked into the room with a file folder in his hand. For Myka it'd been putting her books back on their dusty shelves and re-hanging all her clothes in the small B&B closet. It'd been smelling Leena's homemade chicken tikka masala simmering the kitchen and listening to Pete's incessant joking once again. But above all the little things that she loved so much, it was feeling the smile return to her face, feeling that beautiful gesture be all her own again, that meant the most.

Myka felt the cold grip of stress melt from her shoulders as she sat at the table, glancing around at the faces that she'd come to realize were everything to her. The Warehouse is your home; Claudia, Pete, Artie, they're your family. Explaining her return had been…tricky for lack of better words. Trying to tell them that the very thing that'd driven her away had also brought her back would've seemed contradictory; let alone that that 'thing' happened to be the psychopath that had tried to kill them all. No, she reasoned, they could never understand. For a long while she'd wondered how Mrs. Fredrick could've ever known that Helena was the only one capable of persuading her to change her mind, but it gave her shivers every time so she eventually stopped thinking about it. Leena's easy, beautiful smile was warm and comforting as she passed the basket of bread to Claudia. Briefly she remembered the last big sit down meal they'd all had together. It'd been Helena's welcoming dinner. Somehow, though the thought wasn't as haunting as it would've been a week ago. She had quite literally made some form of peace with that past…for now.

"So Steve, " she said, extending a hand to him behind Claudia's chair, "I believe we got off on the wrong foot." He shook her hand firmly, "Welcome to the Warehouse."

"Thanks," Steve smiled.

"Ahh, to be the new guy," said Pete, leaning back, "I remember our first day on the job, eh Mykes?"

"Yeah, fun," groaned Myka.

"Whatever did happen to that ferret?"

"Ferret?" Claudia asked.

"Do we really have to talk about the ferret?"

"What ferret?"

"Enough with the ferret!" Myka asserted.

Pete laughed, "Myka was such a tight-ass she thought she was 'too valuable' for this job. She wished for a transfer on Beatrix Potter's teapot and…"

"Impossible wishes get granted with a ferret," Claudia finished, "Geez Myka, were you really that full of it?"

Myka's face flushed with embarrassment, "Excuse me, but in my defense I was in the middle South Dakota with an old guy who spoke in riddles about America's attic and Thomas Edison! Besides if you want to play this game Pete was the one who was confused by secret service protocol at that museum party."

"In my defense shouting, 'get back on magenta' is not the clearest order in the world!"

"It isn't supposed to be smarty pants. There's a secret in secret service for a reason."

"Okay, hush you two! God Myka take it easy, you've only been back a day," Claudia grinned. There was laughter and good food and late night conversations and childish games and for that one night everything seemed as perfect as it once had been.

x x x

The following weeks passed without much abnormality, well besides the usual ones. They had successfully snagged, bagged, and tagged Chester Greenwood's earmuffs from the thick of winter in Maine, Marilyn Monroe's hair brush from a bitter actress's trailer in Hollywood, and Jules Verne's original manuscript to 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea which had been drowning innocent readers in an antique shop in Florida. After all the travelling it was nice when Artie handed them a local mission, "Emile Kraepelin's ink blots."

"Emile Kraepelin, he was the guy who discovered Schitzophrenia," Myka said.

"Exactly, these cards," he handed them a picture, "cause a person's subconscious alter-ego to swap with their conscious selves. Basically you become your biggest kept secret or confusion or dark moment, or even fear."

"Geez, that sounds fun," Pete said.

Artie grunted, "But the only person who sees that version of themselves is them. Essentially you drive yourself mad from the inside out. There was ping at a local mental health center about 25 miles from here."

Myka took the address from Artie, "Let's go Pete!"

"Be careful!" Artie called after them.

"We will!" echoed their voices sloppily from the hallway.

x x x

"Pete, should we talk, you know, about my leaving."

"Oh," he shifted uncomfortably, "um, I mean we don't have to."

"It's just, I left you. I left you without saying goodbye, or even fully explaining myself, and then I just didn't call or ever come back or…"

"You did come back," he said, he hesitated looking slightly apprehensive.

"What?" she asked curiously.

