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apparitionism · 3 months

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Bonus 3

I so frequently have to start these intros with “where were we?”, because I so frequently confuse even myself with regard to where any given in-progress story left off... typically it’s a cliffhanger of some sort, but off of, or onto, which specific cliff were we hanging? Well. Here in this continuation of a Christmas tale, we—or rather, Myka and Helena—were suspended in a broken-down elevator in an accounting firm’s office building in Cleveland. Something might’ve been juuuuust about to happen (see part 2 for what that something probably was, and part 1 for the causal chain that got them there), but a voice interrupted, seemingly from on high.

Bonus 3

“Is everybody okay in there?” the voice from heavenward repeats.

Myka looks up, this time confronting not her own reflection but a dark emptiness, one that is partially filled by... a firefighter?

She is sorely tempted, in the moment, to proclaim that everybody in here is most certainly not okay, given that she herself is among that “everybody” and is ready to spit nails at the timing of this supposed rescue... she talks herself down, though, because the firefighter certain doesn’t need to be informed about the grinding frustration of unrealized near-certainty.

The firefighter, most likely concerned about the lack of response, goes on, “If you’re in distress, we can hoist you up through here, get you faster help. If you’re okay, you can wait till we let the car down to the next level and get the doors open. Then you’ll be able to walk out.”

Myka looks at Helena, and they are on the same page regarding being hoisted. “Walk,” they both say.

“Good choice,” the firefighter tells them. “Easier on everybody. Never know when you’ll run into injuries, though... or sometimes worse, claustrophobics, so we gotta check.”

“Among our many problems, claustrophobia is not,” Helena says. She smiles up at the firefighter.

Who smiles back. She’s good-looking, this firefighter.

Not jealousy, Myka admonishes herself. Not now.

“Good for you,” the firefighter tells Helena. Maybe a little jealousy. Then: “I’ll put the lid back on; you two sit tight.”

She disappears; the mirror reappears. Magic-esque.

“Well, this is overdetermined,” Myka mutters.

With a head-cock, Helena says, “I believe I know what that word means, but I’m not certain I know what it means. In context.”

Is she serious? Might as well assume so... “It’s kind of like if you actually had remarked on naughtiness,” Myka says. “But maybe all I really mean, in context, is ‘story of my life.’”

Now a squint. “I know what those words mean as well, but again I must ask—”

“Never mind. I had this wild hope that maybe one thing might go right. But here we are.”

“Being rescued doesn’t fall into the ‘go right’ category?” Helena asks. And now she blinks ostentatiously, combining innocence with a sparkle of eye.

You’ve been teasing me, Myka now suspects, and she wants to say it—to accuse it!—but the interruption stole her boldness. Instead she sighs out “of course it does” and resigns herself to contemplating the complications that have, over the span of time during which she and Helena have been hamhandedly dealing with their destiny, sat themselves down solid-awkward between possibility and realization.

And anyway, if Helena is teasing, does that mean she fails to feel the same urgency Myka does about what might, in the absence of intervention, have been... realized?

Myka has made so many miscalculations with regard to what Helena does, might, could feel. Could the tease, if that’s what it is, have a different significance? Maybe. But Myka is tired. Of miscalculating, yes, but also of hoping. Of wishing. Of hanging on a knife-edge of believing in something that fate keeps deciding should not happen...

Okay, deep breath. Maybe it isn’t fate this time. Maybe in this case it’s nothing more—or less?—than a disapproving elevator.

As they at last exit those hypercritical confines, Myka leans into that latter interpretation, saying back in the car’s direction, “You were pretending to be Jesus-birth-focused, whereas I think in actual fact you’re harking your way around the Old Testament, but as said testament gets cherry-picked by fundamentalist New-Testamenters who don’t know Hebrew. So congratulations on your historically insupportable theology.” She’s pretty sure the unnecessarily extended creak she hears from the mechanism is its version of a crude gesture.

Their firefighter, who had been the one to pry the doors open inch by inch and set them free, now says to Helena, “Did she maybe hit her head when the car stopped?”

“No, she’s merely imaginative,” Helena rejoins, cheerily.

“I’m imaginative?” Myka demands. “Says the father of something.”

The firefighter touches Myka’s arm as if it’s the next step toward physically restraining her, a clear indication of how unhinged her last statements must have sounded. Further indication: the firefighter says, “The whole elevator system’s shut down till they figure out what happened. Can you get down a lot of stairs okay, or do you need assistance?”

“Oh, I definitely need assistance, but not with stairs,” Myka tells her.

Helena steps smooth between the firefighter and Myka, taking Myka’s arm herself instead. “She’ll be fine, I believe. But thank you.”

She’s very gracious. The firefighter is very attractive. Did Helena move to break the firefighter’s hold on Myka... or to place herself closer to the firefighter?

Not jealousy, Myka reminds herself. Not now.

Particularly not now that they’re embarking on a stair-descent and leaving the firefighter behind, one step at a time. It’s an endless-seeming series—“a lot of stairs” indeed—on which they expend no small amount of time. And no small amount of energy.

As they near what seems, blessedly, to be the end, Myka huffs out, “If I ever start thinking I want to live in a high-rise, just say ‘elevator dealy-thingy’ to me to make sure I understand how much I’ll end up regretting it if there’s ever an emergency.” It’s the kind of thing she would say to Pete, so she backtracks: “Sorry. Never mind that. I’m tired.”

Helena’s breathing isn’t exactly unlabored as she says, “No, no. Object lessons. I might take one as well: feign injury so firefighters will convey us via stretcher down accursed emergency stairs.”

“Brilliant idea,” Myka says, though she does spare a “glad we didn’t put you through that” thought for their firefighter.

“Thank you. Coming from, as quite recently noted, such an imaginative individual, that’s a great compliment.”

“Sorry for that outburst too. I was just so ticked at the elevator for how it clearly intended to put a stop to—”

Fortunately/unfortunately, Myka doesn’t manage to finish the utterance, because fortunately/unfortunately, they’re at last pushing through the first-floor fire door.

In a perverse twist, which Myka suspects the elevator of somehow contriving, that door releases them into the cubicle farm. Very near Bob’s location. Where he is now enthusiastically, rather than resentfully, stationed.

“Ladies!” he greets them. Did the elevator text him to lie in wait? “I finally got paid! I’m flush!”

Helena nods in satirical approval. “And we were rescued from the elevator at an overdetermined moment. Such good news all around.” The verbal irony chokes Myka, for it confirms—entirely—that Helena had indeed been teasing.

“Good thing I was here to light a fire under you,” Bob swaggers, clearly oblivious to Helena’s sarcasm, and it’s for once a good thing that he’s paying most of his attention to Helena anyway, because Myka is utterly failing to keep her eyes from widening, her jaw from slackening, into the very dictionary illustration of incredulity. “So what are your plans, now that you’ve put the fear of god into Nancy and made her give me what I deserve?”

