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Chapter Text

Everything was dark, and everything hurt.

And someone was speaking.

“-delusional, megalomaniac, criminal; I knew all of this from the start, of course, but now people have seen the true you. You’ll rot in here for a long time, Wells.”

Helena knew that voice. And she would be damned if she gave James MacPherson the satisfaction of an answer. From the heaviness and immobility of her limbs, she knew two things: she was still in the suit, and the suit was fully and utterly inactive. She also knew that he had no way of telling whether she was awake or unconscious – much less than moving a muscle, moving several stone of inert gold-titanium alloy was completely out of the question. Weak as a kitten she was, but luckily, he was not to know.

Gloating regardless, though, that was James MacPherson.

It also meant that they were either alone in ‘here’ – wherever ‘here’ was – or he deemed anyone present to be utterly unimportant and/or easily disposable. James MacPherson did not show this side of him where it could hurt him.

Truly, the man was despicable.

Then he mentioned a name that made her listen, instantly.

“-Bering. Such a shame.” He clicked his tongue sanctimoniously.

Helena froze. Myka? What did he know about Myka?

Myka was dead. Died in a car crash, after she left Helena’s home in anger, because they had had a fight. If only-

“I suppose you wouldn’t know,” MacPherson went on, lowering his voice to a stage whisper, “but she did not actually die in that car crash.”

Helena’s heart lurched. What-

The next words were spoken right up close to her. “Oh, no. She died trying to stop you, you know.”

What?!

“Who would’ve thought you built two of those silly suits? Blue and green, how adorable. The military had their fighter planes waiting to deploy, but apparently she suggested talking you out of your omnicidal tendencies when she saw what you were doing.” He laughed. “And then you blew her out of the sky! Tell me, did you even see her? Did you know it was her?” His voice came closer. “Are you aware that you killed your darling protégé yourself? Turns out I didn’t have to do anything after all.”

Helena’s heart stuttered to a halt. She did not remember too well what happened after she had seen the news of Myka’s death. She had shut down in some way; she knew that much. Had decided to put an end to all of this.

All of this.

‘Omnicidal’, MacPherson had said.

There had been an empty meadow, and then a crater of molten rock, and she had-

She had tried to ignite the Yellowstone super caldera.

Helena felt sick to her stomach as, bit by bit, she began to remember.

There had been a perimeter warning on her display at some point. Her sensors had been suffering from the heat she was generating, but they had shown her that something was approaching at speed. She had dealt with it and gone on with her task.

Had that… had that been Myka?

Had the sensors been too damaged to show her that the approaching object was another time suit?

Helena’s first impulse was to call the notion impossible, to deny it utterly on the basis that nothing that unacceptable would ever be allowed to happen, but that was not the proper approach. Nothing was impossible, she remembered Caturanga’s admonition. Only temporarily inexplicable or unachievable; and the important word was ‘temporarily’.

And heat damage to her suit’s sensors was eminently explicable.

And helicopter footage of a car crashed into a canyon was no proof of death. Neither was an item on the news, no matter how reputable the station – all kinds of sources could be deceived, manipulated, falsified.

For what purpose, though? Think about that, she told herself; do not think about what it might mean for you personally that Myka is… gone.

“Which leaves me free, of course,” MacPherson continued, “to present myself to the board as interim replacement. Take over the rudderless ship, do my bit, old times’ sake, you know how it goes. Obviously you, once you’re exposed to the world as ‘Iron Woman’, the woman who almost ended civilization as we know it, will be in no position to resume your old post.”

Ah.

“Such a silly moniker, don’t you agree?” MacPherson went on. “People used to like the Vigilante in the Iron Suit, but no longer, after what you did. Screaming for your head, they are – you’ll be lucky to be put away for the rest of your life. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.”

Helena resolved to hold her silence, come what may. Replying to MacPherson would not change a single thing, would serve no purpose at all. If he received no response, he might continue to gloat – although it took a special kind of stupidity to gloat to an opponent you deemed unconscious – thus revealing more details that she could use, and eventually he would become bored and leave. Helena knew his kind.

And she would use everything she was learning to destroy him utterly.

The thought of him back in the CEO’s chair disgusted her beyond belief; the thought of him undoing what she had wrought – because assuredly he would not keep Wells Industries on its pacifist course – enraged her to the point of incandescence. And the thought that he was behind faking Myka’s death made her want to strangle him with her bare hands, inert suit or not.

“The company’s been through so much,” he continued, confirming her first hypothesis, “such confusing changes.” He tutted. “Women at the helm; two in a row. Small wonder, right? They will be glad, and so will be our friends here, to see me return, to see the company return to what we do best: weapon’s manufacture. Up to and including armored jet suits – such a marvelous idea. They are practically salivating upstairs, ready to give Wells Industries – well, when I say that, I mean myself, of course – the go-ahead to analyze every single component of this fascinating piece of technology in our endeavor to replicate it. And if that means we’ll have to cut it in strips off your body, then so be it.”

His voice changed angle once more – Helena assumed he had been crouching next to her and now he was standing up again.

“It’s not like your former friends in the military are particularly fond of you right now,” he said dismissively. “They might be ‘confident’ that you’re alive in there, but frankly, I don’t care and many, many others don’t, either.” He clicked his tongue again. “Tends to happen when one tries to destroy civilization as we know it, you know. Puts a damper on your approval ratings.”

There was a hollow boom and, a few moments later, a wail of unoiled hinges. So, he had probably knocked on a door – steel, by the sound of it – and was now being let out.

“See you soon, old friend.”

The door slammed shut.

Chapter Text

Everything was dark, and everything hurt. Myka groaned as she opened her eyes. She’d never felt so wretched before. The room was mostly dark – drawn-curtains dark, though, not night-dark. There was daylight behind the curtains, and in the far corner, a lamp cast a soft yellow glow onto a girl in a chintzy chair, reading a book. She looked up as Myka stirred, placed a bookmark between the pages, closed the book and came over. Myka blinked as she took the girl in, from her dark curly hair to her frilly white dress to her many-buttoned boots. She seemed at the cusp of puberty – almost old enough to be a teenager rather than a child. And she looked like a Victorian impersonator, completely in keeping with the room’s décor.

What had Myka gotten herself into now?

“Are you feeling at all better, Miss Myka?” the girl asked. “Uncle Bahadur said I wasn’t to bother you while you were recuperating, but I have so many questions.”

Myka tried to lift herself to a sitting position, or at the very least her elbows, and the girl jumped to her side to help. “Thanks,” Myka said finally, leaning back against the pillows that the kid had stuffed behind her back. “I have a question first, though – how do you know my name?”

The girl blinked. “But you told it to me,” she said. “Did you lose your memory? Did you hit your head that badly? How many fingers am I holding up?” Her questions came eager, as though Myka’s medical state was of utmost fascination.

Myka’s head did hurt, and there did seem to be a gap – she’d had a car accident, she remembered that. And Agent Napier with a sling for her arm? Everything was a bit blurry after that, and to Myka, who had perfect recall, that was profoundly unsettling. “Three,” she said at last, in answer to the girl’s last question. “And your name is…?”

“I’m Christina Wells,” the girl said.

Myka felt her stomach drop. She… she did remember that, didn’t she. Christina Wells, standing over her and extending her hand, and she, Myka, in- “The suit.” Her thoughts ran cold. Wherever she was, whenever she was, the suit was her only chance to get back home. And she was obviously no longer in it; she was still wearing the SHIELD fatigues, thankfully, but the suit was gone. “The suit I was in,” she repeated. “Where is it, do you know?”

“The metal armor?” Christina asked back. There was, indeed, a marked resemblance to her mother in the way she held her head. “Uncle Nikola took it to his laboratory. Don’t worry, it is safe there. He said it was a curiosity, and he always keeps those safe.”

Uncle Nikola’s laboratory? Myka hazarded a guess. “Nikola… Tesla?”

Christina’s face lit up. “You do know him! I thought that with that kind of contraption, surely you must know Uncle Nikola, but he acted as though he’d never seen such a thing before.”

Myka’s thoughts raced. Christina Wells, Nikola Tesla – she had gone back in time, that seemed certain, but then Helena had said that Christina had died when she’d been nine years old, and this Christina was obviously older than that. What was going on?

“You do look awfully pale,” Christina said, looking at Myka critically. “Shall I fetch you some tea? Uncle Bahadur says tea heals most things.” Again, her face brightened. “You know him, too, don’t you? You said his name. His family name, I mean,” she corrected herself.

Myka stared at her for a moment, then the penny dropped. “Caturanga?”

Christina nodded. “I shall go and fetch him,” she said. “And tea. He did say to call him when you woke.”

Myka nodded mutely, and stared after the girl as she left. Okay, so. Time travel. But not to the past that she’d been told about. A different timeline? Parallel universe? One where Christina Wells hadn’t been murdered?

And then another thought came to Myka, and settled in the center of her mind, shining brightly.

If this was a parallel universe, there would be a Helena in it.

A Helena unencumbered by the death of her daughter, a Helena free to express and follow her genius, or as free as any woman would be at this time.

A Helena who could help repair and repower the suit, so that Myka could go back to where she’d come from, to where her own Helena-

Myka’s thoughts ran cold again.

What had happened to that other Helena, her Helena? Had Myka succeeded in stopping her? What had happened to… Yellowstone, and the crater, and the… well, the world?

And had Helena survi-

Myka stopped that thought and buried it deep. She had to; there was no chance she’d be able to function here, wherever ‘here’ was, if that worry was anywhere near the surface.

No, best think about how to encounter this world’s, or time’s, Helena without giving too much away. Would this Helena recognize Wells handiwork if she saw the suit? And even if she didn’t, what would she take away from the suit that might alter this timeline’s technological advancement? For that matter, what would Nikola Tesla take away from examining this suit?

Was she contaminating this timeline just by being in it?

This was much easier to think about. And much more necessary.

There was a knock on the door that interrupted Myka’s thoughts. “Come in,” she called out.

“Good afternoon,” a voice she recognized intoned from the door, and Myka suppressed a wild laugh. “My name is Bahadur Caturanga. May I come in?”

“Please,” Myka said with a wave of her hand. He’d been Helena’s mentor, and Helena had trusted him. “My name is Myka Bering,” she said as he reached the bed.

The man set down the tray of tea he was carrying, and gave her a courteous bow and a warm smile. He looked solid and respectable, a bit fastidious perhaps; past middle-aged, maybe in his sixties. “Pleased to meet you, Miss Bering, although obviously I wish it were under more agreeable circumstances. How do you feel? Do you need medical attention?”

“I wouldn’t say no to pain killers if you have them,” Myka replied. “My left arm was dislocated-” she stopped and thought. Had it really only been last night? How long had she slept here? “-a short while ago,” she finished, “so if you have a sling, or could give me a bit of fabric to make one, I’d be very grateful.”

“By all means, Miss Bering,” Caturanga said. “Christina, would you be so kind as to-”

“Of course!” The child almost flew out of the room in her enthusiasm.

Caturanga smiled after her. “She is a very energetic young lady,” he then told Myka. “I’m afraid I’m not as good of a guardian to her as her parents might have been, had they lived.”

Myka felt like she’d been punched in the gut. Her shock must have shown on her face, because Caturanga leaned towards her with an expression of concern.

“I apologize, Miss Bering. I thought… Christina is convinced that you knew them, and that you know Mister Tesla and myself as well. Hence I thought you knew about her being orphaned, as well. My sincerest apologies if I’ve caused you pain.”

Myka swallowed, and swallowed again. Helena dead? Christina an orphan?

One thing was certain now: this was for sure not her past, but a different timeline, or parallel universe, or however you’d call it.

What did that mean for her going back home, though? She’d come here, so there must be a way home, right?

There was no Helena here to help her. And maybe there wasn’t a Helena to return to anymore, either.

Myka shook her head, tried to shake herself out of her thoughts enough to bury them again. Caturanga was still looking at her, patiently waiting for a reply. “I… I did not know, no,” she told him. “I did know Helena. And she told me about her mentor, Caturanga, and her daughter Christina. Mister Tesla’s name I know…” she cast around briefly, trying to figure out a way to deflect, when Caturanga interrupted her with a nod.

“Because Mister Tesla is well-known these days, I presume.” Caturanga turned and pulled two chairs towards Myka’s bed, then brought over the small table that he’d set the tea tray down on as well. Then he sat down. “Miss Bering, when-”

Whatever he wanted to ask her was cut short when Christina burst back into the room with barely a knock on the door. “Here you go, Miss Bering,” she said, holding out a brown glass bottle and a very small spoon. A piece of cloth hung over her arm – the sling, Myka assumed. “Uncle Bahadur made it himself, and it’s perfectly safe.”

Caturanga nodded enthusiastically to this. “It is a new compound,” he said. “A marked improvement on the standard forms of salicylic acid treatments, that will irritate your stomach and intestinal tract far less than the salicylate.” He leaned forwards conspiratorially. “I’ve been in correspondence with two young German doctors who are working on the manufacture of this substance; they are very excited about its possibilities.”

Myka blinked. Was he talking about aspirin? “Okay?” she said slowly. “If it works?”

“Oh, it does,” Caturanga said brightly. “I have tested it myself, of course; it is perfectly safe, and marvelously effective.” He cocked his head towards the tea tray. “Shall I pour you some tea while Christina helps you with the sling?”

Christina had put down the bottle and spoon and was now holding out the piece of cloth. Myka nodded. “Yes, please.”

Christina set to work immediately and with a very determined air, and soon Myka’s arm was secured to her body. Her shoulder throbbed abominably, and Myka picked up and regarded the little bottle. It had no notes or instructions on it whatsoever, only a handwritten label with the name and molecular structure of the chemical compound on it. “What is the recommended dosage?” she asked Caturanga.

“One of these is about a gram,” Caturanga said, handing her the spoon, “which is the recommended starting dosage. If you find your pain persists a half an hour after taking this, we can repeat the treatment.” He reached over a cup of tea that was only half-full. “I recommend suspending it in liquid – typically I’d suggest plain water, but using tea instead won’t hurt, pardon the pun.”

A gram – standard aspirin were five hundred milligrams per pill, weren’t they? And taking two at a time wasn’t discouraged; Myka had done so before, so she did as instructed now. Christina had sat down now, too, and was watching her avidly. The suspension tasted slightly bitter, and Caturanga refilled her cup immediately.

“Sugar? Milk?”

“Milk, please,” Myka nodded.

“It is a tad bitter, this ‘aspirin’, is it not?” Caturanga said sympathetically and added a generous dash of milk to her cup. “Not to worry,” he added, “that is just how it is. You should feel better in twenty to thirty minutes; it is now-” he checked his pocket watch, “four fourteen in the afternoon. Do you feel up to joining us for supper, Miss Bering? You would be more than welcome.”

“If it’s not too much of a bother,” Myka said. She wasn’t too sure if she felt hungry at all, but if Helena wasn’t here to help her, Caturanga – and possibly Nikola Tesla – was her best bet for getting home again.

“Not at all, Miss Bering, not at all.” Caturanga smiled at her, then looked at Christina. “Christina will show you, once you feel ready, where you can refresh yourself. I’m afraid we don’t have a lot of spare clothes for a female adult in this household, but I’ll ask around to see if I can find something for you to change into until you can-”

“She wears trousers, Uncle,” Christina interrupted him excitedly, “maybe your trousers will fit her?”

“I wouldn’t mind that,” Myka said quickly, “trousers, I mean. If… if it’s not too much to ask.” Women had started to wear them around this time, hadn’t they?

“See, Uncle, I keep telling you,” Christina triumphed, “women do wear trousers. Women can wear trousers. There is no reason why-”

“For sports, Christina,” Caturanga replied brusquely.

“I’m sorry,” Myka said, “I didn’t mean to bring up a divisive topic. I’ll-”

“Don’t worry, Miss Bering,” Christina told her. “Uncle Bahadur is just a bit behind the times sometimes.”

“There are still laws against it,” Caturanga said. “She’d be arrested!”

“For wearing them in public,” Christina insisted stubbornly. “If she doesn’t go out-”

“I’ll wear skirts,” Myka cut through the discussion. “Really, I will. I don’t want to cause an argument, or distress, or alarm. And I most certainly do not want to get arrested. I’m sorry.”

“That’s quite alright, Miss Bering,” Caturanga replied, settling back in his chair like a bird whose feathers had been ruffled. “If you give me a little time, I’ll find something suitable for you to wear. Or I could send a boy to fetch some from your home?”

“Uncle, I told you,” Christina said in tones of tried patience, “she flew here. Her home is nowhere near here.”

“I’d rather hear that from Miss Bering, dear,” Caturanga told her, then looked back at Myka expectantly.

Myka bit her lip. How could she explain her presence but not give away where she was really from? “Christina is right, in a way,” she said. “My home is… too far from here to send someone. I’m afraid I…” she took a deep breath, but before she could go on, Caturanga nodded with yet another smile.

“Don’t say another word about it, Miss Bering,” he said. “It will be our pleasure to host you while you’re here. Any friend of Helena’s is a friend of mine.”

“You were friends with my mother, then?” Christina asked, eyes even more alight than they had been before, if that was possible.

Myka hid behind her cup of tea to collect her thoughts. She took a sip – it tasted marvelous – then nodded. “Yes,” she said. “I was.”

“Oh you must tell me all about her!” Christina was almost out of her chair with excitement. “I was only seven when Mother died; I remember so little about her. Meeting someone who knew her – you must tell me, Miss Bering, you must!”

Seven, Myka noted. Another difference.

“Now, now, Christina,” Caturanga replied, putting a hand on her arm. “Miss Bering is still recuperating. We mustn’t ask too much of her. I’m sure she’ll talk with you when she feels up to it, but until then, we shall take her lead, alright?”

Christina huffed a breath and almost, but not quite, slumped back into her chair. “Of course.” When Caturanga kept looking at her expectantly, she added, “I’m sorry, Miss Bering.”

Myka shook her head in surprise. “Nothing to apologize for,” she said automatically. “You’re excited to hear about your mother, I understand that.” But she had no idea what to tell the kid that wouldn’t give away too much. I worked with your mother? She was my boss? We were friends, potentially more- no, that last part was nothing Christina needed to know, at all.

“Supper will be at ten past eight,” Caturanga said through her ruminations. “I shall send Christina to fetch you. Do please allow me to take my leave of you until then, to arrange matters for your stay.”

“Of course,” Myka said, and he stood immediately and turned to his young charge.

“Now, Christina, let’s let Miss Bering rest.” He waited until she nodded, then bowed to Myka. “Miss Bering.”

She smiled up at him, tired now, as if the mention of ‘rest’ and ‘recuperation’ had awakened the need for the same. “Thank you, Mister Caturanga.”

As they left, she stared after them, thoughts churning in her mind. Helena and her – husband? Partner? Christina’s father, in any case, which typically meant marriage, but then what was typical about Helena Wells? – were dead, Christina was alive, seemed to live with Mister Caturanga and to be acquainted with Nikola Tesla, who had taken hold of the suit and might be able to help Myka repair it.

For that, though, she’d have to explain her presence and her predicament, would have to present herself as not just in need of their help but worthy of it, would have to field Christina’s (and Caturanga’s and Tesla’s) questions about Helena and how she knew her, all without giving away that she was not only from the future, but from a different future at that.

Yeah, so, no pressure.

God, she was tired. She’d just… rest her eyes a bit.

Myka was asleep moments later.

Chapter Text

Chapter 3
Time seemed to crawl for Helena, disconnected from the outside as she was. It reminded her far too much of being suspended in her first time machine, but as long as she did not know more about the situation she was in, she was loath to give away the fact that she was no longer unconscious. Someone was bound to come and check up on her, she was certain of it, and when they did, she might learn more even just from the way she would be treated. If she truly was in military custody, as MacPherson had implied, surely they had regulations to follow about the handling of unconscious prisoners?

So when the door clanged open again, she strained her senses to the utmost.

She need not have bothered, though – “Good afternoon,” a loud, but businesslike voice intoned. Female, Helena noticed. “I’m here as representative of SHIELD to take official custody of the individual known as Iron Woman, presumed to be Helena Wells.”

Helena had no idea for whose benefit the woman had spoken, but felt grateful for the information even as she was curious as to whose custody she was being transferred to. SHIELD – Agent Jinks had been part of that organization. He had left a flash drive behind that Helena had skimmed – something about super-heroes teaming up; it had sounded incredibly far-fetched, like a story from the comic books that Myka-

Helena had stopped reading the proposal at that thought, and now stopped her train of thought as well.

“Mrs. F,” a male voice replied with just the tiniest bit of annoyance, “you’re gonna need to sign here, then.”

According to Jinks’ file, Mrs. F was not just head of the ‘super-hero’ project, but head of the entire organization of SHIELD.

“Whatever it takes, sergeant. Whatever it takes.”

Through the helmet’s dampening, Helena could not hear if any signature was taking place, but then the man said, “Thank you. Should I have someone bring you a pallet jack? That thing hasn’t moved since we put it here.”

“I’ll let you know, sergeant. For now, I’d ask for a few moments privacy with her.”

“As you wish, ma’am. Just knock on the door when you want out.”

“Thank you.”

The door slammed shut again.

“I’m reasonably certain you can hear me, Ms. Wells.”

Helena gave no response.

Mrs. F sighed. “Since the means by which you allegedly committed the crimes you’ve been accused of, i.e. the suit you are currently in, defy standard incarceration, SHIELD will take you into custody as the only agency equipped to deal with such… equipment.” She cleared her throat delicately over the poor wording, then went on. “You are being charged with attempted omnicide, attempted mass murder, plus an assortment of further, minor crimes and offenses. You have the right to remain silent; anything you do say can be used as evidence in your case. You have the right to legal counsel; you can request that a counsel be provided to you free of charge if you can’t afford it yourself; you have the right to meet with your legal counsel at any time and without surveillance. You will receive a written version of the accusations brought forth against you, as well as your rights, as we proceed.” Mrs. F delivered these words flatly, but without hurry or annoyance. Then she took in a breath. “Any comments?”

Again, Helena kept her silence.

“Right,” Mrs. F said quietly. Then Helena heard her knock on the door. “We’re done here,” she informed whoever was listening.

The people who loaded her onto the pallet truck were none too gentle. Helena bit back a wince more than once. She felt bruised all over, and had surely sustained burns on some parts of her skin where the suit had heated up too much.

No wonder her sensors had been impaired.

No wonder she had not recognized Myka. The sensors should have showed her a specific symbol for Christina’s suit, not the generic blip – but that relied on the sensors recognizing Christina’s suit, and that, in turn, relied on inter-suit communication, which probably had also been damaged, and-

And Myka was dead.

By Helena’s hands.

If MacPherson was to be trusted – that was also something to cling to.

Still, better to concentrate on the pain that her bruises and her burns dealt her, rather than the abyss in her heart.