"I mean, I know you helped with one mission, but that couldn't have been enough to make you change your mind." Myka was silent. "I mean, I know you Mykes, something else made you come back. What was it?"

She cleared her throat nervously, "I, um."

"We're partners Myka, you can tell me anything."

She sighed and nodded, beginning to speak quietly, but clearly, "When I got back to the Warehouse after that mission Mrs. Fredrick showed up to thank me. She said she wanted me to speak with someone, that she wanted to make sure I made the right decision," she froze a minute, "The next thing I knew she was standing there in front of me." Myka swallowed hard, growing a little bit sweaty.

"Who?" Pete asked, obviously confused.

"Helena," Myka breathed, letting the name flow into the open air of the car. Instantly she could feel Pete tense up. "Pete," she tried.

"No, don't even." He was abnormally quiet, like he was angry.

"Pete I,"

"Myka that woman ruins everything! Don't you remember what she did to us, to you?"

Myka's breath shuttered, and her eyes got slightly wet, "Of course of I do, Pete. I left."

"I know-"

"But I came back!"

"But Myka she-"

"No," Myka said. She grasped Pete's hand firmly, "I came back."

He nodded, "I know. It's just…" he swallowed whatever thought he'd had, "I know."

x x x

"Really?" Myka yelled, bolting down the hallway of St. Johnson's Mental Institution, ink blots in her bare hand. If she had the time or breath to turn and scream at her ignorant partner, she would have.

"The cookies were right there!" He hollered.

"I don't care Pete, I need a neutralizer bag right…" She stumbled into the women's room, avoiding the insane guy chasing her. "Damn it!" she swore, listening to the man's fists pound on the locked door. Pete had the gloves and bags, and he was out there.

"Sucks, doesn't it?" a voice asked behind her.

"Who?" she turned, gasping. Her image started back at her in the mirror, smirking at her. "You, you're…"

"Uh-huh," it grinned, teasing her.

"Wha, what sucks?" she asked, deciding that maybe if she played it's game she wouldn't fall into the insanity Artie had warned them of, at least until Pete found a way to get her a bag.

"You know," it said playfully.

"Yeah, getting stuck with a smart-assy artifact in a mental hospital bathroom, not the best day at work…"

"No," it giggled, "that's not what I meant," but suddenly its face swirled, becoming stunningly more Myka, but sad, and ghostly. It looked like it'd faded, like it was only half there.

"What are you trying to do?" Myka asked. "I'm not falling for it."

"You are a ghost, just like her."

"Huh?" Myka breathed, wishing she could touch it suddenly, wishing it was real…

"Your Helena, trapped in that hologram prison. You are fading without her. You are fading just like her."

Myka found it increasingly scary watching her own image waste away in the mirror, she wanted it to stop. "No I'm not," she asserted, "Helena's fine. I'm fine. Everything is fine now. You're wrong." She kept raising her voice, without really realizing it.

The image laughed, but its face didn't move, "You tell yourself that, but deep inside it's a lie. You love her. You always have."

"Well, sure. I mean we're friends…" she counted in her head slowly, 1..2..3..4..5..stay calm.

"No Myka, you love her. You are falling in love her, like you said you never would again."

"No!" she yelled, "I'm not! That doesn't even make any sense!" She placed her hands over her ears, deciding she could take no more of its taunting. She tried to remember what Artie had said about it. You become your biggest secret, or confusion, or fear… Her fear? Was it falling in love? Was it Helena? Why would that have to be such a secret? Why would she hide it from herself?

"You cannot escape yourself…you cannot avoid yourself…"

"Stop it!" she screamed, "make it stop!" she forced her eyes shut, willing the voice, the image to leave, but they were everywhere, surrounding her. Tears wet her hands. She grew dizzier and dizzier imaging sleep, imagining silence.

A sparking sound rang behind her, granting her wish for silence. "Myka, Myka are you alright?" Pete asked, lifting her limply from the floor. He noticed the tear streaks on her cheeks, she was trembling and whimpering, very uncharacteristic of Myka.

"Is it gone?" she whispered, not yet opening her eyes.