Fear of god... now Myka’s certain he and the elevator are in cahoots.

“We have business to attend to,” Helena tells him.

“IRS business?”

Helena smiles. It doesn’t reach her eyes. “Not at all,” she says, and Myka recognizes that tone as “continue at your peril.”

So of course Bob continues. “Oh, that kind of business,” he smarms, like the two of them are speaking in some super-secret, super-specific, only-we-know-what-the-word-“business”- means code. Infuriating in itself, but he goes on, “If you’re not on the clock, maybe you’d enjoy an evening out.” The “enjoy” is slimy, and the “maybe” is smug, as if he has no doubt the answer will be yes.

“Oh yes,” Helena says, bringing Myka up short, and “very much so,” she continues. What performance is this? “But not with you.” Myka exhales in relief. Helena then turns to her and says, “I believe you promised me an evening that would make up for our having been trapped?”

Myka nearly chokes again, now at the way “an evening” and “make up for” absolutely roil with salacious intent.

Bob yelps, “I knew it!” which Helena skewers with a completely, and completely transparently, fake-dense, “Knew what?”

He is sufficiently cowed to refrain from responding with anything involving the word “naughty.”

When they finally escape the building, Myka fumes, “Nancy Sullivan did not in any way go far enough with that guy. I don’t know what this pen would let me smite him with, but I’m extremely tempted to take it out of the bag and make a list of my own.”

“Despite the downside?” Helena asks. She’s dialed back the punish-the-offender spice; now she sounds her baseline undercurrent-of-amusement self.

Myka envies her ability to change registers so seemingly effortlessly. “I’m already off the charts, judgment-wise,” she admits, “so I honestly wonder how much downside I’d really feel.” It’s more than she would have been inclined to say, pre-elevator. But something has surely shifted.

“Hm,” Helena noises, a not-quite-poke of an answer. But she then asks, “Would I be on this list?”

Whiplash: back to an unassimilable suggestiveness. That’s better, though, than Helena making and conveying a guilt-ridden assumption, as she most likely would have done in the past, that Myka would pass judgment on her for her misdeeds.

“And if so, in which column?” Helena muses on.

Again Myka would love to have panache, to be able to play into the overdetermined idea of “naughty” or at least counter it with a clever turn on “nice.” Instead she offers something in hope, which she hopes is most immediately legible as practical and not too hopeful: “Since you implied I’m taking you out, I think I’d better do that. Or some other mechanism might decide to get all... judgy. Disapprovey? Obviously from a different theological perspective than the elevator, but even so.”

“Such other mechanism sounds strangely chivalrous. Holding you to account on my behalf? I confess I’m curious as to the form that chivalry might take.”

It’s a perfect opening to probe Helena’s true interpretation of the overdetermined interruption. “But the consequence of said chivalry,” Myka says. “I don’t want to risk it.”

“Any such consequence would be, at this point, merely delay,” Helena says.

Delay... the interruption was merely delay... which means Helena thought that not-quite realization of all their pent-up possibility was—thinks it is!—as inevitable as Myka had. As Myka does. Does now again. Okay, the tenses may be hard to render sensically, but Myka knows what it all means.

Alas, despite the change in their together-weather, she can’t quite see her way clear to realizing that inevitability on a sidewalk... to move in that direction, though, she undertakes to demonstrate that she can be the chivalrous actor, no disapproving mechanism required. Object lessons. “I know you haven’t had any food since this morning,” she says. “Are you hungry?”

Helena’s eyebrows rise. “Oh,” she says, as if only just remembering that her body has physical requirements. Could her time as a hologram have affected—dampened—her awareness of such necessities? Even thinking the question jabs Myka with want, to be the one to bring her back to the body. Its needs. “Yes, I am.”

“What do you like? What’s a favorite?” Please don’t let her say tacos from a truck, Myka begs the universe, because she would really rather not have to explain her lingering shivers around taco trucks as yet another dealy-thingy.

“Preferences are still in process.”

It isn’t “tacos from a truck,” so hallelujah. But it’s inscrutable. “Are they?”

“I’ve traveled through America and elsewhere, over the weeks I’ve been away.” Helena pauses, giving Myka time to appreciate this window, however minimal, onto an answer to the “where were you” question... sadly, “America and elsewhere” gives precious little insight into the reason for all this travel. Helena continues, “What I’ve found is that contemporary cuisine bears little resemblance to what I knew. Some is strange and off-putting; some is strange but surpassingly delicious. Have you experienced a ‘blooming onion’?”

Is that intended to occupy the former or the latter category? “Pete loves those,” Myka says. That should fit as a response to either one.

“They represent what I cannot help but imagine is a foretaste of paradise,” Helena says.

She sounds rapturous.

Thus Myka has a new goal: to inspire a tone in Helena’s voice even approximating the one with which she’s just expressed this unexpected adoration.

However, Myka also has a new frustration: that not one but two of the people who occupy essential positions in her life venerate blooming onions. Which she herself cannot stomach. How to process this? Maybe she could do it by simply watching Helena eat one of the vile things... that really might be worth doing, if only as a stick against which to measure Pete’s gusto...

Sadly, that’s not going to happen today, for a frantic search on her phone yields zero restaurants in the vicinity offering even an approximation.

Onions aside, however, the number of restaurants near to them is, in positive news, nonzero. Myka reads her list of results to Helena as suggestions, and she is genuinely entertained, as well as informed, by the vehemence with which Helena vetoes every option that isn’t aggressively carnivorous.

Twenty minutes later they’re seated at Marble Room, which billed itself on its website as featuring “Steaks and Raw Bar”: Helena had turned up her nose at “raw bar” but landed with claws on “steaks.”

Watching Helena leaf through a menu—sitting across from her at an intimate table for two and doing the same—is even more astonishingly normal than any of the other normal things Myka has seen Helena do, and has done together with her, today. “Have we ever been to a restaurant? Just you and me, being seated? Getting menus and looking at them?” She would of course remember it, if they had, but she asks so as to press on the newness of it.

Bonus: Her asking the question prompts Helena to propose they conduct an inventory, limited though they both know it is, of shared non-B&B meals. It seems a gentle tiptoe through the past, one that might help rather than hurt, so Myka agrees.

“We didn’t share any table in Tamalpais,” Helena begins.

“Too busy saving Claudia from combusting,” Myka concurs.

“And removing you, vertically, from the path of marauding vehicles,” Helena concurs back. She smiles at Myka with a spark, one that is neither naughty nor nice, but rather alchemizes both into a gift of energetic attention that should be impossible.