Mrs. F kept silent on their way to wherever they were going, only uttering commands like ‘in there, please’ when necessary. Helena had nothing to say to her, or to whoever was doing the actual loading.

When Mrs. F did speak to her again, Helena could tell that they were in a moving vehicle of some kind – ground movement, not air movement. “Bit of a shame,” Mrs. F said, “that you went off the deep end there. I’d like to say that participation in my team is still possible, but we’ll have to see what the jury says – and the public.” The car, or lorry or whatever they were in, jostled over a bump in the road and Helena suppressed another wince. “There is one thing that you might be interested to know, Ms. Wells,” Mrs. F continued. “I have the tapes of what happened at the crater. I have studied them intensely. And it appears to me that Ms. Bering might not be as dead as everyone thinks.”

“What.” It came out as a croak that Helena barely credited with having come from her throat.

“Ah.”

Helena felt movement on her helmet, then the face plate detached.

“I thought that might rouse your interest,” Mrs. F said calmly, meeting Helena’s eyes for the first time. Just like her voice, she had an air to her that brooked no nonsense. “Ms. Wells, I believe we have a common interest. Ms. Bering gave us extensive intel about the suits prior to leaving for Yellowstone. We want the suit back; you want her back. Those two objectives aren’t mutually exclusive.”

“But-”

“You may have heard that there was an explosion,” Mrs. F continued over Helena’s interjection. “That is true, but I have evidence that that didn’t kill Ms. Bering. It looks far more like she simply disappeared. Now, people eager to build a case against you will spin it their way; I have it on good authority that should the federal court acquit you, the state attorney of Wyoming will make the case that you murdered her. And for someone,” she gestured dismissively, “unused to the more cutting edge of science, the interaction between the explosion and her disappearance might seem clear-cut. But you and I know better. Ms. Bering, and the suit she was wearing, are somewhere. And we both want to find out where.”

“Be that as it may,” Helena said, biting down on the hope in her heart, “why should I collaborate with my prison guards?” Another rumple shook the lorry, and Helena gritted her teeth so as not to cry out as her body was bumped against the suit’s metal.

“Because, Ms. Wells, right now we’re the only ones prepared to not just believe that Ms. Bering can be found, but ready to give you access to whatever you need to find her.” Mrs. F looked immaculately unperturbed as the lorry jostled again and then started to slow down. “The US military wants the suit for their own purposes, and they don’t care if it’s yours of hers. They would be happy with only one suit, and they don’t particularly care what happens to you. SHIELD doesn’t want any suit loose in the world, or in the hands of any one national government. And you are our key to finding the second one.”

Helena inhaled deeply – and immediately broke off when stabbing pain shot through her ribs. “One condition,” she said, feeling supremely helpless in her unresponsive suit.

There was a glint in Mrs. F’s eyes. “I’m listening.”

“James MacPherson,” Helena grated, “all but admitted he tried to orchestrate Myka’s death – the accident in Brookside Canyon. Even if he didn’t succeed, he tried.” She took a deep breath, trying to tame the murderous rage in her heart. “I want him brought to justice.”

Mrs. F looked at her for a long moment, as the vehicle slowly rolled to a stop. Then she nodded. “I’ll have my people look into it.”

Chapter Text

Nikola Tesla was a… personality. Things had to be just so, from when dinner started to what was served and how – and who sat where at the table. Myka didn’t mind too much; at least he wasn’t coming on to her. He also did not waste any time on small talk, though, and that put her somewhat on the defensive.

“So, Miss Bering, that suit of yours – how is it powered? Electricity, I assume, but where’s the source of it? And why is it inert now?” He was looking at her with curiosity afire in his eyes.

Myka laid down her spoon – at least soup was easy to eat with only one functional arm – and dabbed her mouth with her napkin to buy herself some time. Then she replied, “You are quite right, the suit is powered by electricity. The specifics of it are, I’m afraid, proprietary and not mine to divulge.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Edison technology, I presume?”

Even Myka had heard of that feud, so she quickly shook her head. “As it happens, no,” she said. “Completely unrelated, and I would very much like to keep it that way. Secrecy is of the utmost importance to me, Mister Tesla; I’m sure you understand.”

“Ah!” he exclaimed, almost happily. “Of course, of course. Yes, of course. Are you the suit’s inventor, then?”

At this, Caturanga’s head came up, and a thoughtful expression appeared on his face.

Myka was surprised too, that Tesla so readily suggested that she, a woman, might have invented this machine. She quickly shook her head. “No,” she said, “I’m… simply the test pilot, if you will. I didn’t think I would land quite this far off course, I have to admit, and now I’ll need to get back again; ideally under my own power. If you could help me recharge my suit, Mister Tesla, I’m sure that the person, or persons, behind the endeavor will be very… happy about that.” Let him read into that whatever he wanted: future business opportunities, patent sharing; whatever helped her get him on her side was fine with her.

Tesla’s eyebrows came up. “I see,” he said with a small smile. The spark of curiosity was still alive in his eyes, and Myka was glad about that, because she knew that without his interest, he’d turn her down, and she had no idea who else to go to. “Well, we can return to my laboratory momentarily, if you like, and start the endeavor.”

Caturanga cleared his throat. “Tomorrow, perhaps,” he said mildly. “It is already late, and Miss Bering is injured.”

Myka and Tesla both opened their mouths to protest, and snapped them shut again when Caturanga gave them a small but challenging tilt of his head. Christina giggled.

“Of course,” Tesla said, nodding sharply. “I shall go for my walk then. Miss Bering, would you accompany me so we can at least speak a bit further about the suit?”

Caturanga shook his head. “It would not be proper,” he said. He’d given a very satisfied nod when Myka had appeared in skirts at the dinner table – his preoccupation with propriety surprised Myka, who wouldn’t have thought that any friend of Helena Wells could cling to such habits for long.

“I’ll come with you then!” Christina said quickly and with an excited grin. “Miss Bering and I shall chaperone each other.”

Caturanga looked as though he wanted to protest some more, but then simply sighed and waved his hands in resignation. “Alright, alright,” he said. “But please, Nikola, Christina, remember that Miss Bering is still recuperating. Nothing too strenuous, you hear?”

“Just three times around the block, Uncle Bahadur,” Christina tried to appease him. “Will you be up for that, Miss Bering?”

Myka nodded immediately. “Absolutely,” she said in a firm voice. She felt she needed the exercise, and she knew she needed to get going with the suit – if not in practice, then in theorizing about it with Nikola Tesla at least.

“Righty-ho, then,” Caturanga sighed. “If you’re all that determined.” And he waved them out of the room.

-_-_-

The skirts were bothersome, Myka decided, indoors and outdoors. Tesla had gallantly offered his arm as they approached the door to step outside; then Myka realized just where they were stepping out of. She tried to keep her balance, but her left arm was still immobilized against her body, and she took Tesla’s arm gladly.

“The Waldorf-Astoria?!”

“Yes,” Tesla nodded with a small, proud smirk. “They offered me to live on their premises, you know. The director himself!”

Myka hoped that her expression was suitably impressed, and it seemed to be, because Tesla went on to describe how his inventions had made him ‘quite well-known; moderately famous, even, one might say’. Christina tagged along behind them, greeting everyone they encountered, most of them by name, most of them casting more than curious looks at the woman with her arm in the sling walking along with Nikola Tesla – or so it seemed to Myka, at least. As they turned the first corner off of Fifth Avenue, the number of encounters dropped significantly, and Tesla turned to Myka.

“Are you from the future, Miss Bering?”

Myka’s mouth dropped open. “Wh- why would you say that?” she asked.

“The future!” Christina sounded tremendously excited and hopped from the narrow sidewalk into the street to catch up with Myka and Tesla. “Oh, that sounds fantastical! Say you are, Miss Bering; it would be delightful!”

“It is my firm belief,” Tesla stated solemnly, “that in the future, women shall not only match, but outstrip men’s ingenuity. Surely your suit, advanced as it is, and you yourself as its pilot, are proof of that.”

“But surely there are women in this time who are brilliant enough to think up such a thing,” Myka protested.

“Few, and far between,” Tesla said, and nodded at Christina. “Her mother was such a one; brilliant indeed, an inventor just like me. Had she lived, yes, I would think her capable of thinking up such a thing as your suit – however, building it!” He shook his head. “Its intricacies are far, far too minute, too delicate, to have been produced in this time. Nobody is able, I am ready to bet my good name on it, of milling or otherwise producing such minuscule fittings, connectors, and other technology as your suit must consist of. Miss Bering, I kindly ask you not to try and deceive a man of my intellect in a matter such as this.”

Christina was holding her breath; her eyes gleamed with wonder and excitement.

Myka inhaled deeply. “I cannot confirm or deny your hypothesis, Mister Tesla; I can only ask you to understand my predicament. If I were, indeed, from the future, my mere presence here would mean that I might change this time, your present, my hypothetical past, in such a way that the future I may or may not come from might never come to pass, leaving me without a home to return to.” She was quite proud of how she worded that; reading the classics of science fiction had finally paid off. “In the hands of a man as ingenious, as influential as you, future technology – hypothetically, of course – would surely bring about momentous advancements that would shape history of mankind in ways unforeseeable.”

“Ha!” Tesla exclaimed. “My inventions already do so, Miss Bering!”

“That’s true,” Christina nodded loyally.

“Nevertheless,” Myka countered, then clamped her lips together as they passed a group of people coming towards them. “Nevertheless,” she resumed in a quieter voice, “think about the implications, I beg you. If you introduce inventions to a world that isn’t ready for it-”

“But Miss Bering, if I waited for the world to be ready for my inventions, I would never introduce them! That is not how progress works, surely you understand that!”

Myka bit her lip. In a way, he wasn’t wrong.

Then Christina spoke up. Her face had fallen, and her voice was timid. “Miss Bering, if you’re from the future, how can you know my mother? Did you… did you simply say that to allay suspicion?”

Myka’s eyes fluttered shut for a moment. What was the best way forward here? Should she deny knowing Helena, deny coming from the future, not say anything anymore whatsoever? But she needed Tesla’s help, that was something she was sure of. The suit needed large amounts of energy to restart the arc reactor, she was ninety-nine percent sure of that, and in this time, that meant Tesla or Edison. And from all she’d read, the man currently holding her arm was a far better bet for her than his arch-competitor.

“Hypothetically speaking,” Myka said slowly, “consider that both might be true at the same time.”

Christina pondered that statement for a while, then blanched. “If you can travel through time, so can someone else,” she whispered. “Like my mother.” Her face contorted with anguish. “But why would she leave me?”

“No!” Myka exclaimed – softly, because another group of people had just rounded the corner they were headed towards. “Please don’t think that, Christina. Don’t ever think that she would leave you, out of her own free will, okay?”

Christina stared at her slack-jawed. “Then you do know her,” she whispered. “Not did, do. Present tense, not past.”

Myka bit the inside of her cheek. She felt she’d already said far too much; Tesla was listening intently on her other side, she knew. And yet – she couldn’t let Christina believe that her mother had abandoned her. “Let me put forward another hypothesis,” she said, hoping that appealing to the scientific method might help Christina deal with the situation. “Suppose that in a way, for every decision that is made one way, another reality exists in which that decision was made in the opposite way.”

Tesla inhaled sharply. “Different realities! Different realities…”

Christina frowned. “Fantastical worlds, you mean?”

“No,” Myka shook her heads, “worlds much like our own – but in that world, you picked a green dress this morning, not a white one. Or the horse drawing that carriage over there,” she pointed to a passing vehicle, “dropped a shoe this afternoon, and so instead of driving, the person in it had to walk this way.”

Christina slowly nodded as she parsed this. “A different reality for every single decision? But those would count in the millions – no, more! Where would they all be?”

Myka sighed with an apologetic smile. “Beats me, too,” she said. “I’m not a scientist; I only understand the beginnings of theories like that. But it would be a plausible explanation for a year-” she looked expectantly at Christina.

“Oh!” Christina gave a surprised laugh. “1904.”

“1904,” Myka repeated, “that has a Christina Wells but no Helena Wells in it, and a present that I-” she stopped herself, cast a glance at Tesla, and continued, “may or may not come from that is much further ahead, and yet has a Helena Wells, but no Christina Wells in it. Not because she abandoned you, but because she lost her daughter, like you lost your mother.”

“Miss Bering, a word,” Tesla said sharply.

Myka blinked as he speeded up his steps, stumbling to keep up as he, with long, angry strides, put distance between the two of them and Christina.

“I do not know what your game is, Miss Bering, nor even if that is your true name,” Tesla snapped at her, “but Christina is dear to me and you will not toy with mentions of her dead mother, or ideas that she might be still alive. Your flights of fancy might mean nothing to you, but they could well break her heart, and I will not stand for it.”

Myka stopped dead. “I don’t intend to harm her, either,” she returned. “Look, I’m trying my best, okay, to be as truthful as I can, as I dare. I am stranded here – whether in spatial terms or temporal doesn’t make a difference for that. I need your help to get back to where I’m from, and if I am circumspect in what I say and don’t say, it’s because I want to do as little damage as I can. But I know a mother who’s grieving for her daughter, and I see a daughter who’s grieving for her mother, and I believe that the knowledge that the other is alive and well in a different reality can help each of them come to terms with the fact that they’re not present in each other’s realities anymore.”

Both Christina, who’d caught up with them, and Tesla stared at her.

“Can’t you take me with you, then,” Christina then said in a small voice, “when you return?”

Myka hesitated, then shook her head. “I’m afraid I can’t,” she said, hating how her words filled Christina’s eyes with tears. “It’s the suit,” she added helplessly, “it only fits one person.”

Tesla huffed out an irritated breath. Before he could say anything, though, Christina turned to him. “But you could build another one, could you not?”

He shook his head empathetically. “No, Chisel. There are too many intricacies in that suit that I have no hope of replicating, even if I took it apart to its every nut and bolt.”

“Or,” Christina cast around wild-eyed, “or maybe, when you return, Miss Bering, you could tell my m-… your Helena Wells,” she corrected herself, with a precision that cut Myka’s heart, “that she could come visit?”

That might actually be not too far-fetched, Myka thought. And then she remembered how she’d gotten here, and what state the suit had been in. It wasn’t even a given, was it, that if she got it recharged and rebooted, it would take her back. Or that Helena was still a-

Best to keep that thought to herself, though.

“I promise I will tell her about you,” she said therefore.

Tesla snorted again.

As they rounded the last corner, Myka begged out of the rest of the walk, and she and Christina returned to the suite. Myka then begged out of further talking with Christina, stating that she was tired. It wasn’t a lie; she was still recuperating, and stone-weary, and her shoulder felt awful even with the sling. Still, she felt bad at how Christina’s face fell. Christina accepted the evasion with the grudging grace of a teenager who had had manners drilled into her, but Myka could clearly see how much more Christina wanted to know about this Helena Wells that Myka – hypothetically – knew.

She wished she could answer the girl’s question. She just didn’t know how, and how much. And she was afraid of thinking about her Helena too much. She had to cling to the hope that her Helena was still alive; she had to. And that wouldn’t be helped by talking with someone whose Helena was dead, she was sure of that.

She lay awake for a long time that night. 

Chapter Text

“Bollocks!” Helena threw her computer mouse against the nearest blackboard. It flew apart, very satisfactory, into nice irregular pieces.

She did not care; she had dozens more of them.

What she had not enough of was data.

Her suit’s sensors had not just been severely compromised by the heat; half of them had stopped working completely, and the other half had recorded their data to a storage device that itself had become corrupted. She had tried recovering as much as she was able to, but the meager results that that had yielded simply laughed in her face now.

She had no idea where to even begin.

There was a knock on the door.

“Come,” she shouted irritably. At least she was allowed to work in her own workshop – after SHIELD had installed certain precautions. But having to put up with ‘liaison’ Steve Jinks annoyed her.

It was Leena, though, who strode into the room. “Problem?”

“Just about three and a half gigabytes’ worth,” Helena grated, “of data I am unable to retrieve.”

“Ah.” Leena nodded. “Have you asked SHIELD yet? I’m sure the military had every bit of sensor equipment trained on you that they had lying around. Maybe they’ll have something that’ll help.”

Helena’s jaw jutted out, in anger that she had not thought of that herself. “Get me Steve,” she snapped.

“Heck no,” Leena said evenly. “You want him; you get him yourself. Walking around a bit will do you good.”

Helena gritted her teeth. That sentence reminded her far too much of Myka, of how she would pull Helena out of the workshop for a walk on the beach, or a-

“You will find her,” Leena interrupted Helena’s thoughts. “Never doubt that for a second. She’s still alive, and you will find her.”

“I know!” Helena shouted. She felt like throwing something else, but nothing was in easy reach. “I know,” she repeated in quieter tones. “I have to.” For if she did not, what point was there in anything? She was guilty of whatever had made Myka disappear; if she did not bring her back, she might as well plead guilty to having killed her.

“She is not dead,” Leena reiterated her statement as if she had read Helena’s thoughts, which Helena did sometimes suspect her of. “So you are not guilty of murdering her. I’m not here to accuse you; I’m here to tell you what you’re going to do.”

“Which, apparently, is to go and fetch Steve myself,” Helena groused. “Fine.” She turned towards the door. “How late is it anyway?”

“Half an hour till dinner,” Leena replied sweetly.

Helena rolled her eyes as she stalked from the room, but part of her appreciated the young woman’s care.

-_-_-

The data that Steve, via SHIELD, had been able to provide her with did not yield much helpful information. Helena stared out of the window she had had put into the hole she had blown into the wall, a lifetime ago, tapping a ballpoint pen – such an ingenious product! – against her teeth.

“CATURANGA,” she sighed, “open a new-”

“Proximity alert,” the AI intoned, and at the same moment, Helena saw movement outside the window – fast movement, headed towards her.

Then the wall burst in.

“Suit!” Helena snapped, and jumped and pirouetted as the armored pieces flew towards her. The dust had barely cleared when she pointed her palm repulsor at the intruder. “Stop!”

“Or what?” the figure asked.

Helena did a double take. Whoever it was – they were wearing a suit much like hers. Oh, the details were a bit different, the workmanship a bit less refined, but she was clearly looking at what was an Iron Woman suit by any other name. Her heart stopped. Could it be? “Myka?” she breathed.

“You wish,” the figure replied darkly. They used the moment of Helena’s confusion to stride forward and clamp a hand around her forearm. “You’re coming with me,” they said, and activated their boot repulsors.

“Ah,” Helena said with a click of her tongue. “About that.” An alarm began blaring, and shutters dropped along the whole ocean-side wall. The intruder, and Helena with them, began slowly to drift towards them. “Electromagnets,” Helena explained. “Several dozen, independent, each strong enough to-” they slid into the nearest shutter with a clang, “immobilize you utterly,” Helena finished. “You didn’t think I’d be allowed in here without my overseers installing a fence, did you?”

“Fuck,” the intruder said, then repeated in a louder voice, “fuck!”

“Language, darling,” Helena sighed. “How about we civilize matters a little before the cavalry arrives, hm? My name is Helena Wells and I believe you’re trespassing on my property. Open face plate,” she instructed her suit – with the electromagnets active, she had no chance of moving a muscle.

The figure stared at her. Up close, Helena realized that they were probably smaller than her. Her eyebrows rose in curiosity. Then, the figure slumped – as much as that was possible at the moment – let go of Helena, and ordered up her own face plate.

“Claudia Donovan,” the intruder said in a surly voice. “Originally here trying to save my brother, but-” she glanced around with the facial equivalent of a shrug, “I guess that’s not going too well right now.”

“Did it ever occur to you to ask my assistance, rather than force me?” Helena asked mildly. Claudia Donovan seemed so very young; younger than Leena, perhaps, even. How on Earth had she gotten a suit?

“You aren’t exactly known for being altruistic in person, you know.”

Helena had to concede that point. “Save him how?” she asked. “And from what?”

“I think it’s more a question of ‘from where’,” Claudia said. “He disappeared into thin air from a Wells Industries’ lab three years ago. The research I have of him shows he was working on a reactor like yours, that’s how-”

“Donovan!” Helena exclaimed. “Your brother was Joshua Donovan! Yes, I recognize the name now. He did indeed,” she nodded. “I drew heavily on his work when I built this.” She tried to nod her head towards her chest and the arc reactor embedded in it. “I wanted to contact him, collaborate with him after I came back, but I couldn’t find him.”

“Yeah, no kidding,” Claudia muttered.

“I thought he had simply left the company, had perhaps retired somewhere in privacy,” Helena went on. “Disappeared, you say?” When Claudia nodded, Helena furrowed her brows. “Well, let’s see what we can do about that,” she said.

-_-_-

Claudia Donovan’s genius rivalled her own, Helena found. It took some persuading to convince Mrs. Frederic to let her join Helena, but when Helena argued that, one, the young woman was looking for someone with another armored suit, and two, anyone who could build their own suit in barely more than a backyard workshop was better on the team than working against it, Mrs. Frederic nodded her assent.

Claudia was also a hacker of the highest order, and able to access, with a few helpful insights from Helena, the Wells Industries’ servers to download Joshua’s project files. Helena resolved to keep that fact in mind for Agent Jinks to exploit in his endeavor to bring MacPherson to justice. And certainly, at a later date when Wells Industries was back out from under his clutches, it might behoove her to tell someone in the company about this security risk. But for now, it suited her nicely – and Joshua Donovan had made some interesting discoveries, some of which not even Wells Industries was aware of, or so Claudia reassured Helena.

“That encryption?” she pointed towards a folder that had only even appeared on the screen after she had done some wizardry or other, and went on, “that’s a him and me thing. I swear to god only the two of us know how to access this.”

“Well, get on with it, then,” Helena admonished her, leaning across her shoulder.

“Alright, alright,” Claudia muttered with a grin. The folder opened after a few more moments of wizardry, and presented a video file and a few more folders.

The file was called ‘hey claud’.

“Yeah baby!” Claudia crowed. Still, she took several precautions before clicking on the file, including backing it up on not just one but three separate media. “Here we go,” she then said, plugging one of her backups into one of her laptops and clicking on the video file.

The video showed only a man a few years older than Claudia sitting at his desk in what was obviously a Wells Industries lab. The date in the lower right corner was of almost three years ago, and the clock was well into the small hours.

“That’s the night he disappeared,” Claudia said in a choked voice.