"Yeah," he said, pulling her into a hug, "it's gone."

x x x

Myka's eyes were tired from attempting to focus the blurry words on her page. The events of earlier had left her mind scarred, and her hands shaky. She slammed it shut in defeat, resting her back on the headboard of the bed. After her ordeal Pete had broken through a window, though she hadn't been able to hear it, and neutralized the ink blots. He'd found her a blubbering mess on the floor though. Carefully he'd been able to lug her back to the car, never once questioning what'd happened. Peculiar of Pete to not be insatiably curious, but Myka's learned enough times not to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Her head was fuzzy and her eyes were blurring everything in sight, so gently she closed them welcoming the darkness. Grayed words were swirling in her mind, trying to make sense of one another. Myka had to keep reminding herself that the thing in the mirror had been herself. All those thoughts, though twisted by an artifact, were her own. You cannot escape yourself…you cannot avoid yourself. They rang an eerily familiar tone. Don't walk away from your truth… The voice sent shivers instantly through her. The expressions were so ridiculously similar. We became friends because we are alike in many ways…

Love is like a friendship caught on fire - Bruce Lee. The book, the quotes, they all flooded back without warning, but there other voices and images too fading in and out behind the words.

"I think you're a remarkable woman Myka Bering. For the love of god, don't let me ruin that."

A true friend is someone who lets you have total freedom to be yourself - and especially to feel. Or, not feel. Whatever you happen to be feeling at the moment is fine with them – Jim Morrison

"What star is it anyways?"

He examined it for a minute, "Well that's Orion's belt, and it's the center star, so I think it's Venus."

"What's Venus represent."

"Well, uh, she was the goddess of love."

We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone - we find it with another -Thomas Merton

Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop - H.L. Mencken.

She saw now that what she'd wanted wasn't at all what she'd blindly believed. After all it had been a selfish assumption that H.G. Wells would ever find a friend in her.

Love is a better teacher than duty - Albert Einstein

"Don't be like me Myka," H.G. pleaded, "Don't walk away from your truth."

Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage - Lao Tzo

"Fine. You want to kill everyone. Fine! Here," she shoved the grip of her gun into H.G.'s free hand, and stuck her forehead to the cool barrel. "I guess I was wrong about you liking me, or anyone for that matter. I guess I was wrong about you caring for anything. So I'm wrong! Shoot me then, kill me. The opportunity's here. So just do it."

The scenes flashed away the moment they were finished, and all she saw was dark once more. Only a few words echoed through her mind still.

"What do want me to say that I'm in love with him or something?"

"Actually, that's better. Thanks for telling the truth."

Myka took a long drink of water from the glass on her nightstand, processing, or at least trying to. Her headache was back, but she didn't bother swallowing any pills. They wouldn't help anyway. She knew what she had to do, it was just scary, and stressful, and her legs felt like lead. There's stress in any job, I like this one.

"Fine!" she yelled to her own voice in her head, hoping no one else in the house though she was insane. All the voices and pictures were too much at once, and they meshed together obscenely. Just when she thought she'd gotten it together. Really Myka, do you ever 'have it together' in this job? She stood quickly, trying not to get too dizzy, threw on a pair of boots and jacket and ran down the stairs of the B&B. "I'm going out," she yelled quickly, and left before she could hear any objections.

The Warehouse was unusually and chillingly still. There was no racket or panic or misbehaving artifacts. She crept up to Artie's thankfully vacant office, double checking to be sure no one was there and that there was no possibility of a Mrs. Fredrick moment (not that that was ever possible to guarantee.) She glanced at it, perched so ordinarily on the edge of the cluttered desk you'd never know there was a person in it. Myka took a slow, deep breath questioning everything she was about to do, everything she was about to say. She snatched it, running her hand around the even surface of the orb. She was still unsure of exactly what it was or how it was projecting H.G., but she knew H.G. was in it somehow, that was enough.

She gave the sphere a sharp twist, glimmering blue light flooded from it, forming the slightly startled and ever-beautiful form of H.G. Wells.

"Myka," she said softly.

"Hi," Myka responded, her voice sounding a little unsure of itself, "How, um, how are you."

"Well I've been better," laughed H.G. sardonically, "bit boring stuck in limbo prison."

Myka smiled sympathetically.

"So," Helena coughed, "to what do I owe this pleasure? Case you can't crack or…"

"No, um," Myka stuttered, "I actually just came to talk to you."