Oh, this... this is what Myka has found irresistible from the start, for the full alchemy is in fact not only Helena’s impossibly true spark, but how Myka herself responds to it: with an internal melt, the “oh, this” that always hits new, each time she feels it. They say the body doesn’t remember pain; apparently it also doesn’t remember, from one moment of recognition to the next, how it greets its perfect match.

Another of those irresistible moments—actually a cascade of them—had occurred on a plane, as they traveled to Pittsburgh to probe what had happened to the students in Egypt, about which Helena was of course hiding her full knowledge. Myka tries not to push too hard on how significant that episode had been to her, given all the internecine baggage, as she says, “Sitting on a 737 in row 32, me in E and you in F, choosing between the market snack box or the chicken-salad-sandwich plate... that doesn’t count, I’m pretty sure.”

“Alas, no. I did, however, appreciate your willingness to share your sandwich with me.”

“You said it was one of the worst things you’d ever tasted in your life.” In the sandwich-share’s wake, Helena’s face had presented an astonishingly unnuanced canvas of disgust, and Myka had despaired at having caused such a reaction, even as she had reveled in having taken the unprecedented opportunity to do so: “Want a bite?” she’d asked, desperately casual, and Helena had accepted the invitation, biting, all teeth and lips and... and then, sadly, the reaction.

“It was,” Helena says. “Nevertheless I appreciated your willingness—but aha!” she pounces, “sandwiches! We ate ful sandwiches together from that cart in Alexandria.”

“No seating there,” Myka reminds her. “Also no menus.”

“Disqualifying,” Helena concedes. She falls quiet.

They both know Egypt is the end; what follows is adversarial. And then incorporeal.

But today—this collaborative, embodied day—is a beginning. “So we should mark this as a first,” Myka says.

“Celebrate this as a first,” Helena responds... corrects? She looks down at her menu and doesn’t look up as she says, “Of many. If I may dare to hope.”

Myka waits to answer until the look-back-up has occurred. “Only if I may too,” she says, meeting and holding Helena’s eyes.

Which roll, those eyes, and Myka panics. “You may and I may, but such mutual hope will likely have no earthly effect,” Helena says, providing relief: the scoff was directed not at Myka, but at... everything.

Hoping to unscoff her back to celebrating, Myka tries, “Can’t we mutually hope for it to have that effect though? In addition to that underlying mutual hope, for this being the first of many?”

“We can,” Helena says, her brow skeptical, “but would that be sufficient? I suspect the overall situation is likely to require several recursive applications of hope.”

“I can’t dispute your suspicion,” Myka concedes. Is hope a finite resource? That feels like a philosophical dead-ender, or at the very least the beginning of a descent, so she tamps down her impulse to voice the question. They’re here now, a circumstance on which Myka certainly, and Helen probably too, would never have thought to expend any hope at all.

She gives her own look at the menu and, without thinking, blurts, “This meal’s going to cost me several recursive applications of my credit card.” Immediately she wants to swallow back those words; they’re yet another instance of something she’d say to Pete, and anyway mentioning money is so picayune, here in the midst of an historic first. And yet... it never ends well when she tries to pretend to sophistication, moneyed or otherwise, that she doesn’t have, so she gives up and goes all in. “I don’t even know what a ‘duroc pork chop’ is, much less why it would cost more than a coffee-table book. And my dad’s brain would break at the thought of adding a lobster tail to a meal. At the price of it too, but the very idea.”

“I can’t dispute your father’s position,” Helena says, and Myka loves the echo—loves that Helena bothered with the echo. “My mother would most likely respond the same. She was a servant, you know.”

Myka could assure her that she does know; she’s done enough research on the historical H.G. Wells to produce a double-doorstop of a family biography. But she is over-the-top eager to know what Helena might be willing to say, so she goes with what she hopes is an appropriate please-inform-me prompt, sugared with just enough eagerness: “Was she?”

Helena nods. “It trained her to be exceptionally practical, but she became even more so after the failure of my father’s shop compelled her to return to service. That was difficult for her—for all of us. Charles and I were both desperate to rise above that station... insofar as one could, we did a reasonable job of it, and what I’ve learned of Charles’s later life suggests he went even further. A century later, I have as well. So I’ll pay for the meal.”

“But disapprovey mechanisms!” Myka protests, realizing she’s piled error on error: first, she’s supposed to be taking Helena out; second, she’s implying that she can’t pay; and—

“For good or ill, money is no longer my limiting factor,” Helena says, halting Myka’s thought-careering.

She seems genuinely indifferent to the financial consequences, so Myka sets herself to try, against every fiber of her frugal and responsible being, to pretend like that’s okay. Besides, there’s another issue to pursue. “If not that... what is your limiting factor?”

“Ironically, time,” Helena responds instantly. Acerbically.

“That’s everyone’s,” Myka says, but just as instantly she understands it’s another utterance she should have censored, because she knows what the response will be.

“Unless one is bronzed.”

Expectation fulfilled. And yet: “You aren’t bronzed anymore,” Myka says. To emphasize that—or rather, to emphasize its implications—she extends her right hand across the table. Maybe Helena will take it... she is more hopeful about such a possibility than she has ever been.

“Or unless one is a hologram. Or, now that I think of it, unless one is a vampire.” Helena says this musingly, but she offers her left hand, and now they are touching, and Myka is regretting her vamp somewhat less. “Does that support your earlier postulate?”

Myka can muster few words with their fingers atangle. “Doesn’t matter,” she manages. “You aren’t those either.” So as to put all time-suspending states away, as the past or impossibilities. Or both.

“You are correct. I am none of those.” Helena’s grip on Myka’s hand tightens.

They are holding hands. And if it’s overly adolescent of Myka to find this barely precedented joining significant? So be it.

Together they sit, not letting go. Accustoming themselves, even, to skin on skin. Learning it.

A throat-clear invades Myka’s ears from some unclear direction; she raises her eyes to regard a server.

But those joined hands, hers and Helena’s, don’t immediately disengage. Helena doesn’t let go, and Myka doesn’t either. This has meaning, here among the bonuses: the waiter seeing is okay, and that okay-ness is a continuation. Nancy Sullivan saw. Bob saw—differently, but still. This server, different yet again, but even so: seeing.

“I’m Frank,” that server says. “Really pleased to be here for you tonight. First I need to explain not checking in earlier: you were in conversation, and we try not to let service intrude on your privacy. If that’s an error, it’s on me.” His voice is sleek, as is his physical presentation: he wears a spectacularly well-fitted all-black uniform, as every server here does, but he’s also beautiful, with Roman-ideal bone structure and perfect raw-umber skin. His teeth are perfect too.

Gazing upon him makes Myka regret even more her jump to jealousy with the firefighter—for it now seems more likely that Cleveland has simply been doing its best to show its loveliest helpers to her and Helena.