The man cleared his throat and started talking, and she fell silent. “Claud, if you’re seeing this…” he shook his head, picked up a ballpoint pen and started to play with it. “Sounds dramatic, I know, and I’m really, really sorry. But you gotta take risks sometimes, and this is going to be my big break if I do it right. If not, the good thing is that no-one’s gonna know.” He rubbed his face, stretched, and yawned. “Sorry ‘bout that; kinda late,” he went on. “Or early? Anyway, here it is. You know how at CERN they try and split particles into even smaller particles? See, I’ve come across one that…” he stopped, his only motion in his fingers as they played with his pen. “It seems impossible,” he went on, “but it can… change the size and mass of things; maybe even living beings. ‘Hey, Josh, what about the square-cube law’, you ask, ‘conservation of energy, laws of physics’ – well. If my calculations are right, this particle freaking bypasses all of that.” He held up both hands, drawing vague shapes into the air. “By way of accessing a different dimension, a different quantum stage, pulling energy from it or dumping it there. Claud. Seriously. It does. I’ve done these calculations so often I could do them in my sleep.” He tapped the pen against his temple. “I’ve kept it to myself,” he went on. “First, I thought they’d laugh me off the premises; then I realized what a fucking bomb this is.

“And I know, I know,” he held up his hands with a grimace, “I know I’m sitting in the fucking lap of the biggest fucking bomb manufacturer in the world, keeping this from the head honchos because I don’t want this to become literal bombs, but you know, and I know, and I know I told you a million times, that this is the only place where I can get the stuff that I need.” He stopped, took a deep breath, and looked around himself. “Claud, I know you’ve always hated me for starting here, and I realize that half my work does go into… you know. But hey, fusion reactors are amazing; the possibilities for civilian, peaceful use are endless, and I’m positive it won’t be used for weapons only. I’m talking clean energy for everyone, here, and spaceships, Claud, actual, literal spaceships!” His face shone with excitement for a moment, then he sobered and rubbed his hands across his features wearily. “But I’m getting sidetracked. Anyway, working here allowed me to work on this, and that’s what I’ve been doing, you know, on the side. I just needed to bring this to the point where… well, the point where I’m now, actually,” he said. “I’ve got the prototype ready, and a protection suit. If this goes wrong, I’ll, uh…” he pressed his lips together and grimaced again. “My calculations say I’ll either get so big that I’ll blow up the planet, or so small that I’ll fall into the space between atoms and electrons. Either way, nobody’s gonna know, am I right? Ha ha!” He gave a very fake laugh, and went on, “But if I do this right, it’ll be the world’s first, self-contained fusion reactor and a source of… hey, don’t get emotional on me when I say this, okay, but I’m calling them claudions. I mean, I guess claudino would also work, but I think claudion has more class.

“And with them – Claudia, think about it. Shrinking stuff so that it’s tiny and you can transport it easily, and then bring it back to size once it’s where it’s headed. Or making a tomato so large that you can feed a thousand people pasta sauce!” He shook his head in wonderment. “That’s why I’m doing this, you know? It’ll change the world for the better. No more famine. No more shortage of products, no more war over resources. We won’t need any fucking weapons anymore, Claud!” He paused for a moment, then cleared his throat. “Anyway, I’m gonna put this vid and the rest of my files away and wipe this laptop, and then I’m doing it. I’m doing it! If I’m right, I’ll see you soon, and if not, well.” He pursed his lips and lowered his eyes. “Love you, kiddo,” he said quietly, and then reached forward to stop the recording.

“Shit,” Claudia breathed. “Holy shit.”

“I actually understood most of that,” Helena nodded, “and I have to say I agree with your assessment.”

“Oh, come on,” Claudia scoffed.

Helena simply gave her a long look.

“Seriously?” Claudia sounded impressed.

Helena took a deep breath. “I think it is time I told you something,” she sighed. She took Claudia to what she generously called ‘the archives,’ and unearthed an old, dusty box. “Careful,” she instructed the young woman. “These files are over a hundred years old.”

Half an hour later, Claudia stared at Helena, mouth and eyes wide open. “Dude,” she whispered.

“Not a dude,” Helena corrected her, “that is one of the points I am trying to make.”

Claudia rolled her eyes. “So what you’re saying is, you know this dimension Josh talked about? The one he disappeared to?”

Helena shook her head. “No, not that one. The one that the claudions take energy from and return it back to. I believe my mind – which, it has been postulated, is a form of energy – resided there while my body was inert.” She jotted down the equation that she meant in the margin of one of her old sketches. “See?”

“Okay,” Claudia said slowly. Then she nodded sharply, and repeated, speaking faster now, “Okay. So the arc reactor sets free claudions-” She blushed every time she or Helena said the name; Helena thought it was quite endearing. “-and if their number reaches a certain threshold, people vanish into… what? Where did Josh go? And your Myka?”

‘Her’ Myka. The possessive stabbed at Helena’s heart, but she did her best to ignore it. “I believe it could be called the Quantum Realm,” Helena said. “Space at the quantum level. Things do get weird down there – and ‘down’ is really the wrong word here, but it’ll do for now – and there is a possibility that all of time and space are connected in it. All of it – including dimensions that we cannot even imagine, and different realities, or alternate universes if you will. It is what I’ve been trying to access with my suits in order to travel to a different time, but I did not know enough about claudions, and that is why I failed. I knew there was something, and I tried to allow for it in my calculations-”

“Like Einstein did with the cosmological constant,” Claudia interrupted.

Helena nodded. “In a manner of speaking, yes,” she said. “Which is why and how, I believe, my other suit was able to access the Quantum Realm even if only by accident. Of course we cannot replicate the process exactly – I’d much rather not resume shooting at the Yellowstone Caldera, what with one thing and another,” she said dryly. “However, with this,” she pointed to the workbench with Claudia’s computers, “we won’t need to. We can begin to recreate Joshua’s process, and access it purposefully this time.”

“Alright, but how will we find them?”

Helena had thought about that, too. “My other suit I’ll find because I know what to look for,” she said. “Its signature is locked into mine; I’ll find her wherever she is. Joshua, though, I… I don’t know. Yet,” she added, upon seeing the stormy look on Claudia’s face. “He had a suit, too, he said. Let’s go through his data. We’ll retrace his steps, quite literally, and see if we can’t figure out a way to track him, or his suit, to where he is now.”

“And don’t you forget it,” Claudia muttered darkly.

Chapter Text

Nikola Tesla’s lab was nothing like what Myka had imagined.

For one thing, it was mostly empty. Oh, a few apparatuses stood here and there, and there was a workbench stacked with tools in neat boxes and rows, but what it mainly was, was a vast open space on the fourth floor of a brick building on South Fifth Avenue that could have been an eclectic twenty-first century designer loft just as easily as, apparently, a genius’ workspace.

Her suit lay flat on top of a sturdy workbench, open like a shell that Myka had been peeled out of.

It looked a mess. Scrapes marred the paint job, some gouged deeply into the metal underneath. The right shoulder was scorched all down the torso, and bits of sod and dirt were still smeared liberally across every inch.

Myka gulped. It was good to know she had come out of this alive, really. Because seeing the state of the suit, it could have easily gone the other way. And if this was how one suit looked, the other suit-

She stopped that thought. She had to concentrate on this suit, not worry about the other one and the person who’d been in it.

She just hoped that the damage was – well, cosmetic, basically. If any of the processors or components were fried, she was stuck. Like Tesla had said, there was zero hope of replacing them. If the software was dead, she was equally stuck, because she had zero idea of programming, and there were zero books on that available.

This would only have a chance of working out in her favor if all they needed to do was clean it, recharge it, and reboot it.

All of that shot through her head within seconds of laying eyes on the mess.

“Looks a bit the worse for wear,” Tesla mused, standing next to her with arms akimbo. “I’ve been waiting for your visit before I started to clean it; I didn’t want to inadvertently make things worse than they are.”

“Thank you,” Myka replied, from the bottom of her heart. She scratched the back of her head and released a long breath. “Okay,” she said, “I guess we better get started.”

Christina huffed out a groan. “I had not expected to start with cleaning,” she said with audible distaste.

“There is no such thing as a menial job, Chisel,” Tesla told her. “And if you think you are too great for a small task, you are too small-minded for the truly great tasks.”

It took them the better part of the morning to get the dirt out of every nook and cranny. Myka’s left arm was still useless, which left her unable to contribute all that much, which in turn left her grumpy. On the upside, though, Christina was reminding her of Helena in the best possible way – she, too, was bright, brilliant, and quick-witted, and had very nimble fingers and a knack for employing them for maximum efficiency. Myka learned that ‘Chisel’ was Tesla’s nickname for Christina, a moniker worn with great pride by the kid, who graciously allowed Myka to use it too. As they made their way towards the part of the suit that housed the processor, Myka kept looking for anything vaguely or outright plug-like, and finally discovered something that looked like the cover of a battery compartment. Tesla provided the correct screwdriver, and then the three of them stared at a mess of molten plastic and battery remains.

“Don’t touch, or breathe in too deeply,” Myka said, “this is probably toxic.”

“I’ll get the rubber gloves,” Tesla nodded. “Is this what powered the suit? It is extraordinarily small.”

“Not the suit,” Myka replied, “but this powered the control mechanisms, so to speak.”

“Ah,” he said. “So this is the brain that tells the muscles what to do?” He gestured at the slim rectangular case that sat above the damaged battery box.

Myka nodded. No point denying the truth or trying to dupe him; he was way too smart for that. It would have been insulting, and insulting the only person capable of helping you was not a good way to get that help. “Can I have that screwdriver?” She needed to open up the computer case and see if that had been affected by the heat – either the battery fire or the outside heat – at all. If it had, that was it. She held her breath as she found and unscrewed the screws, grateful that it was her left arm in the sling and not her right.

Christina gasped when Myka removed the lid, and Tesla hurried back from where he’d been retrieving the gloves. “Goodness,” Christina said. “What is that?”

It was computer circuitry, and blessedly intact, at least from what Myka could see. She released a breath, and a silent offer of thanks to fate, the universe, or whichever power had protected this from frying. “The brain, as Mister Tesla said,” she said, and quickly closed the lid again. “It is fragile, so I’d rather keep it protected. I just wanted to make sure it was still in one piece.”

Next to her, Tesla huffed a disappointed sigh. “I should have liked to get a better look,” he said morosely.

“I know,” Myka told him. “You might yet, if we manage to hook this up to a power source and it doesn’t start up. So don’t put away your magnifying glass yet,” she added dryly.

He gave her a quick, excited grin, then leaned over the battery compartment again. “Connecting to a power source is the next step, then,” he said, moving his head this way and that to inspect the damage. “I assume there are contacts in here somewhere?”

Myka nodded. “Should be,” she said, “and ideally a description of what kind of voltage we need.”

“Ah! Yes, that would be important. The machinery in that box seems too delicate for strong input. I’ll see what I can do.”

“Can we have lunch first, though?” Christina asked from behind them. She turned to Myka and dropped her voice to a theatrical whisper. “Uncle Nikola tends to forget if you don’t remind him.”

It was getting dark by the time they’d cleaned the battery compartment fully; mostly because Myka, who had a vague idea that batteries contained harmful ingredients, insisted on as many precautions as she could think of. There were no markings left on the molten plastic, but Myka remembered the specs of her phone battery and figured that those might not be too far off.

“If we start with three point seven Volts,” she said, “do you think that will work? Or would it be too strong? I don’t want to fry the brain, as it were, just power it up again.”

“You are lucky, Miss Bering,” Tesla announced. “I happen to have a rheostat in the laboratory – we can start with a voltage close to zero, and raise it slowly to see what happens.”

Myka nodded. “Sounds good,” she said.

Tesla beamed.

“I don’t need to remind you,” Myka told him severely, “that this is my only chance to return home, and if we mess it up, I can’t replace or repair it?”

His face fell, but he nodded. “I shall be as careful as I would be with a newborn,” he promised.

Nevertheless, Myka’s heart was in her throat as she watched him clamp wires to the contacts they’d cleaned earlier. She was holding her breath and crossing her fingers as he stepped to the rheostat, and next to her, Christina was doing the same.

Then a shadow flickered across one of the windows, and she looked up. “Hey, um-” she began, but Tesla interrupted her.

“Damn you!” he shouted, hurrying to the window and grabbing a pointer stick on the way, brandishing it like a rapier. “I’ll show you-!”

“Edison,” Christina explained to Myka with a shrug. “Or rather, one of Mister Edison’s underlings, come to spy on Uncle Nikola. Never mind that we’re on the fourth floor here, they always try to find ways to see what he is working on.”

Myka’s heart dropped. Curtains, she thought. Blinds, even cardboard in a pinch. Armed guards. “We can’t let Thomas Edison get his hands on this,” she grated.

“We are of one mind, Miss Bering,” Tesla shouted as he returned. “That utter… pillock will stop at nothing to get one over on me. I might be inclined to believe your admonitions about technology too far ahead of its time, but he most certainly won’t.” His face was furious as he stopped to pick up a tarp from under the other workbench. “I apologize that I let this happen,” he said when he arrived back at their work table, breathing hard. “Christina, will you please roll the blackboard over here to block anyone from seeing through those windows, while Miss Bering and I construct a barrier for this side?”

“Of course, Uncle!” Christina seemed excited far more than anxious, and Myka supposed that was just as well.

They constructed their screens within minutes, and though the workspace was much more cramped now, Myka felt immeasurably safer within it.

“Righty-ho,” Tesla announced, stepping up to the rheostat again. “Miss Bering, do you have any way to gauge when we have reached the correct voltage?”

Myka gave an apologetic shrug of her right shoulder. “When something happens?” she suggested.

Tesla raised his eyebrows at the insufficiency of her reply, then shrugged. “Well, here we go then,” he announced, and flipped the switch that connected the rheostat to the power source. It began to hum, and as he worked the slider, the hum changed pitch. “Christina?”

“Point five volts,” Christina, who was watching the measuring device Tesla had put in between the rheostat and the battery connectors. “Point seven five. One. One point two five. One point five…”

Nothing at all happened until they reached five volts, upon which a fan started to turn, causing Myka to startle. “Hold it,” she said sharply. “Steady for a bit; let’s see what happens.”

A few diodes began to blink, and she held her breath. So far, so good, at least she assumed so. How long would the boot-up take, if that’s what it was?

There were a couple of beeps, and then a familiar voice rang out, “Password, please.”

Christina and Tesla looked at each other, eyes wide with surprise. “But…” Christina said, blinking. “But that is Uncle Bahadur’s voice. How… how does it get into this machine?”

“Long story,” Myka said absentmindedly, wondering what the password might be. “Um, Christina?” she tried.

“Yes?” Christina said.

At the same time, there was another beep, and CATURANGA replied, “Wrong password. Password, please.”

Myka swore under her breath and held up her hand to stall Christina’s questions. Then inspiration hit her. “Chronic Argonaut,” she said carefully.

This time, the beep had a different pitch. “Welcome, Ms. Bering,” CATURANGA intoned, and Myka’s knees almost buckled in sudden relief.

“What on Earth?!” Tesla murmured.

“CATURANGA, can you please run a self-diagnostic?” Myka asked with bated breath.

“Of course. Please wait while I do so.”

Myka felt like crying with joy.

“What is this magic?” Christina asked in hushed tones.

“Sufficiently advanced technology,” Myka pressed out, then laughed. She noticed that it sounded ever so slightly manic, and tried to compose herself. “Sorry, Christina. I… I’m a bit overwhelmed, that’s all.” She took a few deep breaths; in through her nose, out through her mouth. “This machine is capable of replicating the intelligence of a human being,” she said. It was a close enough explanation, wasn’t it? “And Helena gave it a familiar voice for interacting with it. It controls the suit’s functions, making it easier for me to use.”

“Reproduced intelligence,” Tesla breathed. “Astounding.”

Myka bit her lip. She hadn’t thought about what he’d do with knowledge like that; hadn’t even thought about the fact that he’d learn of CATURANGA in the whole process. She shook her head, angry at herself. She needed to do better, damn it.

“I have finished my diagnostic,” the AI announced.

Tesla looked at the suit as if he half-expected it to sit up by itself. “And?” he asked.

“Ms. Bering?”

“Go ahead, CATURANGA,” she replied. Next to her, Christina clapped her hands in delight.

“There is severe heat damage to most of the sensors,” CATURANGA told her. “The propulsion system seems uncompromised, but I advise an in-depth diagnosis after we re-initiate the arc reactor and before we do a test run. Would you like me to start the re-initiating process?”

Myka’s eyes grew round. “Can you? I mean, yes, please do,” she corrected herself.

“Very well.” There was a pause of a few seconds, then CATURANGA spoke up again. “I’m afraid the reactor is completely powered down, Ms. Bering. It will need an external power source as well as new fuel to re-start the reaction.”

“Specs of that power source? And what kind of fuel?” Again, Myka wondered what Tesla’s brain might do with the answers to these questions, but she couldn’t help it – she needed him to know.

“Five million volts minimum,” CATURANGA replied, “and either pure deuterium, or a mixture of deuterium and tritium.”

“Five million volts I can deliver,” Tesla said, his nonchalance slightly colored by pride, “but what on Earth is deuterium or tritium?”

Myka’s heart sank. Of course. She took a deep breath, and hoped. “CATURANGA, hypothetical question, please: can deuterium or tritium be produced by physical, chemical or other methods available in 1904?”

“Technically, deuterium can be produced, or rather, accumulated with antiquated methods, yes,” CATURANGA replied after a moment.

“Antiquated,” Tesla muttered in irritation, but Myka couldn’t empathize; she was too busy being relieved.

“The process can be reproduced,” CATURANGA went on, “with methods available at that time; the only reason why it was not, was that deuterium was discovered at a later date.”

Myka took a deep breath. “Okay, so what do we need? Can you give me a… a shopping list?”

“In short,” CATURANGA replied, “water and hydrogen sulfide, as well as large amounts of energy and time.”

Tesla raised his head. “Now that, I can provide.” He turned to Myka with shining eyes. “It so happens that I helped build a power generator facility at the Niagara Falls where both water and energy are in ample supply; we can arrange to have sulfide transported there.” He tapped his finger against his lips. “Time might prove the biggest problem; now that Edison has gotten wind of what is happening here, he might come snooping around some more, or send people.”

“A decoy!” Christina said. “Leave something here for him to find while we head to the Niagara Falls in secret. Surely that will throw him off the case for a while?”

“An excellent idea,” Tesla nodded enthusiastically.

Myka, though, focused on another of Christina’s words. “‘We’?” she asked mildly.

Christina grabbed her right hand with both of hers. “Oh, you mustn’t leave me behind, Miss Bering! This is too exciting!”

Myka shook her head. “Christina, that’s too dangerous.”

Tesla’s head snapped up. “Oh, but it isn’t,” he said immediately. “People always say that electricity is dangerous, but I can assure you, it’s perfectly safe.”

“See, Miss Bering? Uncle Nikola thinks I should come too.”

“I did not say that, young lady,” Tesla smiled indulgently, “but you are a good laboratory assistant, I will admit that much.”

Myka rubbed her forehead. Now that the initial euphoria of hearing CATURANGA’s voice had receded, her head hurt, as did her shoulder, and she was bone-tired yet again. Her every instinct told her that Christina was not safe around the suit, not if Edison was after it, but for the life of her she couldn’t find the words to express that. “We’ll talk about that later,” she announced, suppressing a yawn. “Let’s wrap up for today and head home, okay?” She turned to Tesla. “Can we secure this place against Edison’s men?”

He nodded. “I’ve employed a guarding service before,” he said. “I’ll send a runner to them to post a few of their men in here tonight.”

“Good,” Myka nodded. “CATURANGA, if anyone except me or Mister Tesla tries to access you or interfere with you in any way, do not cooperate. Do you need to power down, or something, to preserve energy?”

“As long as I am connected to a steady power source, I can remain active even without a battery in place. If you intend to disconnect me, let me know so I can power down the suit’s systems in a structured manner.”

Myka looked at Tesla. “Do you have anything that could function as a battery?” When he shook his head, she addressed CATURANGA again. “Best power down, then.”

“I understand, Ms. Bering. Good night.”

As she watched the diodes fall dark and the fan cease to run, Myka knew she would not breathe easy that night, armed guards or not. But it couldn’t be helped – she doubted that anyone would take kindly to her suggesting she spend the night in the lab. It surprised her even more, therefore, when Tesla announced, after dinner, that he intended to do just that.

“I shall work on creating a battery, Miss Bering, that will allow,” he cleared his throat and cast a half-nervous, half-amused glance at the actual Caturanga, “your machine to work more independently.” When she started to say something, he held up his hands. “Don’t worry, I won’t interfere with it in any way. I give you my word.”

“Miss Bering, you are surely not thinking of accompanying him,” Caturanga spoke up from his chair. “You need rest!”

And he was right – Myka knew she was able to power through pain and exhaustion, but she’d been tired before, and now dinner had made her almost lethargic. Nevertheless, knowing what was the right thing to do didn’t make it easier. “Alright,” she said through gritted teeth. “I suppose.”

Caturanga looked as though he was refraining very hard from saying ‘good girl’.

Myka was asleep moments after her head hit the pillows.

Chapter Text

Chapter 7
“Okay, this should do it.” Claudia snapped the compartment on Helena’s suit’s forearm shut. “Try it.”

Inside the suit, Helena nodded. “CATURANGA, scan the provided sample for DNA.”

One of Joshua’s old sweaters lay on the table in front of her, and she slowly waved her closed fist, knuckles first, across it to let CATURANGA scan it.

“I have detected human DNA,” CATURANGA announced after a moment. “I am running analysis on it as I speak.” After another short moment, he continued, “I have completed my analysis. There is DNA of three human beings on this jumper: Ms. Donovan’s, another set that matches hers closely enough to be a first-degree relative, and a third set that I can’t match with anyone in my database.”

“Claudia, do you have any other siblings?” Helena asked, to avoid imprecision. When Claudia shook her head, Helena went on, “CATURANGA, store the second set as Joshua Donovan’s DNA, and feed it into the tracker.”

“Very well.”

“God, he is even more British than you,” Claudia sighed. “How do you stand it?”

“Balance for all y’all’s unrelenting American-ness,” Helena gave back.

Claudia shuddered. “Dude, don’t even try.”

“I told you not to call me that,” Helena snapped.

“It’s doesn’t mean you personally,” Claudia gave back, “it’s just a figure of speech, okay?”

“And sometimes figures of speech are hurtful! I have had to fight half my life against people who would only give me credence if they believed me to be a man; can you not imagine that it is a bit of a sore point to be called ‘dude’ under those circumstances?”

“Alright, alright,” Claudia said, head between her shoulders and hands up conciliatorily. “Alright already. I’ll try, okay?”

Helena took a deep breath. “See that you do. CATURANGA, what’s the status?”

“No match found yet, Ms. Wells.”

Claudia’s eyes darkened. “Fuck.”

“Patience,” Helena told her. “We are, in a manner of speaking, searching all of time and space. It’s bound to take a while.”

“Yeah? Well sometimes ‘in a manner of speaking’ hurts too, you know.”

Helena, who by now had learned that Joshua was Claudia’s sole surviving relative, hesitantly put a hand on the young woman’s arm. “We will find him,” she said. “Not a metaphor. We will find your brother, and if at all possible, bring him back here.”

Claudia huffed out a sigh. Before she could say anything, though, an alert beeped.