"Oh," Helena raised her eyebrows, clearly caught off guard, "sure then. I believe the right question to begin with then is how are you?" She asked this not like the typical greeting, she asked like she knew there was something disturbing Myka.

"Well you know how a few months ago when we were talking I said, well I mean I was talking about who you were and…" she fumbled, suddenly feeling stupid and childish for coming at all.

H.G. only smiled, "Who I was to you."

Myka cleared her throat, "Yeah."

"Myka, you can talk to me. Clearly you want to or you wouldn't have come here." Myka stayed silent. "I promise you can tell me," she said soundly.

"It was an artifact, or I guess it's been a few artifacts," she started, "They kept telling me that I, that I felt something for you, but not what I thought."

"And what did you think?" she asked calmly.

"I don't know. I really…admired you. I mean, you were my hero since grade school," she crumpled the paper in her pocket, contemplating pulling it out.

"Thank you," she nodded, "that's very flattering."

Myka pulled the page out of her pocket, handing it to Helena but it sliced through her not-really-there hands. "Right," she said, and laid the paper on the table in front of her. "I wrote this in fourth grade

. I was going to show it to you after Warehouse 2 but…"

Helena nodded glumly, but smiled as she read.

Who I look up to

By Myka Bering

I look up to H.G. Wells. I find him inspiring to have written and imagined in the way that he did. His stories melded the fantasy of dreams with the possibilities of the future. Even in a time of great oppression in his day and age in London he still found enough fascination to write about these fantastical possibilities. It was like he lived in world filled with endless wonder. Someday when I'm old I hope to be somewhere where I can see as much magic as he seemed to.

"Sorry to have misgendered you," she said. Helena laughed.

Myka sighed, the contented and friendly glint on Helena's eyes giving her comfort, "There was a time in my life when I was afraid of you. Okay, actually there were lots of times in my life I was afraid of you. There were times when I thought you were a psychopath. There were times I questioned who you were and who you wanted to be. And there were times I thought I was afraid of you, but really I was only afraid of myself."

"And there was a time when I thought this world had only anger and grief and hatred,
Helena said, "But you, you told me that people fought it, that it also had laughter and joy and love."

Myka shuddered.

"It's that word isn't it?" H.G. asked, "Love? Something about it."

"I just, it's scary," she admitted.

"What is?"

"Falling. The falling, it's scary. I've done it before, and I don't want to do it again."

"And you're afraid that you are falling for me?"

"No!" Myka said quickly, "No, no! I'm just confused, that's all."

"I see. You're confused, because I'm a woman."

"No! I just," damn it, she had no idea what to say. Everything she was saying was honest, but somehow the words just weren't coming to explain.

"Oh come now Myka, tell me that your 'confusion' surrounding me has nothing to do my being female?"

"Well…" she was silenced. Did it?

"Uh huh," she said, "Listen to me. I understand being afraid of love. On a good day I can find a thousand meanings to the word love. On a bad day I can usually find even more. There are so many ways to feel it. You can love someone by caring for them deeply and enjoying their company, in that respect I gather you love Pete and Claudia and Leena a great deal. You can love someone because you genuinely admire them or their work, like an author or actor. Loving someone doesn't always have to mean you want to sleep with them and things like that."

Myka's eyes widened at the end.

Helena chuckled, "You have to stop fearing it."

"I fell in love once," she said, "with my partner."

"Pete?" Helena gasped.

"No, no! My old partner, in the secret service," her eyes glistened, "his name was Sam. We'd been dating for a few years. We were outside after a reception, everything was fine and then…" he throat closed. "They found a ring in his pocket after he was brought to the funeral home. He didn't deserve to die that night. That man was after me, not him."

H.G.'d gone speechless. She reached for Myka's hand, but of course hers breezed straight through. She looked Myka in her tear-stained eyes. "That's love," was all she could say.

Myka nodded, "I promised myself I'd never fall again."

"But you have," H.G. grinned, "in whatever way you have. We love and we fall every day. You love your family, you love your team. I tried to tell myself I would never love again after Christina died, but I lied to myself too."

Myka looked at her.

"I fell in love with you Myka Bering. I what way I'll let you decide."