Bonus.

“No error whatsoever, darling,” Helena says, her sincerity evident via the endearment. From anyone else, it might seem dismissive, even infantilizing, but from Helena, as Myka knows thanks to Claudia’s reactions to being on the receiving end, it’s a notice-signifying prize. If an occasionally unnerving one.

Frank, however, is not unnerved. He visibly warms, turning toward Helena, drawing his hands apart, opening his shoulders—expanding his physical presence, like a peacock, but one whose display is appreciation. When he speaks, however, he shifts to include Myka in his openness. “Like to start with drinks? And I can clarify anything on the menu, if you’ve had time to look.”

“I can clarify that she wants a steak,” Myka says, to speed the process along, given how long it’s been since they both ate.

“The Delmonico,” Helena clarifies further.

“That’s a standout cut. Preparation?” Frank asks.

“Bloody.”

Myka laughs. “Saw that coming. Rethinking the vampire thing a little by the way.”

This makes Helena smile—not naughty, but rather, again, with attention. As if she and Myka really do know things about each other... under a tragic knife, they’d said words about knowing, knowing better than anyone, but Myka is aware, and she presumes Helena is too, that those words weren’t true; they were nothing more (or less) than wishes, postulates about a better world than the too-real one that seemed inescapable.

But now they might be inching closer to that better world.

Helena says to Myka, “In deference to our parents’ sensibilities, I won’t add a lobster tail, but perhaps Crab Oscar? For the resonance?”

“I have to admit, that’s like the pork chop: I don’t know what it is,” Myka says. “Except for the resonance.”

“Is resonance like instagramming?” Frank asks. “Unless it’s just for that, I’d go elsewhere.”

Helena glances kitchenward, then looks back at Frank. “So. A specialty, but not of this house,” she says, voice lowered, almost-but-not-quite comically cloak-and-dagger.

“Few blocks west for cooked seafood. Blue star on the door; can’t miss it,” Frank says, lowering his voice too.

They are beautiful co-conspirators.

“Oh, Oscar would have liked you.” Helena now sounds silky. Fey and silky, and Myka wants to wrap herself in that magicky silk.

“The Grouch?” Frank tries, a little flippant—but only a little. He’s keying on Helena’s every word.

“He certainly was,” Helena says, with approval, as if Frank has passed an exceptionally exacting test.

“Okay,” Frank says. His I-don’t-know-what-just-happened-but-I-think-I-liked-it tone is painfully familiar. “And for you?” he asks Myka.

“The beets and blue cheese salad, please.”

“A salad?” Helena gasps, clutching at her chest.

Could that level of indignation possibly be real? Myka ignores the histrionics for the moment and tells Frank, “A couple of vegetable sides too: the blackened carrots and also the steamed asparagus.” She then says to Helena, “They sound subtle.” Real reaction or no, Myka might as well start defending her choices.

“You vegetarian?” Frank asks. “Vegan? Kitchen can modify whatever you—”

“Not as such. I’m just not as carnivorous as she is.”

“Mm,” Helena noises, and Myka can already hear the “Aren’t you?” that will follow... she tries to shape a riposte, and she is so preoccupied with that impossible task that she nearly misses what Helena actually says: “I’m sorry. You should of course have what you want.”

Her contrition seems genuine. But in the end it doesn’t matter, for the reason Myka now articulates. “I do. This minute, I do.”

Which... flusters Helena? She looks down at the menu again, down then up at Myka, blinking, then turns her attention to Frank, as if he might save her. From an overload of honesty? Of resultant expectation?

Frank doesn’t seem inclined to offer any lifeline. Instead, he says to Myka, “Listen. If you’re into subtle vegetables. It’s not on the menu, but chef’s serving a really special kabocha squash with some of the meat dishes. I could bring you some of that too? If it doesn’t hit you right, no harm no foul.”

“That would be great,” Myka says. She doesn’t know what kabocha squash is, but she’s copped to enough unsophistication already; she and her phone can figure this one out, and anyway, squash is pretty much squash. It’s not some coffee-table-book pork chop.

“Thinking about those drinks?” Frank then asks. “I’ll tell the kitchen to expedite that steak though.”

The idea of making yet another decision is too much pressure; Myka declines. Helena declines too, in a way that suggests she is deferring to Myka, conforming to her wishes. It’s another bonus: not only does Myka not have to defend her choices, but she can in fact shape choices for both of them.

It’s as intoxicating as any cocktail.

Frank adds, “But with the meal? Maybe? I can bring out the full wine list.”

More pressure, and Myka, despite the fact that the thought of drinking wine with Helena is lovely, opens her mouth to say no. But then: “Do you have a recommendation?” Helena asks Frank. It’s defusing. As if she knows that’s how it hit Myka, as pressure but also as potentially lovely. And as if she wants to resolve “pressure.” So as to reach “lovely.”

“To stand up to that Delmonico, it’s definitely a cab. Sommelier likes to pair the Hall Coeur 2013. Young, but deep. Takes that journey, you know? It’s a Napa, from St. Helena.”

Helena raises an eyebrow at Myka. “A signal of approval for once?” Her voice rises, up up and away from cynicism.

The last thing Myka would ever do is quash that rise. Hearing it—knowing it applies to the two of them together—is another bonus. “Saint Helena,” she agrees, without irony.

As the meal proceeds, the bonuses multiply: Helena’s face lights up when the steak arrives, and that is of course a gift, as is the voracity with which she attacks it. But watching her begin to cut and consume the stark slab has a further effect on Myka, in that it puts her in mind of Helena’s basic personhood. Or, no: her animalhood. An animal, here a human one, eats a piece of meat. Throughout prehistory, recorded history, all the history, this throughline. “Let me try a bite,” Myka says, and Helena obliges, slicing, transferring across the table, connecting each of them, as a consuming animal, to the other, the two of them, as animals, to all others. There’s both thrill and comfort in that.

The service, too, is a plus: Frank attends to them with delicate discretion, never interrupting conversation, yet always appearing when a dish should be cleared, when the wine should be poured. Sleek. Smooth. In addition, this serves for Myka, surprisingly, as a sotto voce contrast to Helena’s aspect, revealing her as a bit less sleek and smooth than Myka always ideates her as being... why does the difference, if that’s what it is, seem so striking? Well, Frank is clearly practiced at his tasks. Experienced. Does that mean Helena, here being with Myka in this way, sitting and sharing, is in fact doing something... new?

Myka knows her preferred answer to that.

Also rewarding, completely unexpectedly: the kabocha, presented as thick slices that are charred but not smoky, seasoned but not overspiced, sweet but not cloying, creamy but not clottingly so. It’s unlike any squash Myka has ever eaten... thus squash is not pretty much squash. “I could have this squash every meal,” Myka says as she finishes the not insubstantial portion, literally licking her lips. She suspects her voice is betraying something very like rapture, and could this possibly be how Helena and Pete feel about those execrable onions? “Every single meal. For a week. A month.”