“Ms. Wells, I detect a high level of claudions.”

“What? How?” They had not even started their experimental setup yet; while Helena’s suit was powered up, neither its arc reactor nor the one in her chest should be creating a ‘high level’ of claudions. They would need access to the Wells Industries facilities for that, they both knew.

“I do not know.” The AI sounded calm and unconcerned, quite unlike the two humans present.

“Postulate, then!” Helena snapped.

“It is possible that this occurs at the destination end of time or space travel when using the claudion method,” CATURANGA replied.

“So someone’s coming here?” Claudia asked.

“It is only a postulate,” CATURANGA said patiently.

“Regardless,” Helena said, “CATURANGA, start recording on all available devices, and alert SHIELD as per protocol.”

“Of course.”

There was a distortion in the air now, about eight feet away from them, like heat waves over a patch of hot road. “Claudia, get into your suit and get on the other side of that,” Helena ordered.

“You have an incoming call from Mrs. Frederic,” CATURANGA announced.

“Not now!” Helena shouted, focusing on the patch of wavering air.

Then, before Claudia had even moved, as if snapped into place by the shortest rubber band in the universe, a silver and blue figure stood on the spot, facing away from Helena and Claudia both.

“Myka!!” Helena yelled, and started towards it.

“No!” Claudia intoned, casting her half-armored arm in Helena’s path. “Too small, too small!”

Helena stared at her in-helmet display. Claudia was right, she realized as the figure slowly turned to face them. She fell into a crouch, training her palm repulsors on the intruder and flexing her fingers on the in-glove controls to access firing mode. “Who are you?”

Chapter Text

“Miss Bering, could I talk to you, please?” Christina stood at the compartment door, swaying with the train’s motion as they made their way north.

“Sure,” Myka said, “come on in.” She sat up straighter and patted the seat next to her.

Somehow, Nikola Tesla had gotten them a whole railway cart to themselves, with a separate baggage compartment that held their luggage, Myka’s suit all padded and boxed up in what looked like a casket, several containers of hydrogen sulfite, and assorted other gadgetry Tesla had deemed necessary to bring along. The journey would take a whole day, and Myka had expected the ever-curious Christina to come along sooner or later, but Christina seemed hesitant rather than excited as she sat down and folded her hands in her lap.

“What’s up?”

“Miss Bering, I…” Christina began, then stuttered to a halt. “May I ask you about my…” she stopped herself again, shaking her head, then continued, “the version of my mother that you know?”

She looked at Myka with heart-wrenching hope in her expression, and Myka didn’t have it in her to say no. Truth be told, she’d expected that question, and she was equal parts proud, glad and saddened that Christina recognized the difference between her mother and Myka’s Helena.

So she nodded. “What would you like to know?”

“Everything,” Christina breathed fervently.

It was one way to spend a train journey, for sure. Myka told Christina how she’d met Helena, explained what a CEO was, confirmed that women could indeed hold such positions and were even heads of governments in some countries, detailed the duties of a personal assistant, detailed her duties as Helena’s personal assistant, and then veered into the part where Helena had sought not just an employee but friends.

“And did you become her friend, Miss Bering?” Christina asked. Her expression was filled with longing, same as Myka had seen in her mo- Helena’s eyes at times, and Myka wondered if, apart from Caturanga and Tesla, Christina had friends herself.

She nodded, and saw relief flood Christina’s eyes. “Yes, I did,” she added, confirmation and reassurance in one.

“Would you…” Christina asked hesitantly, “would you consider becoming my friend as well?”

“Absolutely,” Myka replied at once. “I need to remind you, though,” she added with a twinge of bad conscience, “that I won’t be here long if everything goes right. Please keep that in mind.”

“You’ll return here, though, won’t you? For visits?”

Myka gave a double take. She hadn’t even thought about that, truth be told. “I… can’t say,” she said slowly. “I really don’t know the mechanics behind me coming here; I don’t know if it was just a fluke, happenstance, or if it can be replicated.”

Christina stared at her, then set her jaw and nodded. Her gaze was conflicted, but steady. “I understand,” she replied, and her voice was steady too. “I would assume there are millions upon millions of other universes out there, and finding your way back to this specific one might prove impossible. Like retrieving a drop of water from the ocean.”

It was Myka’s turn now to stare at this thirteen-year-old girl. And for the first time, see an actual thirteen-year-old girl, not ‘the not-quite-daughter of the woman I love, who I need to protect from the impact of me being in her timeline’. A thirteen-year-old girl raised by, as far as Myka could tell, a fatherly figure and an erratic uncle, and probably not too many close female acquaintances, if any.

She swallowed. “I’m sorry.” And because that didn’t seem nearly enough, she added, “I will gladly be your friend while I’m here, and if there’s any possibility to remain in contact afterwards, I’ll find it, okay?”

The way that the muscles worked in Christina’s jaw was very recognizable. The short, sharp nod, too. Myka debated with herself for a moment, then decided to just go with it, and said, “Hey, I’m not sure if this is the proper thing to do in the society you live in, but if you want a hug, I can give you a hug.”

She had barely finished talking when Christina flung herself at her.

Over the next hours, as the train made its way first north, then west, they talked about everything a teenager could possibly think of to talk about and ask, and when they arrived at the Niagara Falls lodgings Tesla had acquired and found that they would be sharing a suite, they both grinned at each other over the prospect of talking further, deep into the night.

It was a bit odd, Myka thought, to be a kind of mentor figure, perhaps, to a teenager – but gratifying, too. She had wished for someone to talk to like this, when she’d been Christina’s age, but that only spurred her on now to be the best kind of friend for the kid she could possibly be. Christina was sharp, her intellect clearly schooled by scientific thinking and, from what Myka could make out, Eastern – Hindu, or perhaps Buddhism? both? – philosophy as well. And she was enthusiastic, too; curious about every single thing on this planet and beyond, soaking up what Myka said like a sponge, right down to speech patterns. For a while, this had Myka worried, but over breakfast with Caturanga and Tesla, it was clear that Christina was still fluent in Victorian, as it were, and Myka breathed a bit easier.

They arrived at the Niagara Falls Electricity Facility to find the ‘casket’ in a large, mostly empty workshop in the basement, out of the way of the day-to-day running of the factory, but in close enough proximity to the electric main that Tesla could set up the apparatuses that he and CATURANGA had come up with – one for filtering deuterium out of water, the other for kick-starting the reactor when they had enough fuel for it.

Tesla was secretive bordering on paranoid about the whole matter, but that suited Myka just fine. Neither deuterium production nor fusion reactors were inventions of this time, and the fewer people had even a whiff of what was going on, the better. Tesla was reasonably certain, in his own words, that they’d thrown Edison off their track with the decoy they’d set up in the South Fifth Avenue laboratory and the continued enhanced guard they were paying to patrol the place. It wasn’t uncommon for Tesla to be called away surprisingly for consulting on this or collaborating on that, he said, and as long as Edison didn’t know precisely where he’d gone, he – they – could be anywhere.

Myka was pretty sure Edison would find out sooner or later, but if it was later rather than sooner, they just might have enough time after all. Powering up the suit wouldn’t need all that long, according to CATURANGA. Roughly three days, depending on how saturated deuterium was in this area’s water, to get the required amount to fuel the reactor, and then five to ten minutes to prime it – if all went well. Myka was exorbitantly glad that the AI knew everything necessary and that Tesla had the tools they needed; take any of that away and the whole thing would collapse like a house of cards. She really was lucky, or – if you believed in that kind of thing – had amassed a crap ton of good karma in a previous life.

To keep the number of people who knew what was going on in this lab to a minimum, Myka offered to take her share of standing guard. Her left shoulder was still painful, but improving steadily, and it wasn’t her dominant hand; so what that it was still in a sling? Most of her bruises and scratches were well on their way to healing, and her energy was back, too. When both Tesla and Caturanga tried to protest, she challenged them to a revolver shooting contest and won by a mile, and that was that.

Christina loved it. The first time Myka stood watch, she tried to sneak in with her, only to find herself at the business end of Myka’s revolver, and then at the receiving end of a blistering lecture that had her half in tears. Myka relented only well after next morning’s breakfast, to drive the message home, even if the girl’s huge, teary eyes tore at her heartstrings. Still - the kid could have died, had Myka’s reflexes not been as good as they were.

And yet on the third night, the one that would see completion of the deuterium-producing process close to morning, Myka found the kid in the workshop again, curled up on a pallet, not even really hidden, and dead asleep. She rolled her eyes and was about to wake her when Tesla stepped up next to her and said, “Leave her be, Miss Bering. She adores you, even I can see that, and she knows she has limited time to spend with you if all goes well. I will return at five in the morning to start preparing for the last step; you can take her home then and say your goodbyes.”

Myka’s Secret Service instincts were shouting at her to insist that Christina should be going home now, but she found she couldn’t stomach the idea of dishing out another rebuke, of being the reason, again, for Christina’s tears. So she nodded, pulled the gray fire blanket more snugly across Christina, and settled in for her night watch, hoping for the best.

She’d completed reciting Hamlet in her mind, and was just about to start on The Tempest, when she heard a sound – footsteps. The phosphorescent clock on the far wall, Tesla’s pride and joy, showed three-forty-seven. Nowhere near the time when Tesla was scheduled to return, and the man was painfully exacting.

“CATURANGA,” Myka hissed, “intruder alert. Set off all precautions.”

“Understood,” CATURANGA replied in a low voice. “Ms. Bering, there is sufficient deuterium in the fuel cells to start the priming process already; I assume this information is of interest to you.”

“Do it,” she instructed, “but as unobtrusively as possible, okay? We have presumed hostiles incoming; use your best judgement.”

“Understood,” the AI repeated. “I have sent the alert signal to Mr. Tesla’s receiver; they should arrive in nine and a half minutes.”

Myka nodded, then moved over to where Christina had hidden herself away. She gently shook the girl’s shoulder. “Hey, wake up,” she said in a low voice, putting one finger on Christina’s lips. “Don’t make any noise; we’ve got an intruder coming, maybe several.”

She could feel Christina’s soft intake of breath, but the girl remained silent. Good.

“I need you to stay calm and stay hidden, okay?” Myka said, removing her hand. “I know you’re excited about what I can do, the shooting and all, but that also means I’m the expert here, okay? I’ll handle this, and you can help me best by making me not have to worry about your safety. That means making one hundred percent sure you’re not seen or heard. This is not the time for heroics, Christina. Please tell me you understand that.”

“Yes.” The reply was tiny. Scared.

“Hey, Chisel.” Myka made sure that her smile was audible, and squeezed the kid’s shoulder for good measure. “It’s okay. I got this. I’m trained for this, okay? Just stay quiet and hidden, and we’ll be alright.”

“Okay.” The word rode on a shuddering exhalation, but then Christina fell quiet.

“Thanks.” Myka squeezed the girl’s shoulder again, then got up. She took a few more fire blankets from the safety cupboard and shook them out with one arm, throwing them over Christina to make a pile that no one might suspect a child hiding under. She could hear the footfalls more loudly now, and knew there was more than one person coming. Three, she judged, maybe four. Potentially more, if they wore shoes that made fewer sounds. Her revolver had six bullets; she loosened it in her hip holster. She grimaced slightly at the thought of this many intruders; all healed, she knew she’d be able to take them on – her reflexes had kicked in the moment she heard the footsteps. With a still-immobilized arm, though? She’d rather not shoot these people, but she might have to. She checked the crack under the door and almost laughed – whoever was coming in had turned the hallway lights on; they’d be night blind in the workshop, and nicely silhouetted against the door.

She headed over to the fuse box and opened it silently. The breakers had phosphorescent labels, too, and she quickly killed the one for the overhead lighting – if the intruders came in and flipped the light switch, nothing would happen.

Well, no lights would turn on, anyway.

Then she took up station crouching behind the workbenches that lined the wall left and right of the door, and waited.

The steps came closer, then stopped, and there was a moment of whispering – probably instructions, maybe a discussion. Then the door opened, spilling amber-colored light into the room that was broken by the shadows of four people as they filed into the room. Myka didn’t see any arms on the first two; the last two carried truncheons or clubs or something along those lines.

The first man swore under his breath as he flipped the light switch without success. “Putnam, your light,” he hissed.

Guy #3 drew a cylinder from inside his coat, but before he could activate it, Myka was upon him and guy #4. She slammed the door shut to cut off the light, rammed her elbow into Putnam’s temple, and delivered, on the same turn, a chop with the edge of her hand to guy #4’s windpipe.

They both dropped, the other two turned, and Myka crouched and got out of range – she could see guy #1 and guy #2 milling about in the sudden dark, and made use of their inability to see to get at their backs. She found herself close to the stand with the cleaning equipment and snatched up a broom, thwacking the handle across the side of guy #2’s head and then planting the corner of the bristle crossbar in guy #1’s solar plexus. He wheezed and went down, but guy #2 just shook himself and came at her again.

Then someone – guy #4, probably – turned his flashlight on, and in the following confusion, two of the intruders rushed Myka and bore her to the ground. She hissed as pain lanced through her shoulder. One of the two then delivered a blow to her head that made her ears ring, but the other keeled off back, flailing his arms at something that was wrapped around his head. Myka’s grabbling fingers found the broomstick and thwacked it across the face of the man on top of her, then threw him off, rose, and decked him for good with a roundhouse kick. She turned to see what was going on with the other guy, and froze. Christina was on the man’s shoulders, holding the fire blanket close over his head, clinging to his back with her knees. He was turning in circles, and it was only a question of time until he’d ram into something that would shake the kid loose.

Myka swore and tried to make out where the other men were, and then the flashlight went out again and they were all unable to see.

And then a stationary white blue glow flared up.

The arc reactor was humming smoothly.

And guy #1 snatched Myka’s revolver out of her holster from behind her.

Fuck. “Christina,” Myka yelled. “Drop, and get into the suit.” She dodged one bullet and ducked behind a shelf to get closer to where the kid was still fighting with guy #3. “Into the suit!” she shouted again, with all the authority she could muster. The suit was bullet-proof – whatever else it was, that was what mattered. She took on guy #3 to distract him as Christina clambered off his back, using her momentum to turn him away-

And her right side exploded in a burst of pain.

Her ears rang and her knees buckled. She tried to tell her body to turn, turn, roll, get to cover, but it wouldn’t obey. A shadow sped past her, and as it passed, something about it hit her left shoulder and spun her around with a dizzying new wave of agony.

She forced her eyes to remain open, saw the suit seal itself shut over Christina, saw it vanish.

Then everything turned black.

Chapter Text

There was a muffled utterance from inside the intruder’s suit, and Helena shook her head. “Didn’t catch that,” she snapped. “Open your face plate. Slowly.”

And yet when the person did, the bottom dropped out of Helena’s world.

“Christina…” And then she realized that the girl was much, much older than nine, and tensed again. “Who are you?” she repeated.

“Christina Wells,” the girl gasped, her words tumbling over one another, “but I’m not your daughter, and we have to go back and save Myka.”

Helena’s ears started ringing as though someone had hit her helmet with a hammer. “What?” she asked, staring dazedly at the girl.

“We have to save Miss Bering! They were shooting at us and she was hit! Quickly, you need to go where I just came from, and save her!”

“Hey, kiddo, about that ‘where you just came from’,” Claudia intoned. “Where did you just come from?”

“1904,” the girl snapped, “but not your past, my present. A different timeline. Miss Bering explained all of this, but we don’t have time-” she broke off and furrowed her eyebrows in sudden puzzlement. “Except that… we do… I think?” and then her eyes rolled back and her head slumped forwards. Only the suit kept her standing, but it did start beeping.

Helena finally regained reign over herself and rushed forwards. “CATURANGA, diagnostics!” She tapped her own suit to open up, and its pieces sped off her as she headed towards the girl in the blue suit.

“I detect no injuries,” the AI replied, “but blood pressure and heart rate are elevated.”

“Yeah, no kidding if she was just shot at,” Claudia remarked.

“So she’s just unconscious?” Helena pressed. “Can we take her out of the suit safely?”

“Yes and yes, Ms. Wells,” CATURANGA replied.

“Open, then,” Helena snapped, and then caught this girl who claimed she was not her daughter in her arms. “What else can you tell me, CATURANGA?”

“DNA sample is a match for the Wells family,” the AI said while Helena moved the girl’s limbs into recovery position, “and she appears to be thirteen or fourteen years old. In good health but for, presumably, this recent fright. Her overall health, and the proportions of certain trace elements support her claim of being from the early twentieth century; however, the ratios of her molecular isotopes are… unusual.”

“As if she wasn’t from this world?” Claudia asked.

“That hypothesis would explain the differences, Ms. Donovan, although others might too.”

“Another universe, another timeline. A daughter born in 1891 who appears to be thirteen or fourteen and says she’s from 1904.” Claudia looked intently at Helena. “H.G., it does sound plausible.”

Helena bit her tongue. She both did and did not want to believe that it was plausible. If it was, then this was as near her daughter as she had encountered in over a century. If it was, though, it also meant that Myka lay shot, bleeding, potentially dying in that other universe, that other timeline, with no suit to help her. “CATURANGA, can you trace that suit’s origin so that I can travel there in my suit?”

“I can. However, may I remind you that we still do not have the means to produce sufficient claudions-”

“Then how did that suit get here?” Claudia asked, nodding her chin towards the empty suit.

“Rubber band effect,” Helena said, snapping her fingers and fighting the urge to drop the topic when the girl at her feet twitched at the sound. She needed to focus on Myka, not this child. “It didn’t so much go back as it was snapped back along the past of least resistance, since the universe that it was in recognized it as a foreign body.”

“Well, that would explain that part of the calculations,” Claudia nodded. “Okay, so we gotta get into Wells Industries, then, am I right?” She flexed and cracked her finger joints.

Helena blinked, then realized what the young woman was talking about. “Claudions. Yes. Yes, we do.”

“I’ll get on it,” Claudia said.

Then the girl took a shuddering breath and murmured something, and Helena’s attention snapped to her. “What was that?” she asked hesitantly. Truth be told, she would much rather have anyone else take care of this child who looked so much like her daughter and yet also so different.

“Myka,” the child said more clearly.

“We’re working on it,” Claudia called from the desk she had moved to. “Don’t worry, pipsqueak.”

“Not… pipsqueak,” the girl protested with a weak, but recognizable scowl. “Chisel.”

“Huh?”

The child huffed an annoyed breath, rolled herself up so that she was sitting, and repeated, “Chisel. If you must use a nickname. I’d rather you call me Miss Wells, though. I do not remember us being on a first name basis.”

“She’s your daughter alright, Miss Victorian Age,” Claudia said, and her words lodged themselves behind Helena’s sternum and twisted.

She turned to properly study the girl, at the dark, tousled curls, the pale skin, the clear brown eyes – lighter than her own, and the face around them softer than her sharp features, but there was no denying that this was Christina Wells.

Just not her Christina Wells.

And just as she was studying, she was being studied in turn. “You look just like I remember her,” this Christina Wells said then, and suddenly tears shot into her eyes. “I both did and did not want to believe Myka when she told me of you,” she said, pulling her knees up and wrapping her arms around them.

Helena’s heart plummeted even further. “You… your mother…”

“My mother died when I was seven,” Christina said quietly, and the first tear trickled from the corner of her eye. She pressed her lips together, though, swallowed, and then tried to sit up. “We need to get to Miss Bering,” she insisted.

“I told you we’re working on it,” Claudia repeated. “Besides, it’s time travel. No matter when we start out here, we can make sure to arrive just after you left, okay? It’ll be fine.”

And then Helena realized that Claudia was talking to her, as much as she was talking to Christina, and realized another thing: her own cheeks were wet.

Curious.

“Is that true?” Christina was looking away from Claudia to Helena for reassurance, and that was a gaze Helena had only one way to respond to.

She nodded. “Yes, love.” And then she realized a third thing: she had just called this girl, who was not her daughter even if she was Christina Wells, ‘love’.

For a second, raw, bottomless longing was visible in Christina’s eyes. Then they shuttered. Her jaw set angrily, and she hissed, “Do not call me that. You are not my mother.”

And even though her words were true, and Helena could not refute them, that did not negate the pain they dealt her. “I’m sorry,” she replied. “Would ‘Christina’ be alright with you, or should I,” she gritted her teeth and pushed out, “stick with ‘Miss Wells’?”

A flicker of similar hurt twitched across Christina’s face. Then the girl dipped her chin back onto her knees again. “Christina will do, I suppose.”

“Fu- um, fudge,” Claudia called out.

“What?”

“One, Mrs. F is here. Like, here here, as in outside the gate, looking, uh, kinda stormy?”

Helena would have very much liked to throw something, but contended herself with sighing. “Alright,” she said. “Two?”

“The labs we need are booked. Like, twenty-four-seven-for-the-next-five-years booked. I mean, H.G., they’re working on-”

“I don’t care if they’re working on world peace, Claudia,” Helena grated, “get us in there.”

Claudia groaned, looking as though she, too, was on the verge of throwing something. “I can’t,” she said. “You don’t have the clearance anymore, and the booking system has too many four-eye safeguards.” Then she set her chin and added, “And do not forget about Joshua, H.G., or we will have a situation.”

Helena flashed her a dark look. “I have not forgotten. I stand by my word. And we still have people on the inside; Amanda Martin, Jane Lattimer. I’ll talk with them.” She sighed again. “And with Mrs. Frederic too, I suppose.”

-_-_-

All told, it took them a week.

Helena clung to what Claudia had said: it was time travel. It did not matter when they set out, only when they arrived.

They would get to Myka in time to save her.

They had to.

A week of terse phone calls and in-person meetings, of appeasing Mrs. Frederic – who, when she learned of the arrival of Christina Wells, simmered down remarkably fast – of pulling every lever, utilizing every trick, planning for every single possible contingency. But finally here they were, one night away from gaining unauthorized access to one of the best-guarded laboratories on the planet.

And still Leena insisted on dinner. Every night, there was healthy food, and no talk of work at the table.

Helena had to admit, it brought an aspect of normalcy to days that were anything but. The table was fuller than usual, with Leena and Pete, Claudia and Christina, and on two of those seven nights, Jane and Amanda as well.

Christina had taken to the twenty-first century remarkably quickly. Far more quickly, if truth be told, than to Helena. The girl ‘hung out’ with Pete and Leena frequently, and Helena winced every time a modern word or phrase or pronunciation made its appearance in Christina’s parlance.

So when Christina, after dinner, sought out Helena and asked if she could speak with her, Helena was surprised, and irritatingly tongue-tied. “O- of course,” she stuttered. The others had already filed out of the dining room, and so Helena pulled out her chair again, then the one next to it.

Christina sat down gingerly, on the very edge. She opened her mouth as if to speak, then snapped it shut again.

“What is it?” Helena said, taking care to keep her voice inviting.