“I could do the same with this steak,” Helena says.

She’s managed to down an impressive percentage of its sixteen ounces, which prompts Myka to say, not entirely jokingly, “We may need to talk about heart-healthiness at some point.”

Helena takes a moment. Then she says, “Healthiness of heart... mine? Yours? Or both?”

It’s a bit sardonic, involving an eyebrow, and Myka berates herself for not having preconsidered, and consequently rejected, bringing up hearts, because they could not possibly be ready to speak directly about—

—but then Helena is extending her left hand, and Myka is meeting it with her right, and just like that, they are rejoined.

With her right hand, Helena raises her glass. “How did we fail to toast when the wine first arrived?” she asks.

“You were too focused on the steak.” Myka says this with affection. With familiarity. She can imagine—and wishes she could confidently predict—saying these same words to Helena again at some future celebratory meal. She can imagine—and wishes she could confidently predict—their hearts being made healthy by such continued affection and familiarity.

“That was certainly an error, and as our charming Frank would say, it’s on me. So I’ll toast now as I should have done then: To you.” Helena’s salute is candid. Open. As warm as her hand on Myka’s.

“To you too.” Myka has to raise with her left hand—it feels a little weird, but isn’t that appropriate for a first toast with Helena? “And to us,” she adds, a dare that Helena reward by not withdrawing her warmth or her hand.

Their hands are still joined when Helena’s phone announces its presence. The intrusion breaks their hold. Myka’s heart, just now so high, sinks, for such interruptions—of chats, of meals, of anything consequential—are so rarely good.

She braces herself for an adverse outcome.

She tries to hide the bracing by directing her attention to her remaining stalks of asparagus, slicing them into bite-sized pieces, then slicing them again, halves halved, quarters quartered, sixteenths sixteenthed, practically baby-fooding them as she aggressively pretends to ignore the words Helena is saying.

Not that those words are revealing: “yes,” and “all right,” and “I understand.” Repeated with slight variations.

Upon disconnecting, Helena says to Myka, “Apparently my reprieve has come to an end. I’ve been instructed to go to the airport.” Her voice is calm but somewhere sharp, a blanket smoothed over blades.

“A reprieve? That’s what this was for you?” Bracing had been the right instinct, but Myka had not expected that to be the body blow. “For me, it’s been a bonus.”

Helena inclines her head. “A bonus, certainly. If you prefer.” Smoothing, smoothing.

Myka does prefer, but she pushes back. Back to punishment, hoping to expose the blades. “What you prefer—what you called it, even if you don’t prefer it—matters more. If this was a reprieve, what was the sentence?”

“It wasn’t pronounced in any court, but from my perspective? To keep my distance from the Warehouse,” Helena snaps, then winces. “And the obvious corollary.”

Myka has hit her mark. And now, saying it out loud... that will make it real. So: “From me,” Myka says.

“From you,” Helena says back. Her saying it, realing it too: it’s gratifying.

“You can’t even stay for dessert.” It’s an absurd heaviness to put on such a silly thing, and it’s not like Myka would have eaten any dessert herself. But she would avidly have watched Helena do so... “I’m questioning the Fredness of it all,” she laments.

Helena turns quizzical, but there’s no way Myka can explain. Well, no: there’s no way Myka can imagine wasting time by explaining.

“My flight isn’t till tomorrow,” she says instead, plaintive. She’s seized by an impulse to—what is it?—go with Helena to the airport? Yes, of course she wants to do that, but there’s more—again, what is it?—to figure out a way to fly with Helena wherever she’s being sent, damn the consequences? Yes, that’s closer. But Myka can’t gift herself such a wildness. Not even for Christmas. Not even if she put herself on her own “nice” list.

Should’ve taken this to a hotel room, her body berates. Should’ve skipped to that. All this time wasted in a restaurant. Sitting. Menus. Should have pursued the satisfaction of what you’ve always known, from the marrow of your bones all the way out to your skin, is a greater hunger.

But. Even as her body tries to persuade her of its primacy, she thinks back over their interactions of the past hours. Would she trade them for that satisfaction? Would she really? Perhaps, in a different world—a more desperate one. But in this hopefully better world, this time was not wasted. All these bonuses... they were, they are, important. Conversation has been essential to each incremental increase of their intimacy. She shouldn’t discount it. She should celebrate it.

“I went to a wrong place just now,” she tells Helena, whose face is on pause—she must have been waiting for Myka to make even the slightest bit of sense. “I’m sorry. Do you want me to go with you? At least in the taxi?”

Helena’s post-pause expression is deeply indulgent. “I think you should stay and enjoy dessert. Let me imagine you seeing this unprecedented meal to a sweet completion.”

“I’m not really a dessert person,” Myka says, not wanting to be indulged quite like this, and additionally not wanting to misrepresent. “And anyway I don’t see how I could enjoy it with you gone. Could you maybe imagine something else?”

Helena softens; clearly, that was a good response. “What if I simply think of you. You eating your salad, your vegetables,” she says, then, “and one bite of bloody steak.” That’s another of those transcendent attentional gifts. One bite of bloody steak. Myka files that away for future comfort, even as Helena continues, “While I watched you do those things. Reveling in the fact that, as established, such a thing has never happened before.”

“I like that,” Myka says. “I know I’ll be thinking of you eating your steak, how I watched you. Which also, as established, never happened before.” She is compelled, however, to add, “But you’re leaving again. Which has.” She checks the time, and now it is Christmas Eve. She tries not to draw inferences from that.

“But I will come back.”

“When?”

“When I can.”

“Why did we get stuck in that elevator?” Myka asks.

“Because the mechanism malfunctioned. With intent?” Helena says that last playfully.

Myka doesn’t, here at the end, want to play. Play along. “I repeat, more existentially: why did we get stuck in that elevator? Bearing in mind that the elevator itself may not appreciate its role in the... grand design.”

Helena takes a moment. Then she says, “So that we might have this goodbye rather than, as before, none at all?” The words are a softness.

Myka wants to respond in kind. “Or—and?” Fighting against fearful reticence, trying to be truthful, she says, “So I could work my way up to saying this out loud: please come back. To me.”

Helena breathes. “And so I could say this to you: when I can, I will.”

They’re in public. How different might this have been if Myka had pushed them toward a hotel room? But she can’t help checking herself: it’s not like things couldn’t have gone spectacularly wrong in such a space. Plus an elevator would most likely have been involved, so...

In the space they are actually inhabiting, Helena now rises from the table. Myka does the same, moving to meet her.

They share a hug, one that terrifies Myka—because they’ve never touched like this before; because it feels awkward rather than natural as their bodies surge, press, warm; because if they can’t even hug right then what does that bode for anything else—but as they emerge from this confusion of arms and torsos, Helena says again, “I will.” Her assurance reshapes the ungraceful embrace into a profound affirmation.

The certainty heats into Myka: any goodbye, even a clumsy one, is a bonus compared to no goodbye at all.

But then Helena is gone.

And Myka is not at all surprised—yet still devastated—to be sitting alone at a table for two in a steakhouse in Cleveland on just-turned Christmas Eve.

“I’m sorry your lady had to leave.” Frank has materialized next to her, like he’s the Ghost of Christmas Bonus. Or, no: the Ghost of Christmas Bonus Rescinded.

“Story of my life,” Myka says, trying for a jest, fearing it’s a sob.

Frank juts his perfectly sharp chin like he’s considering a similarly perfectly sharp comment... but then his face gentles. “She paid the check and then some, so you can sit here forever if you need to.”

“I should probably go,” she says. Sad but true.

“Wait a second though. She said to bring you this, because she wants to make sure your heart stays healthy.” He places a small plate of kabocha squash before her. “She seems for real,” he concludes. But then, “Is she?” he asks.

Yet another gut-familiar reaction to the Helena of it all: not-quite-belief. “She is,” Myka testifies, again fighting that sob. Because before tonight, before today and tonight, her response would more likely have been “I hope so.”

As she eats an additional portion of absurdly delicious squash on Christmas Eve in Cleveland by herself, Myka considers calling Pete. He would at least rescue her from this sudden crush of loneliness...

... but on second thought, would he? Or would his presence make it worse, as it sometimes has before? Myka knows she’s at fault for that; she’s never really explained to him, out loud in words he would understand and accept, what Helena is to her. How entirely she matters.

Which in turn brings her to the keynote, which is that she should feel the loneliness. She owes it to Helena, for this is one of the visceral testaments to Helena’s significance: because her absence matters just as much as her presence.

****

When Myka gets back to the B&B the next day—after having been offered on both of her flights the opportunity to purchase a chicken salad sandwich, each time rendering her nostalgic and frustrated in equal measure—Steve is waiting for her.

“How was it?” he asks as he relieves her weary hands of the pen-bearing static bag.

“Really, really nice,” she says. For the resonance.

Steve smiles a smile Myka doesn’t understand.

TBC

#bering and wells #Warehouse 13 #fanfic #holiday (but not Gift Exchange)#Bonus #part 3 #what’s a bonus?#which mechanisms judge you negatively and which judge positively?#you never know #and speaking of elevators #I cannot recommend highly enough Colson Whitehead’s novel The Intuitionist #because it commits to the bit #to the nth degree #and it object-lessons you #also to the nth degree #about what a narrative can actually *do*#in terms of excavating and linking #and oh yeah resonating

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b-and-w-holiday-gift-exchange · 10 months

Text

Hello everyone!

It's American Thanksgiving, which means sign-ups for the Bering and Wells Holiday Gift Exchange are officially open!

Here's how this event works:

Send a message or ask to this blog (@b-and-w-holiday-gift-exchange) or directly to me (K, your host, @kla1991) stating that you would like to participate. Sign-ups begin today and close on the Winter Solstice, December 21st.

If you sign up, you'll receive the name of your giftee on Christmas, December 25th. You will then have one week to *anonymously* contact your giftee to tell them what kind of fan works you make (art, fic, gifs, etc.) and ask for ideas or requests.

Between New Years', January 1st, and Valentine's Day, February 14th, you'll work on your gifts, and on the 14th we'll all post what we've created for our giftees and enjoy all the gifts!

If you have questions of any kind, feel free to reach out to this blog or to @kla1991 to ask. And even if you don't plan to sign up, please reblog this post to spread the word!

Happy American Thanksgiving, and happy Bering and Wells Gift Exchange Season!

#bering and wells #b&w holiday gift exchange #warehouse 13

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deathtodickens · 2 years

Text

A Bering & Wells Gift Exchange comic story for @lady-adventuress. Happy Palentines Day, friend! There are typos and drawos, even after my very extensive, not-at-all rushed, proof-reading, so, many advance apologies. Thank you for the ideas, I tried to stay in line with mistaken identity/long lost theme. Hope it is enjoyable!

Myka was seventeen when Emily Lake, her best friend, disappeared. Whisked away into the night by Mrs. Frederic, crying and inconsolable, cursing her father’s name. It was unreal, all of it, from first kiss to final goodbye. But whatever disbelief Myka had held onto, wide awake in her bed most of that night, shattered entirely on her walk to school the next morning.

She remembers hearing the sirens as she’d finally drifted into sleep but there were always sirens. Sirens were never unusual.

She should have known. She should have known.

Emily Lake’s house was burned to the ground. A smoldering pile of charred rubble, surrounded by crime scene tape, police vehicles, and a white Coroner's Office van.

She could only get so close but she could see all she needed to see.

She doesn't remember losing consciousness, though she supposes no one does when they come to. She remembers the spinning. She remembers the falling.

And she remembers waking up in the back of an ambulance with Mrs. Frederic by her side.

Myka sees Mrs. Frederic a lot over the years. Not by choice or chance. Not by want for that woman to be in her life. Just by the mere fact that she loves a ghost. A girl that's supposed to be dead.

Burned up in a house fire.

Buried in the ground.

They'd pulled two bodies from the rubble of Emily Lake's house, too badly burned for an open casket. Too unknown and unrelated to anyone of means to have a proper burial.

Myka went to Emily's memorial at the high school. She listened as others spoke about a girl they knew nothing about. And while she grew angry at their forced tears and fabricated associations to a dead girl they never knew, she, herself, had absolutely nothing to say about it.

Her best friend, Emily Lake, had died in a fire.

Some girl she loves, called Helena, arose from her ashes.

Myka sees Mrs. Frederic once when she's nineteen. This time she hasn't passed out. She's at a cafe on her college campus, listening to music through a set of headphones, and drawing in her sketchbook.

Mrs. Frederic sets a flyer down on the table in front of Myka and takes a seat in the chair across from her.

She doesn't wait for Myka to remove her headphones or even acknowledge her presence.

"This is not cute," the older woman tells her while gesturing down at the paper. "This is too close."

Myka eyes the flyer. It isn't hers per se but she'd been hired by someone on campus to draw it for an upcoming event. It's a very simple drawing of two women holding hands, but one of those women looks a lot like herself and the other looks a lot like someone she used to know.

"You don't like my art?" Myka sighs, turning her attention back to her sketchbook.

"She's dead," Mrs. Frederic recites, not at all for the first time.

Myka puffs out a soft laugh, glances up at Mrs. Frederic, and says, "And yet here you are. Again."