“I…” Christina fiddled with her belt buckle – she loved trousers. Fashion in general, and trousers in particular. There had been one remarkable, actually downright enjoyable shopping trip- but this was not what was on the girl’s mind, Helena was very certain of that. “When you go and get Myka,” Christina said suddenly, “will… will you take me back as well? Will I have to return there?”

Helena blinked. “We… haven’t actually talked of that, have we,” she said slowly.

“Nope,” Christina said; a habit she had acquired from Pete, as far as Helena knew.

Helena bit back her annoyance at it, and asked, “Do you have a preference?” instead. Among Leena’s hasty advice on how to deal with a sudden teenager, ‘agency’ and ‘respect their personhood’ had been prominent.

Christina, though, asked back, “Do I get to have a preference? I’m a foreign body in this universe, after all. Doesn’t it recognize me as such? Don’t I need to go back? I don’t want to be covered in the universe’s equivalent of nacre, or,” she shrugged helplessly, “cause a rift in space and time or something.”

Helena blinked again. “How on Earth do you get these ideas?” If this was Claudia’s doing, Helena would have to- and then Christina’s reply stopped her thoughts short.

“You talked about it,” Christina said. “When I came here. When I woke up from being unconscious.”

Helena, gaping, racked her brain, trying to remember events as they had happened that day.

“Something about rubber bands?” Christina prompted.

“Ah.” Helena nodded as she recalled the conversation, the sudden insight. It seemed Christina had woken from unconsciousness earlier than Helena had realized. “Well. Do you feel out of place? Or as though you’re being pulled back?”

“Yes,” Christina said immediately, “of course I do. I miss Uncle Bahadur, and Uncle Nikola. I miss understanding how the world works. More or less anyway. But… but here is where women can be CEOs, and heads of government, and wear trousers. And…” her face worked for a moment, and then she looked Helena straight in the eyes, just for the fraction of a second before her gaze dropped again. “And you,” she said with a shrug, then cleared her throat. “You’re here.”

Helena swallowed, and swallowed again, and tried to blink away the sudden tears in her eyes. “I haven’t been around all that much,” she said, suddenly painfully aware of that fact. “I… didn’t know if you wanted me around.”

Christina’s teeth were clenched sharply. Helena could see the effort it cost the girl to open her mouth to speak. “I… I wouldn’t mind.”

“So… so would you like to stay, then? I can look over the data we’ve assembled so far, see if there’s any indication that staying here is bad for the universe, or for you,” Helena offered.

Christina, with her eyes still fixed on her knees, nodded mutely.

“Alright,” Helena said, and suddenly felt as if she’d run, and won, a marathon. As if a puzzle piece had clicked into place – not the final one, but one that informed the rest of the puzzle by its mere presence. “Alright.” She took a deep breath and released it silently.

“Will Myka be alright?” Christina asked, and now she looked at Helena with fear in her eyes. “Are you sure you’ll arrive there at the right time?”

Helena, who asked herself those very questions every hour of every day, gritted her teeth and nodded. “Yes,” she said, willing it to be truth rather than self-reassurance.

Christina cocked her head, and for a moment, Helena would have sworn that her dau- that the girl looked right through her. Then she nodded, and dropped her gaze again, and said, “Okay.” She pressed her lips together again, and swallowed, and Helena recognized the behavior from her own from earlier – Christina was trying very hard not to cry.

“She means a lot to you, doesn’t she?” she said, surprised at finding her own voice somewhat hoarse.

Christina nodded without saying anything, and twin drops landed on her jeans.

Helena felt at a loss. Everything in her strained to rush over and hug her daughter, and strained at the same time not to rush over and hug this girl, because in truth she had no idea if an embrace would be welcome at this point.

And then she heard, in her thoughts, a little voice that sounded just like Leena say, ‘just ask her, silly’.

“Would you-” It came out in a croak. Helena cleared her throat and started over. “Would you, ah, like a hug?”

Christina hesitated, then nodded again, and again the motion shook loose tears.

Helena stood up and took the two steps that brought her to Christina’s side, then wrapped her arms around the girl’s shoulders and pulled her close. Christina resisted – just for the fraction of a second, but noticeable enough for someone who was, always, watching and noticing for these little bits of grit in the metaphorical shoe. And then the girl’s spine softened and she leaned into Helena and let out a sob, and Helena felt both soothed and further wounded by the gesture.

This was not her daughter, and she was not the girl’s mother. The last seven days had made that abundantly clear for both of them. But they both had lost someone, and maybe, with the universes aligning and fates smiling down on all of them, they could fill each other’s void, however imperfectly.

Helena clung to that as the girl – as Christina started to cling to her.

“I…,” she announced when Christina had calmed down a little, “will go to my workshop now. See about the data. Probably dreadfully boring, but if you wanted to, you… you could join me.”

Christina looked up at her. Her face was sodden with tears and swollen from crying, and out of instinct, Helena’s hand came up to smooth back the girl’s hair from her face. Christina swallowed and nodded. “Yeah,” she said, in a voice thick with tears still. “Yeah, I’d like that.”

“Well, go on then,” Helena said with a little smile, nudging the girl’s shoulder. “Bring your book?”

It was oddly peaceful, Helena thought ten minutes later, to work on her computer and whiteboard while Christina sat on a desk chair, one leg pulled up under her, the other dangling to turn the chair, deeply immersed in a copy of The Golden Compass that Jane had sent her, compliments of Rebecca.

“You’re a bit like Lord Asriel,” Christina said after a long while of companionable silence, and put the book on the desk next to her, obviously finished with it. “Researching strange particles, building something to move from one universe to the next.”

Helena, assuming that this Lord Asriel was a character in the book, tilted her head. “That does sound like a possible parallel,” she said carefully. “What kind of a character is he?”

“Hard to tell,” Christina said with a sharp crease between her eyebrows. “I mean he just killed Roger, Lyra’s friend, but-”

“He what?” Helena stood up from her chair, grabbed the book and read the last few pages. She let the book sink. “I am nothing like that,” she choked out. “I could never-” she stopped and drew in a great, heaving breath. She was shivering, actively shivering, having read a few measly sentences about the death of a child, merely a character in a book, someone she knew nothing about. Her head reeled as though someone had struck her a glancing blow, as though she was sitting in Christina’s chair and someone had hurled it into spinning and changed gravity to boot. Her hands let the book drop where it would and sought the desk, clinging to its stability.

And then a smaller hand touched hers, clumsy and hesitant, patting an attempt at comfort like the stumbling pattern of a newly-learned dance. “I’m sorry,” a teenaged voice said. “I should not have said that.”

Her daughter’s voice, had she lived, would have sounded like that. Helena laughed at the idea, at the wonder and the pain of it, and marveled that it came out as a sob. Marveled that, suddenly, she was embracing this teenager, no – clinging to her, the way the child had clung to her earlier, as if the other was what kept them from drowning, what kept the confusion at bay by virtue of undeniably, warmly, breathingly, heart-beatingly existing.

Having realized that she was, in fact, overstepping, Helena cleared her throat and dropped her arms. “My apologies,” she said.

“No, I-” Christina began, shaking her head wildly. “I’m sorry.”

Helena took in a breath and nodded. “Then perhaps it is best if we both simply… move on, is it not,” she said.

“But-” Christina started to protest, but then hung her head. “Alright,” she whispered.

Helena shook her head. “No, please,” she said. “Tell me.”

“Did you…” Christina stopped herself again. Her face, mouth, jaw worked for a moment, then settled. Her eyes were anguished but unwavering as she asked, “Did you… love… your daughter?”

“Yes,” Helena croaked, not bothering to hide how deeply this question affected her. “Yes, by all that is and has ever been important to me, I loved her.” In reply to this, Christina’s mouth trembled and her eyes filled again. And as if Helena heard, again, a voice telling her so, she suddenly knew what it truly was that Christina was asking, what it was that Christina needed to hear, and added, “And you can be very, very certain that your mother loved you too.”

Christina stared at Helena for a moment longer, then her tears spilled over and she rushed into Helena’s arms again. And Helena received her willingly, wrapping the girl in the tightest embrace yet as she cried, as they both cried, over the ones they had lost.

Chapter Text

“Ugh.” Claudia pulled the mask off her face. A silicone replica of the face of a renowned French scientist, lifelike enough to fool the systems and safeguards put into place around the fabled Wells Industries High Energy Particles Lab, or, as it was known among the admittedly small crowd of particle physicists, HiPaL, landed on a desk with a rubbery ‘flop’.

“Did you check-” Helena began.

“That the cameras are looped? Duh,” Claudia replied with a look that said she felt borderline insulted by the question. Then she nodded her chin at Helena’s face. “Can you please take yours off now too? It gives me the creeps.”

Helena quickly discarded her own borrowed face and wig, and shook out her hair. It had irked her to have to pass for a man, but it had been the best-suited combination on short notice, considering that he would have to be British. Her ability to replicate an American accent was, everyone had agreed, atrocious.

They then opened the boxes and crates that had been brought in the day before, signed off by Jane Lattimer, whose domain the purported experiment of doctors Emilie Pontgaré and Robert Fletcher-Shrewsbury fell into, and Douglas Fargo, chief of HiPaL security. Or rather it had been signed off with the authority of Douglas Fargo, whose ID had been duplicated by Claudia after Amanda had swiped it off him during a lunch they’d taken together.

That same ID had allowed Claudia to access the scan files of the equipment and swap them for much more innocuous ones – ones that did not, for example, show three armored suits in the three largest crates.

They had done their best to think of everything – Doctor Pontgaré had received a phone call early last week that informed her she had won a surprise trekking trip to the Moroccan Atlas, and Doctor Fletcher-Shrewsbury had gotten a written invitation to judge a gardening competition in the Hebrides, apparently a life-long ambition of his, as had the trekking trip been for Doctor Pontgaré.

Claudia and Helena now worked quickly to set up and activate the gear they had brought to ‘supplement’ the particle accelerator dug into the mountains northeast of Ventura. They worked well together – it was refreshing, Helena thought, to have someone to collaborate with who had such a quick mind, such a comprehensive understanding of what they were working on, and who knew that ‘right’ was not always synonymous with ‘good’, or with ‘legal’.

She had an inkling that Mrs. Frederic shared that last trait. The woman had not batted an eye when Helena and Claudia had presented their plan, and had poured considerable – and most certainly half-legal at best – resources towards its fruition. Why SHIELD still supported the mission now that both suits were in their grasp, Helena had not understood until Pete had told her that no agent would ever be left behind if their team could help it – and apparently SHIELD counted Myka as such, now.

Helena had most certainly not argued with that.

“Okay,” Claudia announced. “Josh-Tracker checks out, and so do all the readings we’re getting from the accelerator. Double-check that, please, then we’re green for the next step.”

Helena nodded, running her eyes over the readouts to verify Claudia’s work. “Check,” she said at last.

“Excellent. Strap in, then.”

This was the part that Helena liked least. No matter how much she had argued that out in Yellowstone, Myka’s suit had not been immobilized either to allow the claudions to suffuse it evenly, Claudia had put her foot down that this was a precision operation, not trusting in blind chance. Helena had to give her that, and the calculations backed it up.

That did not make her like the cage, as she mentally called it, any better at all.

Her suit was already attached to it, and stood open as it waited for her. Behind it, and closed, was Myka’s. Both suits’ arms and legs were connected to struts that were strong enough to hold them immobile even if for some indiscernible reason Helena decided to want out of confinement – the only way to do that would be to give Claudia a spoken signal, who would then shut off the experiment remotely. Once inside the suit, Helena would have no other way of proceeding, and that kind of powerlessness did not sit well with her.

She would have to bear it, though, to get to Myka – and she would have borne anything to get to Myka, no matter how hard.

She checked her suit yet again, then straightened her shoulders, took a deep breath, and stepped into it.

“Welcome, Ms. Wells,” CATURANGA greeted her. “All my self-diagnostics show perfect results for both suits.”

She dismissed him with barely a grunt, and watched Claudia get into her suit as well, for protection. While Helena’s calculations had clearly shown that claudions were, by themselves, harmless – and that the universe did not seem to have a grudge against Christina staying, a fact that had provoked another fierce embrace last night – there was a chance Claudia’s suit would be needed in other ways, not the least of which was the process-inherent radioactivity.

“Communications check,” Helena called when she saw Claudia close her helmet.

“Hearing you loud and clear,” Claudia replied. “Right, I’ll check the whole megillah again, make sure you didn’t pull it out of whack climbing in there, then we’re good to go.”

Helena suppressed the urge to tell the young woman to hurry up. Safety was important, as was precision; they agreed on it, and had gone over the precautions time and time again, weeding out the irrelevant ones and paring the necessary ones down to a manageable amount, achievable within their time frame. They were already hurrying it along as much as they could.

“Green,” Claudia announced and strode over to the main controller console. “You ready?”

“As I’ll ever be,” Helena grated. It would take precisely four minutes and thirty-three seconds to build up enough claudions to allow the suits to travel to the Quantum Realm. She was not looking forward to those four minutes and thirty-three seconds of enforced immobility. Anything, she repeated to herself, to get to Myka. Anything.

“Alright, here we go,” Claudia said. “Three, two, one, flip-ety-doo-da.” She flipped the switch, and the sound of the accelerator changed.

The progress bar in Helena’s in-helmet display slowly began to climb, and she told Claudia so.

“Yup, reading the same thing here,” the young woman confirmed. “Two percent – three – four; that your rate too?”

Helena tried to nod, but even that was impossible now. She gritted her teeth and said, “Yes.”

“Excellent.” Claudia rubbed her hands together, then swung them loosely at her side. “Alright,” she went on, “how are we gonna spend the next four minutes thirty? I mean, I wanted to listen to music, but somebody vetoed that, so what are we gonna do? Truth or dare? Hey, dare you to scratch your nose.”

“Not funny, Cla-”

And then Claudia’s right arm came up and fired a ball of plasma in Helena’s direction that missed her by fractions of an inch. She felt its heat pass by her torso. “What on Earth?!”

“I don’t know,” Claudia shouted back, sounding panicked. “I swear, H.G., that wasn’t me. My suit – fuck, have I been hacked?!”

“You bloody well better check,” Helena bellowed back as Claudia’s suit took out the crate that Myka’s suit had come in.

“Hang on, hang on, I- shit!” The latest shot had come dangerously close to the main control panel.

“Claudia, deactivate your suit now!”

“I’m trying, I’m trying!!”

“CATURANGA, can you access Claudia’s suit’s controls remotely? Can you immobilize it, deactivate the weapons, anything?”

“I’m afraid I can’t, Ms. Wells.”

“Analysis, then – how is this even possible?”

“Oh, I can tell you that,” an odious voice purred through Helena’s in-helmet speakers.

Claudia froze mid-stride, as if someone had pressed the pause button – which, considering everything, someone might actually have done.

“MacPherson,” Helena spat. Her fingers twitched in her immobilized gloves.

“The very same,” MacPherson said. And then Claudia’s suit performed a bow.

“Fuck you,” Claudia fumed.

“Language, Miss Donovan,” MacPherson replied with a click of his tongue. “You and I both know that the suit is able to twist its torso three hundred and sixty degrees, regardless of what that would do to your spine. So I suggest you hush now, and let the grown-ups talk.”

“Fu-,” Claudia began.

“Claudia,” Helena snapped. “Please,” she added. She did not care for the idea of the young woman’s torso being twisted three hundred and sixty degrees.

“Yes, Claudia,” MacPherson imitated her, “please have the good sense to listen to your elders.”

There was no further reply. Helena knew – hoped, in any case – that that meant that Claudia was furiously at work on regaining control of her suit.

At the very least, the sound of the accelerator had not changed, and the progress bar in her display was steadily climbing, currently passing twenty-five percent. The cage was set to auto-release the suits when they were fully saturated, and then she would be free to… interfere. In the meantime, distracting MacPherson from anything Claudia might be attempting was the best course of action, surely.

“Talk, then,” she snapped at MacPherson.

Twenty-eight percent.

“Did you never wonder,” the man replied in his most unctuous tones, “how a young woman, barely old enough for college, built a suit all by herself?”

“She didn’t,” Helena replied. “She based it off of other people’s work, mine included. The first time something’s done, it’s a breakthrough; the second, third and fourth time hardly are.” She had an idea of what he was insinuating, but this was less about finding out about that, and more about keeping him talking.

Thirty-three percent.

An indicator in the upper left of her display turned green, and she breathed a bit easier. The finger commands she had tapped into the glove’s internal sensors had not only isolated CATURANGA, the signal now confirmed that Myka’s and her suit were still safe and untampered with. She set to feverish work, grateful for the first time that her suit was immobilized – he would not see her fingers move; not a twitch would be visible while she tapped her commands.

“Oh, I fully agree,” MacPherson said. “Especially when one uses well-known code of halfway similar devices already in existence, and doesn’t think to check for manufacturer’s back doors.”

“I did check, you fu-” The suit twisted painfully, and Claudia stopped with a yelp.

“Ah, ah, ah, ah, Miss Donovan,” MacPherson chided. “Do not presume to contradict me again.”

If sheer incandescent rage were able to interrupt a remote-controlled take-over, Helena knew Claudia would be free already.

“What do you want, MacPherson?” she asked him.

Forty-two.

“Want? I?” He laughed – pleasantly, as though she had asked him what his favorite high tea sandwich was. “Oh, but I already have it. No, this is simply a test run, a proof of concept, you see. I’m recording the input I’m getting off of this suit, for marketing purposes. The military is extremely interested in the possibilities.”

“I bet they are.” Helena spat – she had to sound the part, and it was not even hard.

Forty-seven.

MacPherson laughed again. “The remote-control capabilities in particular have raised a lot of positive commentary,” he said. “We shall keep them among us, of course; it wouldn’t do, now would it, to deliver such suits to our allies and let them know that we can turn their own army of suits against them if we so wish.”

Fifty-one.

“So this is simply for money?” Helena asked incredulously.

“Oh, of course not, my dear Miss Wells. Don’t be crass, now.” He tutted. “No, you see, my own research tells me that there are possibilities inherent in these particles that allow one to turn back one’s own body clock – surely you can see the interest inherent in that for a man my age. Think about it – prolonged life, eternal even! For a price, yes, of course, but also for the betterment of mankind! Just think how a beneficial leader could rule a country forever, to the good of all its citizens.”

“You are delusional,” Helena scoffed, but in the back of her mind, something told her he was spot on about the healing properties of the claudions as applied to human bodies. There had been a project about it at Wells Industries, if she remembered correctly. One among the many she had had to stop, since the project head had refused to turn it towards civilian uses rather than militaristic ones. She had thought about looking further into that, but of course it had not been a priority-

“Genius was often mocked as such,” MacPherson said in falsely modest tones that sounded like nails on a blackboard.

Sixty-four.

Helena scoffed. “Genius doesn’t steal other’s achievements.” Her fingers longed to choke him, slap him, show him exactly what she thought of him, but she kept them in check as they danced over the in-glove controls.

“On the contrary,” MacPherson replied. “Take good old Tom Edison – barely invented anything himself, but ask anyone nowadays and they’ll list dozens of patents and apparatuses he simply took credit for.”

Helena’s mood darkened even further. Oh, she well knew. Nikola Tesla had been her friend; she knew personally how foul of a creature Thomas Edison was. “And you think history will do you the same service?”

Seventy.

Soon.

“History was always written by the victors,” MacPherson gave back. “It will remember you as the CEO with the vaguely amusing pun of a name, who tried, briefly, to swing the world’s largest manufacturer of weapons to her hippie ideas and failed. Yellowstone? No,” he said, “the world won’t remember you for that. Even now it’s being kept under wraps, and the media are already chasing after a different dog-and-pony today and will doubtlessly bark up yet another tree tomorrow.”

Helena suppressed a snort. So he thought she was doing all of this for fame?

Seventy-seven.

“We shall see,” she told him, calling up a smugness she had no basis for except for her hope to unbalance him further with it. Let him think she had an ace up her sleeve – even if all she had, right now, was Claudia potentially regaining control of her suit, and her own suit being freed in fifty seconds. “I’ll happily dance on your grave when all this is over. I doubt the world will have any idea of where to even find it.”

Another small indicator started blinking in the corner of Helena’s display. No text, no symbol, just a little purple dash blinking oddly… rhythmically?

Morse code, she suddenly realized.

D-I-A-K-P-H-M-T-L-K-N

Claudia. Keep him talking.

Helena set her jaw and redoubled her efforts.

Eighty.

“Do you have any requests for your interment?” she asked.

“You truly are astonishingly stubborn,” MacPherson replied. “I’d say that you would be better served thinking about your own funerary rites.”

-C-N-F-I-R-M-D-L-O-C-8-W-I-L-L-P-W-N-T-H-E-F-C-K-R-

Confirmed – location? And an announcement to pwn – whatever that meant, if it wasn’t a typo – the… well. He was.

Eighty-nine.

U-T-A-K-C-A-R-O-M-Y-K-A

Helena smiled. She would do just that. “Oh, I already have,” she replied to MacPherson’s latest taunt, making things up as she went. “I don’t need you to know them, though; I, unlike you, have people I trust.”

Ninety-five.

“Oh, I highly doubt you-”

The bindings clicked loose, and Helena jumped into the air as her repulsors fired up. Behind her, Myka’s suit hovered likewise. Without missing a beat, just as she had programmed it, her suit took her into the Quantum Realm, with Myka’s suit right on her heels.

Helena was flung through space – first the accelerator control room as it mushroomed into hugeness around her, then the gaps between molecules, then atoms and their electron ‘clouds’, and then further, to a place she found literally indescribable.

And someone waited there for her.

“Hey there,” he said, through the speakers of his own suit. “My name is Joshua Donovan. I imagine you’re looking for me.”

Chapter Text

Helena was taken aback. “Y-yes,” she stuttered, then caught herself. “As a matter of fact, yes, I am.”

He chuckled. “You were probably expecting to have to search for me,” he said. “Well, here I am.” He spread his arms.

“How?” Helena found herself wary of him. In his suit, she could not see his face – and while the suit he was wearing did look like the photos and plans in his files, he might still not be who he said he was. At least, though, he was a human-shaped figure to focus on; the rest of the surroundings… were not. Disconcertingly, dizzyingly not. So focus on him she did, swallowing her worries about Claudia for the now, and tapped another command into her gloves that would activate the DNA scanner – if it would work through his suit. Myka’s suit, meanwhile, floated gently in the – air? space? – next to her, awaiting further instructions.

“Ah.” His voice turned serious. He took a deep breath. “When I arrived here, it came as a shock. Even with the suit. I mean…” he turned and gave a gesture that comprised their environment. Helena did not follow it; she kept her eyes firmly on him. “Weird, am I right?” he continued. “Anyway, it… it was difficult, at first. I mean, your mind actually can shape this place. Look, I can-” he bent down and, for want of a better word, picked up a piece of, for want of a better word, matter. Then he proceeded to shape it, without touching it, into different forms as it hovered over his palm. “Weird, see?” he reiterated. “And a human mind can take weird only for so long, you know.”