"It isn't safe yet, Myka."

Myka drops her pencil. "When will it be?"

Mrs. Frederic looks away from Myka, over her shoulder, out of a window. She says, without ever turning back, "I told you to forget her. She told you to forget her. You know the consequences of not doing that. You've seen what they're capable of."

"I don't know anything. I certainly don't know the consequences or who they are."

"And believe me when I tell you that you do not want to."

"Is it witness protection?"

"Do I look like I work for the Marshal's office, Ms. Bering? Do our interactions scream Federal Government to you?"

Myka eyes Mrs. Frederic up and down but says nothing at all. In response, she receives a huff of annoyance from the older woman across from her.

"The amount of time I have spent running interference between you and that girl is both baffling and exhausting."

That makes Myka smile. Just a little.

"Finish school, Ms. Bering. Keep your head down. Stop this," Mrs. Frederic taps the paper on the table, "and forget her." She stands and turns then adds, just over her shoulder, "I won't be repeating myself."

Myka sits back in her chair, smiles softly up at the other woman, and says, "Let's do this again sometime, hm?"

Mrs. Frederic rolls her eyes up and sighs. Then turns and walks away.

When Myka graduates college at twenty-two, she catches a glimpse of Mrs. Frederic in the hallway of the auditorium where her commencement ceremony is to take place. She is mentally and emotionally preparing herself to fend off all of that woman's criticisms, about what she should and shouldn't be drawing, about how she should and should not be living her life, about who she should and should not be remembering.

But Mrs. Frederic never approaches her. She disappears into the crowd.

Myka has always just assumed that she is being watched, that Mrs. Frederic is watching her. But Mrs. Frederic has never, before now, allowed herself to be seen in return.

Myka starts dating a boy named Sam when she is twenty-five years old. Sam doesn't remind her of Helena and it's the thing she likes most about him. It's easy. He's nice. They have fun together.

Myka doesn't see Mrs. Frederic the entire two years they are dating. And somehow, somewhere inside of her, she's a little sad about that.

Sam is killed in an accident when Myka is twenty-eight.

They had been broken up for a year at that point but they were still close. Still really good friends with a shared love of art and creating, still collaborating to make what dreams they may have into reality.

A lot of Myka's art shifts back into dark places and in those dark places comes reminders of dark histories. Of grief and sadness. Of love and loss. Of all the pain suffered and endured and, mostly, overcome when the perfect person comes along and holds your hand through it all.

For years, that had been Emily.

Helena.

They'd suffered and endured. They'd held hands through it all. Comforted each other, whenever the other needed it most. Together, they'd imagine themselves on fantastic journeys. The innumerable marks on their skin, souvenirs from their mishaps and adventures.

Myka hasn't cried in so long but she cries the night Sam dies. She cries hard and long, for hours and hours. And when she's all cried out over Sam, she starts crying all over again for Emily Lake.

For the girl named Helena whose last name she doesn't even know. She cries until she falls asleep, then wakes up and does it all over again the next day. She does this for a whole week until the day of Sam's funeral and she doesn't know who she cries for more, Sam, Helena, or herself.

It's been nearly four years since their last encounter but Myka isn't surprised when Mrs. Frederic appears. After the casket is lowered and the crowd dispersed, she steps to Myka's side and stands there just beside her for several moments in silence.

And when Mrs. Frederic has decided she's had enough of the quiet, she says, "You did try. I'll give you that."

Myka doesn't know why but this comment, a simple and useless recognition from the woman who gives almost nothing at all, makes her full belly laugh, crying tears of laughter until she can cry no more.

Myka is almost thirty when she almost dies of a heart attack. And then, immediately after that, almost dies by large-toe bludgeoning.

"I'm glad to see you attempting to move on with your life."

"Oh, fuck!" Myka drops a mixing bowl of cooke dough and the very thin, suddenly sharp lip of that bowl lands square on her big toe. When she turns to Mrs. Frederic, in her kitchen somehow, she swears that woman is smiling.

Even if just barely.

"That's a new trick." Myka growls, calming her racing heart.

"New to whom? You seem to be an expert in the field of accidental self-inflicted wounds."

"I mean you. In my kitchen. Inside of my apartment." Myka sighs. "How did you get in here?"

"Certainly not by working at the Marshal's office." Mrs. Frederic quirks a singular brow in Myka's direction.

"Certainly not." Myka mimics, lowering herself to the ground, to clean the cookie dough from tile floor. "What have I done now?"

"I've seen the draft of your very telling graphic memoir. I thought we were clear on the lines that should not be crossed."

Myka stops cleaning. "Speaking of lines that should not be crossed, I won't bother asking how you've seen something that exists solely on my computer." She stands and crosses her arms and tells Mrs. Frederic, "It doesn't mean anything to anyone except me. Nobody else would know it's her and it's not like it's going to bring her back."

"Myka."

Myka laughs softly, "Wow. First name basis? I have definitely crossed a line."

"The problem is, that is exactly what could happen. It could bring her back. Give her no choice but to return."

"She has a choice now? Because that's not what it looked like when you dragged her away."

"I did not drag her. I simply urged her to move forward, faster. You saw, with your own eyes, what the result would have been had she lingered with you. Two homes might have burned that night and your family--"

"I have a lot of respect for you, Mrs. Frederic, despite your constant intrusions. But please, do not talk about my family."

"Fair enough," Mrs. Frederic concedes after a sigh.

"You know, I thought I'd have more hope over time. That she was alive. That she'd one day come back. That I could go to her. Or that holding on to her the way I do would eventually mean something. Anything.

"But after all this time, I find myself more often grieving Emily's death. Because it's the only thing that's real in my mind, it's the only thing that happened.

"Helena is just... she's an old memory that I struggle to keep alive. Ten minutes in one night in the entirety of my life. And I don't even know if anything about those ten minutes is real. If it even means anything. If it's worth holding on to."

Mrs. Frederic watches Myka in thoughtful silence.

"I do know that I never want to forget the way she makes me feel. They way she always made me feel. As Emily, before Helena. She taught me so much. She helped me open up. She opened up to me.

"If I can't talk about her, in a book about my life, there is no book.

"She was my best friend and I loved her. I do what I love because of her and having known her and loved her, for the little time that I was able to, still impacts my life today. Every single day."

Myka gestures to Mrs. Frederic and smiles.

"You, Mrs. Frederic, are living proof of that." She pauses to laugh and adds, "Or the most prolific stalker the world has ever seen."

The older woman remains quiet, pensive. And for a second, one tiny fraction of a second, Myka thinks she's going to show some kind of emotion. Sympathy. Sadness. Contentedness. Amusement? At this point, Myka would even take her usual dose of exhaustion. But Mrs. Frederic's face remains a facade of unconvinced underwhelm and boredom.