That, Helena knew intimately. She nodded.

“So I was kinda glad,” the man continued, “when the Ancient One found me and explained things to me.”

“The Ancient One.” Helena found herself dubious. At that very moment, her display lit up with a confirmation of the man’s identity – as far as CATURANGA could tell, with all its sensors, this was indeed Joshua Donovan. She breathed a bit more easily for that, and her worry for his sister made a comeback, and was promptly dismissed again. This realm they were in was connected to anywhere, Helena knew, and that meant anywhen, too. Claudia Donovan would not fight MacPherson alone; if this meeting here panned out, Joshua would be joining her soon, and seemed in shape for a fight.

Joshua nodded. “They are… well, ancient. I say ‘they’, because they’re kinda… not quite either, you know? Not male, not female. In between, or ‘not applicable’, or whatever. Anyway, they have the power to access this place, or maybe they live here now? They didn’t really talk much about themselves.” He shrugged. “But they did tell me that I needed to stay here until you came looking. When I asked how long that would be, they said it didn’t matter, because time kinda wasn’t a thing here?” He shrugged again. “And I mean, they were kinda right about that.” He sighed. “I know, I know,” he went on, raising his hands in a conciliatory gesture, “I’m saying ‘kinda’ a lot, and that doesn’t sound very scientific, right? But trust me, it’s the best I can do. If you stay here for any, hah, time, you’ll understand. Things are… vague here. Except for the Ancient One, they are real. Definite. It’s hard to explain how; easier if you saw them yourself, but that’s probably not going to happen.” Then he cocked his head. “Or maybe…” He seemed to think about something for a moment, then nodded to himself. “Yeah, why not. Follow me,” he said, and turned and began to walk away.

Walking? Helena shook her head. On what surface? There did not seem to be any, not that she could see. She carefully fired up her repulsors – glad that they worked – and followed him. Myka’s suit ghosted along behind her.

They rounded a… structure, and saw two people in the distance. As they came closer, Helena realized that one of them was the man she was following. Or at least someone wearing the same suit. “Is this-”

“Me?” He gave a chuckle. “Yep. That’s when I met the Ancient One. Like I said, this place is kinda malleable. In flux. You can access any time, um, anytime.” He gestured towards the two people. “Just listen in, will ya?”

“-a person in a similar suit will arrive here,” the non-suited person was saying. They were indeed, in a very odd way, real. Solid. More so than the realm around them, more even than the man in front of them. And, yes, they were also ‘kind of in between’; Helena now saw what Joshua had meant. Timeless, too – it was hard to ascertain if they were young or old; they were bald, so she could not go off the color of their hair, and their face had East Asian features that could be fifty years old as easily as seventy-five, or thirty-five – or something else entirely. “She’ll be looking for a man, a woman, and a child,” the Ancient One was saying, “and she will find you first – the man. Tell her she’s welcome to find the woman, too, but she must not go on looking for the child – that quest is doomed to failure, and has at the same time already succeeded. If she persists in it, she will bring chaos to her world more calamitous, more destructive, than anything she planned to do in Yellowstone.”

“Yellowstone?” the other Joshua said, sounding taken aback. “What’s she doing in Yellowstone?”

“Nothing that needs to concern you,” the Ancient One said. “You just need to tell her. She will understand the reference; she is who it is for, not you. Do you understand?”

“Got it,” the man nodded. “More calamitous, more destructive than whatever she was planning in Yellowstone, if she goes on looking for her kid. That’s a bit mean, though,” he added. “Who wouldn’t go on looking for their kid?”

“She will understand,” the Ancient One repeated. “She should, anyway,” they added, half under their breath.

The first Joshua turned to Helena and whispered. “Well, do you?” but she shushed him. What she understood, she did not like, but that was not a conversation to be had with him.

“Okay, so I tell her that,” the other Joshua said, “and then I can leave?”

The Ancient One nodded. “Precisely.”

“And if, you know, I was to leave right now? I mean I got people waiting for me out there.” He thrust his thumb over his shoulder.

“Ah! I’m glad you’re asking.”

The Ancient One gave a peculiar wave of their hands, and both figures blurred for a moment. When they stopped, the other Joshua doubled over, and Helena heard him retch in his suit.

“Fuck,” he moaned. “Jesus Fuck, give a man a warning next time.”

“Well, you did ask,” the Ancient One said mildly. “This is your answer. And to answer your next question: if she does not heed my warning, the outcome is even worse. There are malleable points in every timeline, every universe, and there also are points which need to remain untouched. The Sorcerer Supreme,” they gestured at themselves with a small bow, “knows the difference. Trust me, and do as I ask. I shall not ask again.”

“Alright, alright,” Joshua was wheezing, still bent over, hands on knees. “Jeez. Okay, so I’ll wait here, and I’ll tell her. Then can I leave?”

“Of course,” the Ancient One said, smiling slightly. “However, you need to return to her entry point, not yours. That, I’m afraid, would be cheating.”

The other Joshua huffed. “Spoilsport.”

The Ancient One’s smile deepened. Then they raised their eyebrows, as if they had just remembered something. “Oh, and be ready for a fight upon your return.” And then they vanished.

The rest of the scene dissolved like morning mist in the sun, and Helena turned to the original Joshua. “And you did as they asked? Waited here for me all that time?” She was not sure why she was asking – he clearly had not returned to his sister. Claudia would not have been as heartbroken, as desperate otherwise. And perhaps that was why Helena needed to hear him say it – that he had kept his sister waiting, had given that sacrifice, had deemed it necessary after what he had seen.

“Fuck yeah,” Joshua nodded. “After that trip they took me on? Dude, you better not go on looking for your kid, that’s all I can say.” He cleared his throat, sounding as though he was remembering bile. “That’s how serious this is, okay? I did my part, and now you do yours. Deal?”

Well, that confirmed that. A muscle twitched in Helena’s cheek at the use of ‘dude’ once more, but she focused more on what else the Ancient One had said about her quest. “When they said I had already succeeded,” she said, more to herself than to him, “did they mean I’d already found her?”

“Your kid?” When Helena nodded, Joshua tilted his helmeted head. “Well, you… wouldn’t you be the one to know that? I mean, she’s your kid, yeah?”

Helena sighed. There really was only one reply to that, was there. “Kinda,” she said.

Joshua looked at her for a moment, then snorted a dry laugh. “I see the place is getting to you,” he said. “I’d say ‘don’t stay too long’, but it’s pretty much meaningless if you can leave to any point in time. Speaking of, I’m outta here.” He squared his shoulder and touched a control area on his left forearm. “Fight, yeah? How bad?”

“Not sure, as a matter of fact,” Helena said apologetically. “Most definitely a fight. Potentially with a person in another suit, based on your design, which you want to vanquish but not destroy.” She hesitated for a moment, then added, “In HiPaL.” That would give him enough preparation without incapacitating him with worry for his ‘baby sister’, she hoped.

“Ah.” He nodded. “Right. You came in that way, right?” He pointed vaguely in the direction from whence they had come.

“Does it matter?” Helena asked back.

He nodded. “I see you’re getting the hang of it. Best of luck with your woman, and really. Like, really. Let go of that quest of yours. I mean the Ancient One did say you already succeeded, yeah? Focus on that, alright?”

And he was gone, as if he had snapped himself out of this place.

She was left alone but for Myka’s suit hovering next to her.

She huffed out a breath. “CATURANGA,” she said, “get out of safety mode.” At the same time, just to be on the safe side, she pressed the corresponding finger commands.

“I am back in standard mode,” the AI announced.

“Thank goodness,” Helena sighed. “Disable Mr. Donovan’s tracker, please, and activate the one for Myka.”

“At once.”

A beacon began to blink on her display. Helena was startled; it seemed to be incredibly close – but then if time did not really have meaning here, neither would distance. Why she had do go anywhere at all, she did not know, but she did trust the tracker; after all, she had built it. She set out. Myka’s suit followed close behind.

When she arrived at her destination, she instructed, “Defensive mode, CATURANGA. Ready Myka’s suit to render assistance as necessary. Are the medical features functional?”

“Fully so, Ms. Wells.”

“Excellent.” She had toyed with the idea from the very beginning, and when Christina had spoken of firearms, Helena had resolved to go through with her plan. The suit was now able to sterilize wounds as well as cauterize them if necessary, and could administer assorted medications as aerosols via the nostrils.

Helena hoped it would not be necessary; she knew Myka was capable of defending herself, but defending yourself in a firefight relied on luck as well as capability, and who knew how Lady Luck had favored Myka that day?

Helena took a deep breath. “Righty-ho,” she exhaled. Then she took the final step forward.

Chapter Text

Myka remembered the last few days in little scenes like flash cards, as if her mind was trying to prompt her.

One scene: a dark-haired man with a mustache bent over her. She felt so warm, and so chilly at the same time, and she knew that she needed to tell him something, but she couldn’t remember what it was, and then she sank again.

One scene: a silver-and-green suit dropped to its knees next to her.

One scene: she was floating, and everything was dark, and everything hurt, and then it didn’t.

One scene: a room with bright lights in her eyes and sharp beeps in her ears.

One scene: another, less bright room, and a head of dark, long hair resting face-down on the little bit of mattress between Myka’s arm and the edge of her bed.

One scene: the same room, but this time there was a teenager sitting in the chair next to the bed, a book in her hand.

It was as if Myka was waking up by increments, each time a little longer than the last, each time a bit more focused than the last. The next time she woke up, she knew who was sleeping in the visitor’s chair next to her bed.

Helena.

Curled in on herself with her knees tucked up and her feet wedged underneath the armrest, Helena Wells, richest woman in the world, was sleeping in a chair next to Myka’s hospital bed.

It made Myka feel oddly peaceful, and she sank back into sleep.

The next time she woke up, a nurse was busying himself with her IV, and Christina was giggling over something with Pete while Helena looked on indulgently. Then Helena’s gaze wandered back and met Myka’s, and her lips formed a sudden, silent ‘oh’.

Myka smiled at her, and promptly fell asleep again.

The next time she must have been dozing for a while, because she knew that beyond soft, gentle beeps and the rustle of a book’s pages, the room was silent. No Pete jokes, no teenage giggles. She knew Helena would be there, though, and indeed when she opened her eyes, she found Helena’s gaze focused on her.

“Hey,” she said quietly. It came out voiceless, just a soft sigh.

“Hello,” Helena replied, in much the same tones, then cleared her throat.

Myka saw Helena moisten her lips very delicately, and suddenly realized how parched she herself felt. Her eyes cast around, trying to see if there was any-

“Would you like a bit of water?” Helena suggested. She closed her book and put it on the bedside table, picking up a glass with a straw instead.

Myka smiled and nodded. The movement pulled at her neck muscles, and she winced.

“Ah, yes,” Helena said with a small, empathetic grimace. “Best not to move too much just yet, alright?” She held the glass close to Myka and guided the straw to her lips.

The water was cool and clear and nice. Myka exhaled softly, happily, and drank some more. “What time is it?” she then asked.

Helena’s eyebrows rose. “Eleven-forty-two at night,” she said after a quick glance at her wristwatch, “but surely the better question is ‘what day is it?’, is it not?”

“I was working up to that,” Myka confessed.

“Ah.” Helena gave her a small smile. Before she answered, though, she glanced at the glass of water. “Are you done with that for now, Myka?”

“Mh-hm,” Myka confirmed, and watched Helena put the glass back on the table. “Well, what day is it, then? And don’t say ‘Friday’,” she added. “I want specifics.” Then, out of the blue, a yawn overcame her – and this time, not just her neck hurt but her whole torso. “Ow,” she said, with feeling.

Helena sat up sharply. “Do you need pain medicine? Should I call a nurse?”

“No,” Myka said firmly. She’d felt much worse, not all that long ago; this was bearable. And while she was awake and alert enough to process things, she wanted answers. “C’mon, spill it, Wells,” she said.

“It so happens,” Helena said, “that it actually is Friday. July twenty-fifth, to be exact.”

Myka swallowed. That was a full three weeks later than the last date she remembered, even given the time she’d spent with Tesla, Caturanga and- “Christina,” she said, prompted by that memory. “Did I see Christina in here? Wearing pants?”

A peculiar smile appeared on Helena’s face – it was tinged with wonder, puzzlement, and a bit of nerves around the corners. “Yes,” she said, “that was Christina. The one you met and sent to me, not the one I lost. But…” she sighed, and her smile turned sad and accepting, “apparently this is the best solution all around. It is a long story, and I would not bother you with it. You’re recuperating, you’re tired – is there anything you need; anything I can get you?”

Myka bit the inside of her lip. There was one thing – one thing that had been on her mind ever since she’d laid in the mud in Yellowstone and decided that she really only had one way forward. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Helena, I’m so, so sorry.”

Helena blinked. “Wh- whatever for?”

Myka hesitated, then went for it. “I… when I tackled you. In Yellowstone. I… I knew that part of why you were… doing what you were doing was because you thought I was dead. And I knew that by stopping you the way I was planning, I might get myself killed for real. And I did it anyway; I had to. It was the only way I could think of to stop you. I… I was fully prepared for that to be my… my last move. Including what that would mean for you if you survived. And I’m sorry about that. Helena, I would… I would love to be able to say I’d never hurt you, but apparently I would, and I… I’m sorry.”

Helena’s mouth hung slightly open as she listened to Myka. Then she snapped it shut and shook her head wildly. “No, Myka, please. Please don’t… don’t feel sorry about that. It was my own bloody fault; I was the one who flew to Yellowstone and started blasting away at the ground; I was the one who put you in that position. If anything, I am sorry, for pushing you away the day before, and for bloody well shooting you out of the sky the day of. Myka, I almost killed you!”

“But that’s exactly what I mean,” Myka gave back. Tears started to blur her vision, and she blinked them away angrily. “If I-”

“Oh will you both shut up,” a sleepy, grumpy teenaged voice interrupted them. “No one killed anyone, okay? No harm done, no apologies necessary. For goodness’ sake, it isn’t all that hard.” And then there was a rustle of sheets, as if someone was turning resolutely away from all the noise and nonsense, and pulled their blanket over their head.

Myka and Helena looked at each other, eyebrows raised on both foreheads, and both mouths hanging slack. Then the corners of Helena’s mouth twitched, and soon they were both suppressing their laughter. Myka's ribs hurt from it, but she welcomed it, all things considered.

“Has she been that way with you as well?” Helena asked under her breath, wiping a tear from the corner of an eye surreptitiously.

“I think I caught the start of it,” Myka gave back in a conspiratorial whisper.

“Or perhaps you caused the start of it,” Helena replied. “You and your scandalous trousers. Now that is something you should be sorry for.”

“Corrupting your-” Myka caught herself and cursed inwardly for ruining the mood with her blunder. “Um, Christina, I mean,” she ended lamely.

“It’s alright,” Helena sighed, all signs of mirth vanished in an instant. She ran a hand through her hair. “I’ve slipped up more often than I care to remember; we all have, Christina included. It’s a bit of a minefield at times, but the times it’s not, it is…” she pinched her lips together and shook her head. Again the corners of her mouth twitched, but not with laughter this time. A smile somehow found its way out instead. “It isn’t what I’d hoped for, nor she I daresay, but it is… it exists. We are with each other, and it… works.”

“So she’s… Is she staying, then?” Myka asked hesitantly, scared of opening any more wounds tonight.

Helena’s smile grew stronger, though, giving Myka the answer before Helena said anything. “Yes. Yes, she is. I told Nikola when I found you – he was there, trying to stop the bleeding. I…” she broke off, took a deep breath, and dismissed whatever she saw in her mind’s eye to continue, “I saw to it that you were stable, and then explained what happened.” Her smile reappeared, grew fond. “He had it half-figured out anyway, of course. Said how envious he was of her, how much he also wanted to see that future. So I told him that half of this future was built on the very things he would invent, in the hopes of giving him decent incentive to do just that. He did seem to be somewhat bucked up when I left.”

Myka released her breath. “Okay,” she said, slotting the info away for later, more intense contemplation. “Okay, so Christina is staying.”

Helena’s smile grew another bit brighter. “Yes.”

Myka couldn’t help but smile back. “Good.” And as if the resolution of this puzzle had pulled a plug on her willpower, she found herself yawning again.

“Go back to sleep, love,” she heard Helena say, and moments later, she was doing just that.

Chapter Text

Chapter 13
Helena fiddled with the collar of her shirt, then looked down to make sure that it dimmed the glow of the arc reactor in her chest sufficiently for the occasion. Not completely, though – her attorney had advised that it might be a good idea if people remembered that it was there and how and why it had gotten there. Helena herself tried not to think back to that time; the mountains, the cave, the first electromagnet put in there by Doctor Yinsen, the second one she had replaced it with when she had gotten home. The shrapnel that was still in her body; the palladium in her second reactor that was slowly but surely poisoning her – not that anybody knew; not even SHIELD, not even Frederic. Certainly not Myka.

She had put all her other concerns aside while she was doing her best to find and rescue Myka, but now that that was done, she had to face the consequences of what she had done before Myka’s disappearance, and apparently one mosaic piece on the way to do that was making the world (and jury) aware of Helena Wells’ mortality, her fallibility, her humanness.

“Ready?” Walters asked her from the car door she was holding open. “Remember to stick to what we talked about. Don’t get creative.”

Helena nodded tersely, then got out of the car and strode through the throng of journalists with as much confidence as she was able to muster. Arthur Nielsen trailed along behind and then stopped to read out the prepared statement, but she and Ms. Walker went on through the doors of the courthouse, to a day Helena had been dreading since she had returned and deposited Myka at the hospital.

She went through the security proceedings with barely a spark of attention, and sat through the beginnings of her trial in much the same fashion.

Myka had awakened the day before. Christina had said so, anyway; but of course it had happened while Helena had been absent, gone to relieve herself. Of course it had. Helena had not strayed from Myka’s side the rest of the day; her bladder had almost exploded the next morning, as she found herself half sitting in the visitor’s chair, half lying on Myka’s bed, clutching the woman’s limp hand in her own. Had it twitched in the night? Helena could not say, and it drove her to distraction.

“Focus,” Walters hissed. Had there been an elbow nudge before? Helena could not answer that, either. She probably better do what Walters said.

“-Walters, Ms. Wells, you have heard the accusations brought before this court. Do you want to reply?”

Helena took a deep breath. Walters had explained this – she and her attorney would be allowed to present her version of events, and the prosecutor would be allowed to ask questions. “Yes,” she said, “I very much do.”

They had talked about this in detail, Attorney Walters and she, as well as Doctor Burke, the psychologist who Helena had been speaking to twice weekly as per SHIELD instructions. She needed to explain everything.

Everything.

It was not a pleasant prospect. Helena was not used to baring her thoughts at the best of time, and yet, Walters had assured her, this was her best option. The woman was a consummate professional; Helena respected that, respected Burke too – and yet.

But there was nothing for it, was there.

She took another breath, and walked to the witness stand where she solemnly affirmed to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

“Ms. Wells,” Walters began, “please state your full name and date of birth for the record.”

“My name,” Helena began, “is Helena George Wells. I was born on September 21, 1866, in Bromley, Kent, in England.”

There was an uproar from the back, where the press was seated. “Order,” the judge snapped, and the uproar subsided. “Ms. Wells, I don’t have to remind you of the affirmation you just gave, do I?”

“No, ma’am,” Helena said.

“I present as evidence,” Walters added, “a birth certificate, a newspaper cutting that includes a photograph, and the schematics of the machine Ms. Wells built at the end of the nineteenth century, to allow her to suspend her life for one hundred and eleven years, in effect ‘traveling to the future’. The year 2008, to be exact.” She hefted a stack of documents, then deposited it on a desk in front of the judge. “I further intend to present as witness the man who aided Ms. Wells in acquiring the necessary documentation and paperwork to assume her role in the twenty-first century. For now, I would like to continue with Ms. Wells, though.”

The judge huffed, but nodded. “Carry on, then.”

Walters turned back to Helena. “Ms. Wells,” she said, “would you tell us, as brief as you can, how and why you ended up in the twenty-first century?”

Helena inhaled sharply through her nose. She knew that every single reporter in the back of the room was now waiting with bated breath for her to make a complete and utter fool of herself – she could already envision the headlines and wondered, briefly, how Mr. Nielsen was faring. Probably apoplectic, if she knew the man at all. Nothing for it. Apoplexy didn’t spell death anymore these days, at least not every time. Chances were he was alright, and her focus need not be on him.

“As you might have deduced by my name and date of birth,” she went on, “I am indeed the person behind the author known as H.G. Wells. My brother Charles and I collaborated on the stories; the biography and pictures that you might be acquainted with are his, apart from the birth date, of course. I provided the ideas, the research; he provided the mustache,” she said, and was gratified to hear a few chuckles. “It was difficult to content myself with my position in the shadows, as it were, but it did allow me to work on my inventions, and that was my true passion – until I realized, one day, that I was carrying a child. My daughter Christina was born in 1891, and immediately surpassed inventing as the focus of my life.”

She swallowed, and closed her eyes to see her daughter’s sweet infant face in her memories. “I adored her,” she said quietly. “I loved her with every fiber of my being; I would have done anything for her, plucked the stars from the skies and hung them around her cradle to play with. If I had had the means of leaving the Earth’s atmosphere at the time, that is,” she added dryly, to a few more chuckles. “However,” she went on, bitterly charging towards the inevitable, “my daughter was killed while we were vacationing in Paris, France, in summer of 1900. She was taken poorly and thus stayed at home with a trusted maid as the rest of us took an afternoon stroll. And so the home that should have been empty when the burglars came to steal from it, wasn’t. A child and a maid put up little fight against three armed men, and were summarily killed; then the house was set on fire in an impromptu attempt to obscure the murder and mask it as simple calamity.

“I was devastated,” Helena said, her voice thick. She tried to swallow the grief, but remembered Burke’s advice to allow the jury to witness it. So she opened her eyes, and looked at the assembled jury members. Some met her gaze, others did not. “In my imagination, I made miracles happen on a daily basis; in my research, my inventions, I realized technology that would seem miraculous to the unknowing person – there had to be a way I could bend time to my will, a way to go back and save my daughter.” Frustration – her old, old friend – crept into her voice as she went on. “I tried – and eventually I found a way to transmit a person’s consciousness backwards in time. It allowed me to inhabit the body of Sophie, the maid I spoke of, in an attempt to fight off the burglars. I knew martial arts, she did not, and so while I knew the moves that would incapacitate the men, her muscles did not respond with enough speed nor force, and I witnessed my daughter’s murder through her eyes.” She cleared her throat and added darkly, “Twenty-three times before I admitted defeat.”

The room was quiet enough now to hear a pin drop.

“I realized,” Helena went on, “that with the means and technology available to me at the time, I was doomed to failure. Thus I reasoned that using my invention to travel to the future, to a time when certainly new technology existed that might allow me to fulfil my plan, was the best way forward. However, my heart was filled with grief still, and with anger. My daughter’s death had been a senseless crime; brutal, and senseless, and I was beside myself with rage that the world would allow a child as innocent, as wonderful as my Christina, to be taken from me in such a horrid fashion. So, as I worked on my machine to allow me to suspend my life and send it to the future, I also sought out and found the men who had murdered my daughter and Sophie.

“I am not proud of what I did to them,” she said, fully cognizant that she was about to confess to murder. Both Walters and Burke had advised for it – the whole truth, they both said, was not just a phrase. If by any chance this detail came out into the open afterwards, the whole case might be re-opened. Best to lay it all out now, and so Helena did. “The Parisian authorities,” she continued with a sigh, “had already shelved the case as a simple but tragic house fire; all I had was my account of what I’d seen through Sophie’s eyes – the commissaire laughed in my face as he sent me away. So I took matters into my own hands, and found that revenge did not quell my anger any more than it would bring my daughter back to life. I disguised what I had done, and focused on laying the foundations of what is now Wells Industries, here in California. I made all the necessary arrangements, finished my machine, and strapped myself in.

“What I had not reckoned with,” she said quietly, “was that my mind was not suspended as my body was. I found myself awake, aware, but unable to do anything about my situation. And I realized that I had a long, long period of waiting ahead of me, and no way of ascertaining that time was even passing at all. For all I knew, I might have not survived starting my machine, and this suspended existence was what awaits us after death. No afterlife, certainly no reunion with our loved ones – for then Christina would have been with me, and she very much was not. I was alone; utterly, totally alone.”

She paused – not for effect as much as for herself; she needed a moment to repair her composure. The experience had been horrible in a way mere words could not describe. Yet she needed to try. “Alone, helpless, trapped with my grief and my anger, my memories of witnessing my daughter’s death again and again, my memories of what I did to her murderers… I had programmed my machine to wake me in 2008, but as I said, I did not know if I was even still alive; if this suspended state I found myself in was progressing, if it would ever end. It was not…” she swallowed. “Not easy to bear. The closest equivalent, I suppose, might be solitary confinement.” She paused here for a moment, as Ms. Walters had advised her, to let people come to their own conclusions as to what over a hundred years of solitary confinement might do to a person’s psyche. “It most certainly left its traces on me,” she went on then, “traces that I work on with my psychologist these days, but when I woke up, I was still in a very… Victorian mindset, if you will, and that did not allow for seeking help for mental illnesses. But I digress.”

“I did awake in early 2008,” Helena continued, “and set upon resuming control of Wells Industries and with it, the means for a renewed attempt to save my daughter’s life. I found a few promising new technologies, and yet hit one dead end after another. What I also found, however, was that my company, with all the patents and inventions I had poured into it to better people’s daily lives, had turned to the production of weapons and further military supplies.”

She shook her head, barely suppressing a pained grimace. “If any of you are acquainted with the works my brother and I put out, you will know that I am, very much, a pacifist. To find that my work had gone into war, and weapons, and destruction! I was appalled. Sickened. From the start, I was resolved to change that; but a company this large is not turned around within a day. When I was invited to an arms presentation in Afghanistan, I was conflicted; yet my foothold within the company was not yet strong enough to decline, and I went. You know what came next – I was abducted and forced, under threat to my life, to build my abductors a weapon to match what I had come to demonstrate. As you also know, I managed, with the aid of the heroic Doctor Ho Yinsen, to build an arc reactor instead, and with it energize an armored suit that allowed me to flee. It is ironic, is it not, that that was the breakthrough I needed to finish work on my redesigned time machine?

“Back from Afghanistan, I sequestered myself in my workshop, with the newest model of my time machine my singular focus. This time, I knew I would succeed where in the past I had not. This time, I would be able to save my daughter’s life. So focused was I on that endeavor, that I did not recognize that, over time, someone had befriended me; had in fact stolen what was left of my heart, what had not yet been consumed by grief and anger. Please allow me this detour,” she added, seeing several members of the jury shift in their seats uncomfortably, “for it is pertinent to my account.”

“Make it brief,” the judge admonished her with a significant look at the clock at the far end of the courtroom.

“I will, thank you,” Helena said with a grateful nod. “She did not know she had done so,” she then went on, noticing yet more discomfort at the gender of the pronoun and refraining from rolling her eyes. Surely her proclivities were not news? “In fact,” she continued, focusing on the memory of Myka, on remembering that Myka was alright now, even if it had been a close call, “we had not talked about what we meant to each other until the very last evening. She had come to mean the world to me, quite literally; a world in which women could rise to the highest office, a world more accepting, more open to equality of the genders. More than that, though, she had come to care for me, and I for her, not only in the way friends care for each other, but in a deeper, more tender fashion.

“She helped me realize,” Helena said with a deep breath, “that there were more things to life than my singular focus. And yet she also supported me in my endeavor; that was how much she cared. She helped me test the time machines – the suits you now know – their flight capabilities and communication, at any rate. We resolved to test the time traveling capabilities the next day, but as we did so, I encountered defeat yet again. The suits would not go back in time; they stubbornly refused to travel even a second into the past. Frustrated, thwarted yet another time to rescue my daughter, I lashed out, verbally, at the only other person present, spewing all my bitterness at her who had no part in any of it. She left, of course, as any of us would when thus accosted; I, in my rage, holed myself up and continued to try and continued to fail. And then, next morning, I read the news – she was dead.” Helena bit the inside of her cheek. Remembering that moment was horribly easy. “She must have lost control of her car, crashing not five miles from where I, oblivious, worked on my futile attempts to save my daughter.” A murmur ran through the assorted press as the smarter of the reporters realized who Helena was talking about.

Helena swallowed and went on in a bitter voice, “I had even, dimly, heard the crash. Had I paid more attention, I could have flown out to investigate; I could easily have saved her – I knew that when I saw the site of her accident, when I put two and two together, my heart in my throat at the realization that I had had, yet again, lost someone I cherished with all my heart, and that I had squandered the very real chance to save her, a realer one that I ever had to save my daughter.” She broke off to clear her throat. “I… am afraid I can’t tell you much more after that,” she went on. “The next memory that is in any way coherent in my mind is coming to in a cell in my burnt-out suit.”

She fell silent. Walters held that silence for a moment longer, then announced, “I’ll present an account of what happened in that meantime, as well as witnesses, in a short moment. For now, though, Ms. Wells – is there anything you would like to add to your account that the jury should take into concern?”

Helena nodded. “I have since heard accounts, seen evidence of what I’ve done, and I am horrified at my actions. I deeply regret them. I have sought out psychological help and will continue to do so, in order to understand, process, and get over what made me break down that day, to stave off any further incidents of a violent nature. And it was liberating to learn, only this last weekend, that the woman I had thought dead is still, in fact, among the living-” there was another big stir at the back of the room at that, but she ignored it and went on, slightly more loudly, “that her presumed death had been an attempt at murder that is currently being investigated.”

Helena waited while the judge banged her gavel a few times. Then, at a nod, she went on, “She herself is alive and as well as circumstances allow. Nevertheless, I will continue to work with my therapist until they, and any examiner of your choice, declare me well, confident that I am no longer a danger to anyone. Until that day, and Agent Jinks, who is on the witness list, can confirm this, I have forsworn access to my suit and my laboratory.”

She saw more than a few shoulders, both among the jury and among the onlookers, straighten with relief at that last statement.

Then the cross-examination began. It was a harrowing experience; the prosecutor had no reason to pull his punches, and brought her to the brink of tears more than once. It took all of her willpower not to tremble at the end of it, from sheer mental and emotional exhaustion, but then there was still the press gauntlet to run in front of the courtroom’s doors. Arthur Nielsen appeared and pressed a handwritten note into her hand – a hastily-penned statement, she assumed, but for the life of her she could not read it. When she shook her head and shrugged at him, he harrumphed, then turned to the assembled reporters.

“Ms. Wells will not be giving a statement at this point,” he said gruffly. “Two minutes of questions. Yes – ah, Burnsburgh?”

“Is it true that you’re Iron Woman?”

Nielsen scoffed, but truth to tell, so did Helena. Burnsburgh worked for the Post; he should know better than to lead with something like that. “You know,” she told him archly, “I should really like to meet the person who came up with that moniker, and explain to them that it is not only uninspired in the extreme, but also wildly misleading. The suits are made from a gold-titanium alloy, not iron.”

There was a moment of silence, then several reporters exploded into questions until Helena held up her hands. “I cannot answer any questions that concern the trial, of course. But there is one thing I can tell you.” Next to her, Arthur Nielsen was casting his eyes up to the sky, mouthing a prayer. “Yes,” Helena said, “I am Iron Woman.”

Arthur covered his eyes. Then he shouted, loud enough to be heard over the din that had followed Helena’s announcement, “That is it, people, good night.” And he pulled her away.

Chapter Text

This morning, Myka was properly awake for the doctor’s morning visit. Helena wasn’t there, but Christina, who was, had assured her she’d be along at some point in the afternoon.

“Coming along nicely,” Doctor Calder noted after she checked Myka’s stats. “Any pain?”

“A bit,” Myka replied, “but manageable. Can I get up today? Just a bit – like, go to the bathroom?” She hated being catheterized. It made her itch all over just to think of it.

Doctor Calder held up her hands, palms down, in a calming gesture. “You lost a lot of blood last week, Ms. Bering,” she said seriously. “I heard you studied pre-med; class III hemorrhagic shock mean anything to you?” Myka gulped and nodded. “Let’s settle for just having breakfast instead of parenteral nutrition, hm?” Doctor Calder went on. “And then take it from there.”

“What does class three hemo-thingy mean?” Christina asked after the doctor had left.

Myka swallowed again. “It means a person has lost around thirty to forty percent of their blood,” she said, wondering how much more to reveal.

Christina opened her mouth as if to ask another question, then blanched and closed it again. “Pete said you were a fighter,” she said quietly. “And that I shouldn’t worry.”

Pete was a good man, Myka thought. “I guess he was right,” she said, spreading her right arm in a ‘look at me now’ gesture – the left one was still pinned to her body. “Here I am, almost good to go.”

Christina gave Myka a long, patient look. “I have ears, Myka,” she said. “And Google. And I’m not stupid. I can look things up, and interpret how people look and talk, and how they fall silent when they realize I’m listening.” She bit her lip and dropped her gaze. “You were not okay, and I wasn’t worried, I was scared.”

Myka shook her head. “Hey, Chisel,” she called softly. “Christina.”

“What.” It came out sullen, petulant even, but Myka knew how it was to be a teenager and scared and have adults not tell you things they thought you shouldn’t know.

“It’s okay,” she said, as gently as possible. “I’m sorry you were scared. I understand why you were; it’s understandable to be scared. I’m pretty sure everyone else was, too. My dad had a heart attack when I was sixteen, and nobody would tell me and my sister anything. It blows, and I’m sorry you went through that, okay?” She could see the tiniest of nods, so she went on, “And me being awake and talking and everything means I’m pretty much out of the woods, alright? I mean I guess I’ll have to take it slow for a while,” and this scenery-chewing was mostly for Christina’s benefit – Myka would take it slow, of course she would; class effing three was no joke, she knew that. Still, she could ham it up for the kid. “Seriously, though, I’m out of the worst. Only upwards from here, Chisel.”

Lips still pressed together, Christina nodded again.

“Hey, what are you reading?” Myka enquired, to take the kid’s mind off things, and they spent the next thirty minutes blissfully talking about His Dark Materials.

“I told her that I thought she was a bit like Lord Asriel,” Christina admitted at the end of their discussion.

Myka raised her eyebrows. ‘Her’ could only be Helena, right? “Did you,” she said in her most level voice. She’d have bet dollars to donuts that that hadn’t gone over well, if Helena had known Lord Asriel at that point.

“Yeah, I know, I know,” Christina sighed. “Not the best idea or comparison. But she is… intense.”

Christina had to be talking about Helena. So maybe she wasn’t at ease using the name yet; that was okay in Myka’s book. “She is that,” she agreed with Christina’s statement. “Did she…” Myka bit her lip, wondering if she should ask Christina this at all, then decided to go for it. “Are you okay?”

“She said I’m safe to stay here,” Christina said with a shrug. “In this timeline, I mean. And there’s a Doctor Burke that we’ve both been talking to, if you’re asking if I’m okay with-” she gave the kind of all-encompassing shrug-and gesture that only a teenager can give, and ended, “things.”

“Doctor Burke?”

“He’s a psychologist,” Christina explained. “Leena said that these days they help people understand their own emotions when they become too complicated. The emotions, I mean.”

In the meantime, though, Myka had parsed the rest of what Christina had said. “Safe to stay in this timeline?” Her thoughts ran cold.

Christina sighed and nodded. “Apparently she was a bit worried that the universe might recognize a foreign object or person as foreign and that it might do something about it or something. But then she did some calculations, and said she’d worried for nothing and all was good, and Doctor Calder said I was alright too.”

Myka couldn’t help but grin – not just with relief, but at the way Christina was speaking, switching effortlessly from Victorian diction to twenty-first century slang. “Good to hear,” she said. “So you’re settling in okay? I… uh… I mean I didn’t mean for this to happen, but is it… is it okay for you that you’re here?” Because of what I did, Myka didn’t add. Her personal feelings of responsibility or guilt were hers to deal with, not Christina’s.

Christina nodded. “Yeah, I am. Doctor Burke and I actually talked about this when I mentioned that she’d found you. He asked…” Christina tilted her head. “He asked how I felt about you, about you being the reason for me being here, about her finding you, you being in the hospital, all of that.” She nibbled at her lower lip for a moment, then said, “I miss Uncle Bahadur, and Uncle Nikola. But… but I can’t be sad that I’m here.” Myka took in a tentative breath. That didn’t sound too bad, did it? “It was a bit weird at first,” Christina went on, “and… and sometimes I’m not sure how I feel about…” Myka could see the kid steel herself, and then Christina said, “about Helena,” as if the name was the hardest thing to ever cross her lips. “But Doctor Burke says that’s okay. Says that it’s okay not to know how to feel about something sometimes, and to give it some time and thought and see what happens. So I’ve been doing that. And I’m…” again, the lip was being worried. Then Christina met Myka’s eyes and said, “I’m glad you’re alright, Myka. I was… I was afraid. And now you’re better, and that’s good.”

Myka wordlessly held out her right arm. Christina gave a quick worried glance at the sling and the IV, Myka waved her in with insistence, and Christina hopped onto her bed and snuggled into Myka’s embrace.

“It’s nice that hugging is so normal here,” the kid sighed.

Myka, who had not grown up being hugged very often, didn’t have it in her to explain that to Christina. Instead, she resolved to give the kid as many hugs as she could get away with. “Anytime you want one, just come and find me,” she said for good measure.

At her shoulder, she could feel Christina nod.

Then there was a knock on the door, and the kid scrambled off the bed. A nurse brought in breakfast, and hot on her shoulders was-

“Jane!” Christina was at the woman’s side in an instant, giving her a hug too. “Did you get the book for me?”

“I did, kid, but I will say I’m not here primarily for you, you know.” Jane stood aside as the nurse set a tray table onto Myka’s bed.

Chastened, Christina backed off. Jane nudged the kid’s shoulder, and held out a copy of The Amber Spyglass to her, which Christina snatched up immediately. “Thank you!” she squealed.

“Do me a favor?” Jane asked her, and Christina nodded immediately. “Can you give Myka and me some time?”

“Sure,” Christina said with a shrug. “The book doesn’t care where I read it.” And out the door she went.

Jane huffed a soft laugh, then gave Myka a big, bright smile. “It’s good to see you awake, Myka.” She held up another book, and a small audio player with headphones. “I brought you one, too, paperback and audio since I wasn’t sure which would work better.” She set both onto the bedside table and again stepped out of the nurse’s way as, breakfast served, the nurse left the room.

“Audio, probably, right now,” Myka replied. Now that food was here, now that she could smell it, she found herself ravenous. She took a spoonful of oatmeal that was actually warm, bordering on hot, and even tasted faintly of maple syrup, and sighed in surprised bliss. “This is the best food I’ve ever gotten in a hospital.”

“You’re getting the Wells treatment,” Jane nodded.

Myka tilted her head in silent question. Her mouth was full, but her intent still came across.

“Oh!” Jane laughed. “CEO’s health insurance package.” She gestured around the room. “Single occupancy en-suite room, quality food, doctors who have time to answer your questions – although this one is a SHIELD doctor, she tells me.”

“Doctor Calder?” Myka asked after swallowing another mouthful of oatmeal.

Jane nodded. “Said she treated you after your car crash, and that was all that Helena needed to say she trusted her more than any other doctor. Pays her herself, even.” She shrugged. “Not my place to argue that. Anyway, how are you?”

Myka put her empty bowl back onto the tray and gave a happy sigh. “Pretty good, all things considered,” she said. “How are you? And how did the last weeks go for the company?”

“Good, and-” Jane sighed and weighed her head. “Not irretrievably bad. However,” she added with raised hands, “I’m not to talk about work; strict orders. I’m at the helm for the interim, and I’ve got it in hand – good thing we made that watertight; MacPherson tried to butt in before Claudia got him, but he didn’t get very far. You do not need to worry. Wells Industries is doing fine. No need to bother yourself with that. I give you my word.”

Myka nodded and took a deep breath. “Thanks, Jane. That does help.” Jane’s word held weight – Jane had never been anything but forthright with her. If she said everything was handled, then it was. “Do you know where Helena is?” she asked then.

Jane smirked a little. “Miss her?” she asked amusedly, one eyebrow up.

Myka blushed furiously. “I… There are some things I’d like to talk about with her, that’s all.”

Jane’s smirk softened into a smile. “I see. Well, when you do, go easy on her, will you?”

Myka’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “What do you mean?” she asked. “Is anything wrong with her?”

Jane huffed a short laugh. “Oh, not wrong, no,” she said dryly. “Scared stiff, that’s all. Can’t really deal with your mortality, hasn’t come to terms with it yet.” She sighed. “Daniel was like that. My husband. We had a little… scare when our first child was born. Jean, our daughter. She was okay; me, not so much. And it scared him out of his wits. And then, when I was pregnant again with Pete, Dan could not handle it.”

“But… Helena was here the whole time,” Myka protested. “She knows I’m okay, now, doesn’t she?”

“Sometimes it takes a while to set in,” Jane said with a shrug. “You think you got it all handled, you bottle it all up to keep it together, and only when the actual danger is past, truly, demonstrably past, does your anxiety come knocking. I mean, with that trial going on-”

“Trial?” Myka asked, blanching. “What trial?”

Jane grimaced. “Darn,” she said quietly. “I should not have said that.” Then she took a deep breath. “Doctor Calder’s gonna tan my hide, but I know you’re like me – better off knowing than not knowing and worrying. So here’s the gist – she’s being tried for what she did in Yellowstone. I am sure,” Jane added, leaning forwards and squeezing Myka’s arm, “that the case is either going to be thrown out because she was stopped, or that H.G.’s going to be found not guilty on the basis of non compos mentis; clearly she wasn’t in her right mind. Mrs. Frederic has assembled the best legal team to work on it, so that, too, you really don’t need to worry about.”

Myka almost laughed. “Yeah, right,” she said, but instead of dryly, it came out in a quaver.

Jane tutted, obviously angry with herself. “I’m sorry, Myka. I know you’re recuperating, but things are what they are, and sooner or later you’re going to learn about the whole mess anyway.” She gestured towards the TV in the corner. “It’s on every channel, for goodness’ sake. And I’d rather you hear it from someone sympathetic than on the news at noon.”

“How is she going to be here, though, if she’s being tried?” If Helena was being tried for that, it had to be in Wyoming, right? That’s where they handled anything that happened in Yellowstone, even if it happened in Montana or Idaho; Myka remembered hearing that in pre-law. Wyoming wasn’t exactly next door, even with a private jet.

Jane weighed her head. “She’s out on the highest bail bond any US court has ever set; a billion dollars. Wearing an ankle monitor, too, and there’s a couple officers stationed outside whenever she comes to visit, but that wouldn’t keep her away from you. Sweet, if you ask me,” she said with another small smirk.

Myka pressed her lips together. “I guess,” she said grudgingly. She didn’t want to think of Helena as being tried in court; it brought back memories of a voice saying ‘atrocities’ in that damnable accent.

Jane seemed to recognize how conflicted Myka was. “It will be a fair trial, Myka,” she said reassuringly. “And trials bring closure. You know that. Every LEO knows that.” She didn’t need to add that her son had been in the Secret Service just like Myka; of course Myka remembered that.

Myka sighed. “You’re right,” she said. “I am like you – I’d rather know. So, thanks for telling me, and if anyone gives you trouble for telling me, send them over and I’ll set them straight. Anything else?” She did laugh this time, tonelessly, sarcastically. “What else I should know before I find out the hard way?”

“As far as I can tell, the kid’s settling in okay,” Jane replied. Her tone was gentle and reassuring, and felt like balm on Myka’s nerves. “She’s hanging around Pete a lot, which some people might look askance at, but my son is a good friend, and a good man to be around.”

“I know, Jane,” Myka smiled at her. “That is something I am really not worried about.”

And apparently, that was something that Jane needed to hear. She straightened, and nodded. “And H.G. will come around, too,” Jane went on. “It’ll just take time. She is aware that you’re getting better; of course she is. She just needs to find it in herself to trust that. And that can’t be hurried. Give her time, but also don’t take any nonsense. Dan tried to wrap me in cotton wool, wouldn’t let me lift a finger – I had to disabuse him of that, and quickly. Don’t let her, alright? I’m sure she’s gonna try.”

Myka bit the inside of her lip. “Do you know she-” then she stopped herself. It wasn’t her story to tell.

“-lost someone?” Jane asked, then nodded. “Well, not know as such; she hasn’t exactly told me. I’m guessing here – but takes one to know one, right? There are tells and boy, do I know them. And so does Pete. When she looks at the kid? A kid who came out of nowhere, and looks a lot like her? Now, I don’t know exactly what happened here, but I do know it’s complicated. We’re not going to bring it up if she doesn’t want to, of course, but I’m pretty sure all of us have an inkling; Leena, Rebecca, Amanda too. If she ever needs to talk with someone, you’re not the only one who’s available. Just, you know, putting that out there.” She gave Myka a grave look. “And you’re not on your own either. Just putting that out there too. Rebecca’s said that you and your family aren’t on the best of terms, and that’s the extent of my knowledge there and that’s okay,” she added, hands in the air and smile on her face. “Your story to tell or not, whichever and whenever you want. Just-” she reached for Myka’s hand. Her fingers were firm, warm, sure. “Just know you’re not alone. Alright?”

Myka nodded, not trusting her voice. Heck, her eyes were filling. She wordlessly squeezed Jane’s hand back.

“Come on, now,” Jane said, nudging Myka’s uninjured shoulder. “No need for tears. Chin up, shoulders back, spine straight – if you can, that is. Don’t hurt yourself. I’ll go and find the kid – or would you like some quiet time for a change?”

Myka quickly shook her head. She didn’t want to be alone. Truth be told, she wanted an arm around her shoulders, and a shoulder to lean into, but she understood now why Helena wasn’t able to give her that at the moment. She rubbed her knuckles across her eyes. “I’d like company,” she said, and Jane nodded her understanding.

Chapter Text

Helena arrived at the hospital late that night, after yet another, but thankfully the last, day of cross-examination. As usual, the two police officers accompanying her stayed outside in the hallway; as usual, the hospital security guards stationed in the hallway started chatting with them. The first two were government officers; the latter privately hired people that Helena had brought in – MacPherson might be dead, but Jinks and his team were uncovering quite a few connections the man had had to all kinds of unsavory elements, and who knew if any of those might want to have a go at finishing what MacPherson had attempted. SHIELD agents and more private security also guarded Helena’s home; she was not taking any chances, especially with the suits deactivated and unreachable for the now, as per her promise.

Halting in front of the door to Myka’s room, Helena quickly put all of those concerns out of her mind – she did not want to bring them in with her; Myka was recuperating and needed none of those worries to weigh her down. The first time she had woken up with Helena present – truly woken up, not just met Helena’s eyes for a short moment of recognition – Helena had managed not to mention the trial with a single syllable. She could keep that up. For Myka, she could, she would, do anything.

She opened the door quietly; it was past eleven, and as hoped, Myka was asleep. Standing just inside the doorway, Helena looked at her in the buttery glow of the small light that the nurses always left on.

Myka had regained some color in her cheeks since Helena had last seen her. Still, Helena well remembered the sickly, gray pallor of Myka’s face in Nikola’s workshop; how her lips had been devoid of color, how her skin had been waxen, how all the sensors in Helena’s helmet display had blinked their red warnings into her eyes, as if she did not know that Myka was on the brink of death.

Helena suppressed a growl – this, too, was not something she needed to be thinking about right here, right now. This, too, was not a fitting subject matter for a recuperating patient.

And Myka was recuperating. Every time Helena ran into Doctor Calder or one of the nurses, they took care to tell her so. It was most reassuring, and a tad embarrassing. Helena was aware that she had hovered around the operating room and the hospital staff like a frightened moth battering itself against the guards put in place to protect it – or in this case, the doors and personnel put in place to give the doctors and nurses the space and time they needed to work on their patient.

Goodness knew any hospital knew how to deal with scared relatives – or whatever she was to Myka. At least Doctor Calder did not insist on any ‘you are not related by blood; we can’t allow you in the hospital room with her’ nonsense.

But to think that she, Helena George Wells, had made such an impression that even now, days later, completely unknown nurses took the time to tell her that Myka was doing ‘just fine’-

Embarrassing was one word for that.

And so Helena leaned against the wall and regarded the woman she loved.

The catheter was gone, thank goodness, even though an IV port still remained and Myka’s left arm was still immobilized against her torso. Most importantly, though, Myka looked refreshed – as though someone had taken the time and care to give her a bath. Myka could not have done that by herself, Helena thought, then frowned – Myka should not have done that by herself; she was still too weak. If any hospital staff had allowed her out of bed- but they would not, would they? Still, Helena would have to have a word with them.

Then, as if she had sensed Helena’s arrival, Myka’s eyes fluttered open and focused on her. A smile spread across her features like sunrise – beatific, softening, golden. “Hey,” she said, and crooked her fingers at Helena, whose legs found themselves unable to refuse the invitation and brought her to the side of Myka’s bed in two strides.

“Hello,” she replied, and realized her voice was thick with emotions. She tried to return Myka’s smile, but failed to produce more than a short grimace. “Go on sleeping, darling; I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“Eh,” Myka shrugged. “I’ve been napping most of the day anyway. I’ve missed you.” Her hand closed around Helena’s and tugged, and Helena’s obedient legs folded to deposit her on the edge of Myka’s bed. “I wouldn’t want to sleep through you being here.”

Helena suddenly found breathing supremely difficult and wondered if Myka would not mind saying or doing something to her lungs to give them permission to carry on with their job, since that was working so well on her legs, it seemed.

Instead, Myka’s gaze softened and she raised her hand towards Helena’s cheek, and that did not help matters at all. “What’s wrong?” Myka asked, and Helena felt like laughing – how could she answer when she could not even draw breath?

Then Myka’s fingers connected, and as if the touch had sparked life back into them, Helena’s lungs filled. “Long day,” she managed, then bit her teeth together. It was the truth – what with insisting she stay overnight here, in a Los Angeles hospital, and then flying into Casper for her trial, her days lasted twenty hours easily. Sleeping on the plane was her saving grace, but it was beginning to wear on her.

“Go to sleep, then,” Myka said, tilting her head towards the roll-in bed next to her. “That’s what it’s here for, isn’t it?”

Helena shook her head. “How can I sleep when you want to be awake for me?”

“Nice try, Wells,” Myka smiled. “We’ll have the rest of our lives to talk, or tomorrow morning – or are you due in court again?”

Helena shook her head again, then realized. Her eyes snapped wide open. “Who told you?”

“Jane,” Myka sighed. “But don’t be angry at her. I would’ve found out anyway when I turned on the TV, and at least this way I heard the story from someone inclined to be kind.”

Helena scowled. “I suppose.”

Myka’s thumb made a swift motion across Helena’s cheekbone, then she dropped her hand back on the mattress, where it found Helena’s fingers and curled around them. “Look, I’d rather know what is going on and trust people when they tell me it’s being handled, than not know anything at all and only find out after the fact, okay? Jane told me you have the best legal team you could possibly have, so it’s all good. If you want to tell me how your day was, I’m willing to listen, but if you don’t want to talk about it, that’s alright too – just one thing, okay?”

“What?” Helena asked, anger at Jane – and nerves at the trial – coming out in peevishness.

Myka’s fingers flicked across the back of Helena’s hand. “Okay, first, no need for that tone,” she said, but with a smile, “and second, don’t hold things back because you think I can’t handle them, okay? Yeah, I had a run-in, yes, it was close. But I’m better, I’m stable, I had three meals today and a bath, so… I’m not some half-consumed tragic heroine that you need to traipse around on tiptoe, okay? I damn well peed, sitting up and all by myself, on the actual toilet!”

That startled a laugh out of Helena. Just the one, though, and then her eyes filled. She rolled them, annoyed at herself, annoyed at how horribly close to the surface her tears were these days.

Myka’s hand was at her cheek again, and Helena could feel the arm that held it trembling with muscle fatigue. She took Myka’s hand in both of hers and gently urged it down again. When she looked up, she saw tears and annoyance mirrored in Myka’s eyes, too.

Myka snorted softly through her nose. “Okay, fine. Fine. Yeah, okay, I’m not at a hundred percent yet. Seriously, though, put yourself in my shoes – you wouldn’t want people to make a fuss, treat you with kid gloves either, would you?”

“I wouldn’t- Myka, this isn’t about what I want,” Helena gave back. “This is about you almost dying!” The last two words had come out as almost a wail, and Helena paused to compose herself. “I could not… I could not bear to lose you, Myka.”

“And next you’re going to tell me that you’ll do everything in your power to make sure that I’m safe, am I right?” Myka said, and it sounded oddly like a challenge.

“Of course I am,” Helena replied indignantly.

“Helena, read my lips,” Myka said, leaning forwards. And then, with great care to enunciate clearly, said, “No.”

Helena sat there, stunned into speechlessness.

Myka gave a little, satisfied smile and nodded. “I’m sure you can figure that one out, Wells,” she said, leaning back, “or you lose your claim to the genius title.”

Helena’s thoughts raced. What on Earth was Myka on about, refusing Helena to keep her safe after she had nearly died? She shook her head, and as she did so, an odd reflection caught her eye – the glow of her arc reactor, though muted once again by her blouse, was gleaming off of one of the rails of Myka’s bed. It led Helena’s thoughts down the path to when she had acquired it, to what it had replaced – the ‘souped-up electromagnet’ Yinsen had put in her chest to stop the shrapnel. Helena, too, had almost died. And before the blast of that damned weapon had hit her, she had thought back to how Myka had implored her, back before she had left, to take her along – not as a personal assistant, or not only, but as an additional safety precaution.

And Helena had scoffed. Had told Myka loud and clear that she could take care of herself, that she did not need nannying, in so many words.

“Oh,” she said. A blush was creeping into her cheeks.

Myka smirked, raised her hand to chest-height, and tapped a little tattoo on the rim of the reactor. It was an immeasurably intimate gesture, Helena thought. “Yup,” Myka said, taking Helena’s hand again, “oh. If that ‘oh’ was about Afghanistan, and someone else almost being killed, that is.”

Helena nodded. Her mouth was dry. Thinking of Afghanistan and her arc reactor, there was something she should tell Myka – something that she had not told to anyone; something she should probably tell a doctor, too. But not today. This was not the time. “It was,” she confirmed Myka’s assumption, therefore, and nothing more. “Please, though, Myka, I need to tell you this: I truly could not lose you and live.” Surely Myka had to understand that?

“Yes, you could,” Myka disagreed, and there was steel in her voice that made Helena’s mouth fall open. “You can. Helena, you have to. And you’re making your way there already – I saw a recap of your opening statement in court. You’re working with a psychologist, to make sure that what happened in Yellowstone doesn’t happen again. And part of that is about how you’re scared of losing someone you love. I get that.” She brushed her thumb across Helena’s knuckles. “After Sam died, I had some counseling too. And we went through that as well. And I mean I can’t say that I’m there yet – when I was in Christina’s world, or timeline or whatever, I was so scared that I might have possibly, inadvertently killed you with my tackle that I couldn’t even think that thought, couldn’t even let myself worry about how you were. So, you know, I get it. I get all of that. But I also know that we both need to deal with that, find our way through that, to be happy.” She let go of Helena’s fingers for a moment, to run her hand through her hair – those glorious curls. A smile broke across her features. “Oh, that feels so good,” she sighed, and added, “finally got my hair washed today. But anyway, that’s not what I wanted to say. Helena, here’s what I need to tell you, okay? I’m not saying that taking safety precautions is a bad idea or that I don’t want you to take them. I had to get used to them when I was your PA, and to more of them when you made me CEO. And even though you’re not CEO anymore, I’m pretty sure that some people will try and get at ‘Iron Woman’,” she delicately dropped finger quotes around the term, pulling a face much like Helena had in her press conference earlier, “for one reason or another.” She rolled her eyes. “Hell, I’m a trained Secret Service agent, I know that there are wackos out there who’d happily shoot someone just for being famous. Okay? I get all that. I really do. I just don’t want you to look at me and think ‘damsel in distress’ or something like that. That’s all, really.”

“I understand that,” Helena nodded, because she really, truly did. She remembered her own ire whenever someone had tried to cavalierly ‘keep her safe’ from things. “I understand,” she repeated more softly. “And you are right, Doctor Burke has made the same points as you just did, with regards both to you and to Christina. I am… working on it.”

“That’s all I ask,” Myka replied immediately. “It’s a process, I know. Believe me, I know. I gotta say I’m relieved that you’re not… scared away by how you feel. I was a bit… a bit worried about that.”

“‘Scared away’?”

Myka shrugged, but her eyes were anything but nonchalant. “Part of me was waiting for you to tell me that you were so afraid of being hurt that you were breaking up with me before we even started, just to avoid getting hurt later if something happened to me.”

Helena stared at her.

Myka chuckled. “Yeah, you’re not that kind of person, are you,” she said dryly.

“I should think not,” Helena said, feeling irritable. “That’s a form of self-denial that has, frankly, always confused me. Trying not to fall in love, certainly, that is a valid approach; one I have taken, after all. And yet, along you came. And once I had fallen in love, what purpose would it have served to disavow that in order to stave off some potential heartache later? When I learned that I was pregnant, what would have been the use of trying not to love my child, for fear that something might happen to her?”

Myka’s eyes were bottomless. “It… takes a lot to say that,” she said.

Helena hummed her agreement. “And yet, were you to travel back in time and tell me, as I held my daughter in my arms for the very first time, that I would lose her, including all that came after – it would not stop me from loving her. I might go a tad overboard with my security precautions-” she and Myka shared a smile at that, “-but I would still love her just as fiercely if not more. If I were to lose this new Christina, or you – it would not stop me from loving either of you. The loss would undo me, but fear of it does not, will not make me withdraw.”

Myka’s breath caught. “You… you do, then,” she said, in somewhat strangled tones. “Love me.”

Helena blushed again. “It is true; I had not told you, had I,” she said, shaking her head at herself. She took Myka’s hands in hers. “I do love you, Myka. Fiercely, overwhelmingly at times, with as much of my heart as is not taken up by my daughter, or my-” she chuckled as she repeated the term that Pete had introduced, “bonus daughter.”

Myka did an endearing little double take, then smiled. “I like that description,” she said. “And,” she went on, before Helena could embark on an explanatory tangent, “for the record: I love you too.” Then she smirked – a deep, teasing, thoroughly ravishable smirk. “And what do you know, I even brushed my teeth today so I can kiss you without worrying.” She freed her hands from Helena grasp and took hold of Helena’s face in turn, pulling her in. “Not that I had an agenda,” she whispered.

“Of course not,” Helena agreed, and then their lips met and nothing was said anymore for a good long while.

Chapter Text

“-our understanding that H.G. Wells has been sentenced to pay damages to the Yellowstone National Park administration, on the order of seven point five million dollars, to repair what she destroyed.”

Myka breathed a bit easier at that – if that was the news anchor’s lede, Helena wasn’t going to jail.

“She’ll also need to undergo mandatory counseling, and do community service,” the other anchor added. “And she’s been placed on probation – so, folks, if you find her blasting up your backyard, you know what to do – phone it in!”

And that was it – next up, the weather. Myka switched the TV off and looked at Rebecca, Jane and Amanda. “That doesn’t seem so bad,” she said. It still bothered her that she hadn’t been allowed in the courtroom with Helena. Artie had wanted her to be there, too; he for the visuals, she for moral support. But Doctor Calder had held firm – and Myka had to admit that walking anything more than the few steps between her bed and the bathroom still exhausted her, five days after waking up.

“No, it doesn’t,” Jane nodded in satisfaction.

Myka took a deep breath. “Alright – so MacPherson is dead and gone thanks to Claudia and Joshua Donovan, his machinations were uncovered thanks to Agent Jinks and his team, Wells Industries’ stocks have finally leveled from their freefall, Christina has been provided with paperwork courtesy of SHIELD, and now Helena is off the hook for what she did in Yellowstone. Am I forgetting anything?”

“You’re back in the CEO chair as soon as the doctors say you’re done here,” Jane said in her heartiest voice. “It’s a nice office, but I don’t want it. Make sure you remember that.”

Myka grinned at her. “Noted.”

Amanda then shook her head. “Apart from that,” she said, “that’s it. Pretty good list, if you ask me,” she added. “Honestly, if you had asked me two weeks ago, I wouldn’t have betted on any of that. Talk about things taking a one-eighty.” Then she grimaced. “Jane, we should go. Myka, I’m really sorry, but Jane needs to make a statement as interim CEO. We’ll be back tomorrow, okay? Just hang on in there; I’m sure H.G. is already on her way here. Rebecca, take care of her, alright?”

“Don’t worry,” Myka replied, and hugged both Jane and Amanda in farewell. Christina and Pete were in Casper with Helena; while Helena hadn’t wanted Christina present in the courtroom, Christina had put her foot down about being close by, which Myka absolutely endorsed – if she herself couldn’t be there, at least Christina was. And where Christina went, Pete went – he had appointed himself the kid’s bodyguard, which Myka and Helena absolutely endorsed.

Myka’s phone lit up with an incoming video call. She shot Rebecca a quick apologetic glance. “Rebecca, would you mind?”

“Oh, of course not, dear, go ahead. I’ll wait outside.”

Myka nodded, finger poised to acknowledge the call. “Thanks,” she mouthed, then turned to her phone’s screen.

“Myka!!” Both Christina and Pete were yelling her name.

“Hey you two,” Myka laughed, “cool your engines, hold your horses. I’m not deaf!”

“Myka, did you hear? H.G. is gonna go free!” Pete was obviously unable to sit still. Leaving the phone in Christina’s hands, he jumped up and punched the air. “Awesome! I’m sure she’ll be here soon; she’s in a presser right now, but she said she’d come to the hotel ASAP after that.”

“I know, I know,” Myka said, still smiling. “I saw it on the news. Jane and Amanda just left; Rebecca is still here but said she’d wait outside to give me privacy.”

“Rebecca?” Christina asked, lighting up. “Call her back! I want to talk to her about horcruxes!”

“Socket Wrench, this is not the time,” Pete said, nudging her shoulder from the side. “We’re here to entertain Myka until H.G. gets here and then we’ll give them some privacy too, for all the smooching.” He drew out the ‘oo’ to a ridiculous degree, complete with pursed lips and kissing noises.

Christina laughed and fake-gagged and slapped him, and Myka grinned at their antics. Those two had really hit it off, and it was beautiful to see.

“So Mykes,” Pete said in the end, settling down next to Christina again, “what did you have for lunch today? Throw a man a bone here; the restaurant in this place is boring.”

Myka laughed and rolled her eyes, but did entertain Pete – a bit cruelly, perhaps – with an accurate description of the steak and salad she had for lunch. She herself hadn’t believed it: steak! In a hospital! To rebuild strength, Doctor Calder had explained when she’d asked if Myka had any misgivings over eating meat – or red meat in particular.

Halfway through her equally detailed description of dessert, Helena rushed into the hotel room. “Hello, you two- is that Myka?”

“Hey, bonus mum,” Christina called out as she hugged Helena. “Yup, we got her for you.”

“C’mon, Lathe, let’s make ourselves rare,” Pete added.

“Will you just hang on to the phone for a minute while I take off my bloody coat?” Helena asked, sounding harried.

“Relax, H.G.,” Pete said, “Myka’s not going anywhere. Take off your coat, powder your nose, brush your hair, do whatever you need to do, girl.” He snapped his fingers, and Christina giggled.

Helena, arms still half-stuck in her coat sleeves, rolled her eyes. She did manage to set down her key card, purse and phone without incident, though, and finally extricated herself from her coat. One imperious gesture and Pete handed the phone over to her. “See ya, Mykes!”

“Bye, Myka,” Christina chimed in.

“Bye, you two,” Myka called out, and focused on Helena as the two left the hotel room. “Hey,” she said. “Take a moment, hm?”

“Who said anything about being rushed?” Helena said breezily.

“You’re still out of breath, babe,” Myka pointed out.

“I don’t care,” Helena replied, and the most brilliant smile Myka had ever seen appeared on her face. “I needed to see your face. Have you heard?”

Myka nodded. “The gist of it, anyway,” she said. “Which is that you won’t be going to jail, so I’ll be seeing you tomorrow?”

Helena’s face fell slightly. “Day after, I’m afraid,” she said with a sigh. “There is a lot of paperwork and wrapping up left to do, and then I’ll need to head to the park’s superintendent office, have a prelim meeting, quick presser and big cardboard check photo op.” She rolled her eyes. “Obviously the actual money will flow separately from that, but Arthur thinks that quickest is best right now, that I need to be seen to do my bit to make repairs. I could barely dissuade him from issuing me with a shovel for a photo op at the bloody crater.”

Myka sighed, too. “Yeah, okay, I get that. Will the community service also be in the park, or somewhere else?”

“I’m not sure,” Helena said. “The judge said ‘to be determined’; it’d make sense to have me actually try and physically repair at least part of what I destroyed, I suppose. Although I’m not sure how much of a difference I could make; one woman with a shovel.” She snorted. “I guess I’ll learn more this afternoon – I’ve been asked to return to the courthouse, for just such details, I presume. It’s just like in business; have a big public announcement with a lot of pomp and circumstance, and then do the actual work afterwards and behind closed doors.”

“I’m sorry,” Myka said.

“Oh, no, don’t be,” Helena said quickly. “I’m told this was a remarkably quick decision, and a remarkably lenient one at that. And I am reasonably certain I will survive another night separated from you.”

“Sweet talker.” Myka smiled.

Helena smiled back. Then she tilted her head. “And how has your day been, my love?” she asked.

Myka took a happy breath and began to tell her, buoyed up by that smile, that ‘my love’. It carried her through the rest of the day, through the night, and through the next morning, when she successfully walked all the way to the hallway vending machine without her heart rate spiking. Doctor Calder pronounced her fit for release at that, and Agent Jinks himself drove Myka home – or rather, to Rainbow Cove, at her request.

Leena was her usual calm self as she joined Myka for lunch. “They’re on their way here,” she said. “Christina just texted me.”

Myka did a double take and took out her phone. Indeed, she had a message from the kid too. This, now, made her heart rate jump – she had difficulties focusing on the pasta that Leena had made, tasty though it was. She laughed at herself as she realized how amped-up she was. “God, I wasn’t this nervous at prom,” she said, rolling her eyes.

“Well, were you as much in love then?”

“You got me there,” Myka replied, and suddenly felt a rush of soft warmth spread through her. “I don’t think I’ve ever been this much in love. I mean, I did love Sam, but-” she shook her head. “Not like this. Nothing,” she repeated with an incredulous laugh, “nothing like this.”

“Good,” Leena said with a smile that was just as warm and just as soft. “Good.”

It seemed to take forever, and at the same time like only the blink of an eye, until Helena was standing in front of Myka while behind them and around them, Pete and Leena and Christina created a little whirlwind of coats, boots, bags and umbrellas that subsided as quickly as it had come, leaving Myka and Helena alone in the room.

“Hello,” Helena said, almost shyly.

“Hey,” Myka gave back. Her heart beat right up in her throat. She couldn’t stop smiling, but she also couldn’t move, locked in an internal discussion of whether to hug Helena, or reach out for her cheek, or-

She was being hugged.

Gently, but with infinite care.

And so she hugged Helena back, a little awkwardly with one arm, and felt as though she never wanted to let her go again ever, and then Helena pulled away and Myka started to protest, only to find herself being kissed, kissed, and kissed some more, on lips, cheeks, nose, jaw, lips again. There was wetness on her cheeks, and when she had a moment to look at Helena, she couldn’t say if the tears had come from Helena’s eyes or from her own, and still they were both smiling brightly enough to light up all of Sunset Boulevard.

“Hey,” she whispered, and “Hello,” Helena replied, and then they were hugging again, kissing again, crying some more.

“Please, stay,” Helena whispered, and “Yes,” Myka replied, and again they hugged and kissed and shed a few tears.

“I love you,” Myka whispered, and “I love you, too,” Helena replied, and that was when the tears stopped for good.