Her words, however, belie genuine emotion.

"I have a story for you."

Myka arches a brow. "How suspicious."

"Two little girls grew up together, lived similar lives with similar fathers, who mistreated them in very similar ways. In a single night, they had the nerve to fall in love, right in front of my eyes. A youthful, foolish love that should have ended a decade ago. And yet, here I stand, an intermediary between two foolish girls who refuse to let each other go. Even as they risk their very ends.

"One of those girls is the daughter of a dangerous man who once had the power to demand ungodly things be done to the families of even more dangerous people.

"And the other girl, Ms. Bering, is you."

Myka breathes in slowly. Breathes out one long steady breath.

"I have... so much work to do. And yet, for some reason, I spend, have spent, most of my time intervening in various shenanigans between the two of you."

"Me, living my life like a normal human being, not constantly under threat by some faceless boogie man, is not shenanigans."

Mrs. Frederic ignores Myka's interjection and goes on.

"Intercepting every little whim of the heart you two decide to try and throw out into the world, in order to find each other without blatantly finding each other, when you both know, very well, that is the last thing you should be doing."

"She's... she's trying to find me?"

"Not the point," Mrs. Frederic cuts in. "The point is that she should not be. She knows that. Nor should you be and you know that. Because they could leverage you to get to her to get to her father. They have tried and they will continue to try. And I will continue exhausting myself to keep you two safe because that is what I am, unfortunately, obligated to do.

"No matter how hard you make the task. No matter how many times you want to laugh in the face of it, believe me when I say that he is not worth either of you dying."

Myka remains quiet. She stills. When Mrs. Frederic says no more, Myka takes in another steadying breath and says, "If I didn't know any better, I'd say you actually care about me."

"I care to keep you alive. And her. Until such a time that I no longer have to care about keeping either of you anything for the foreseeable future."

"I do appreciate what you supposedly do, Mrs. Frederic, but in all of our time together, I have never, at any point, felt unsafe or watched by anyone but you."

"And you are welcome for that."

That, to Myka, is the most unnerving thing she has ever heard Mrs. Frederic say to her. In all of their time.

"So what, her dad was some sort of mob boss's hit man?"

"That's a close enough analogy."

"Why didn't you just tell me all of that from the beginning?"

"You were a child. You're no longer a child. I've seen what you've survived. Even if I myself don't find it amusing, I do understand why you laugh when threatened. Now, do you understand the gravity of this ongoing situation?"

Myka nods, "I do."

"I don't believe you."

Myka rolls her eyes. "I understand that I'm supposed to stop doing what I love to do most, drawing and telling stories about my own life, because you want this to end, sooner rather than later."

"No," Mrs. Frederic corrects, "because your life could end, sooner rather than later. You would not have a life to draw or tell stories about."

Myka breathes in deep.

"I am not asking you to give up your passion, Myka, I'm simply reminding you to be mindful, as your passion influences art that grows in popularity, about how much personal information you impress upon it.

"Or one day you'll turn around and it won't be me standing behind you."

Myka is thirty-two years old when Mrs. Frederic appears in a bookstore for one of Myka's book signings and, for whatever reason, that woman chooses to stand in line. Myka catches sight of her when she's at least eight people back, and after three more signings, she motions for Mrs. Frederic to come forward.

To Myka's surprise, the woman does.

Nothing about the way she looks has changed, except that she seems a little less baffled, a little less exhausted. Her visits had slowed, once more, as Myka's preoccupation with Helena's absence continued to wane over time.

"I could have waited," the woman tells Myka.

"The looming anticipation of your next threat was too much for me to handle." Myka smiles. "How is our girl?"

The older woman sighs heavily. All of that exhaustion and bafflement returning to her expression. But Myka is surprised, more than that, when Mrs. Frederic answers her genuinely.

"Insistent. Stubborn."

Myka smiles at the thought of Emily/Helena interacting with Mrs. Frederic in these little ways she occasionally interacts with Mrs. Frederic. A thing she used to think about often but doesn't think about so much anymore.

"Thank you," Myka says softly, lowering her head to face the table below and wiping away a stray tear. When she looks back up to Mrs. Frederic, she adds, "I appreciate knowing she hasn't changed one bit."

Mrs. Frederic reaches into her purse and pulls out a copy of Myka's book. She sets it on the table in front of Myka, who smiles wide.

"You bought my book."

"A birthday gift," Mrs. Frederic says, "for our very insistent friend."

Myka is thirty-four when Mrs. Frederic unexpectedly sits beside her on a park bench then holds an envelope out in front of her. And for the first time, in a long time, Myka isn't startled. She almost expects that other woman's arrival.

She says to the older woman, without ever looking at her, "I don't know what they're paying you but I'm sure it's not enough."

Myka doesn't immediately take that envelope but she can see that her name is on the front. She can see that the handwriting is Emily's. Recognizable in comparison to all of the old notes she has stashed away from high school.

Still, she straightens in her seat and asks, "We're on writing terms now?"

"Proof of life."

"Seventeen years ago, you told me she died." Myka cautiously takes the envelope. "You told me to forget about her."

"And nearly two decades later, look where that has gotten us."

"You've suggested on several occasions that I'd be murdered."

"I resisted the urge myself on many of those occasions."

"A joke?"

Mrs. Frederic arches a brow. The playfulness of that expression, Myka finds, is unnerving at best.

"You said they are dangerous people."

"They were."

"They were?"

"We're on the cusp of a resolution."

"A resolution? With very dangerous people? More dangerous than the man who committed heinous crimes against them?"

Mrs. Frederic nods and simply says, "Even dangerous people grow old."

"Then I guess I feel comforted that you haven't aged a day since we met."

Myka can see Mrs. Frederic suppressing a smile.

"You know, in all these years that I've come to know you, Mrs. Frederic, you don't strike me as the type to negotiate with, much less protect, a man who has done ungodly things to anyone. Dangerous people included."

"You refer to her father as a man, which is something I haven't done in over three decades." A pause follows a thoughtful sigh as Mrs. Frederic turns away from Myka and says. "Still, I find even calling him the monster that he is to be too generous."

Myka gives a subtle, understanding nod.

"The thing you may or may not have come to understand, without the proper context, is that some very terrible people are more valuable to when they are alive, worthless when they are dead, when the survival of many more good people depends on what they know. My employers find value in his living, so he remains alive and, by default, protected."

"And Helena? Where does she come into all of this talk of value and worth?"

"She is her father's collateral damage." Mrs. Frederic turns to Myka. "From the moment she was born, he has been using her existence to further his malintent. Without her, he would already be dead."

Myka can feel her blood rising.

"He had money. He had custody. He had power. He doesn't have any of those things now and I promise you, Myka Bering, that he is not worth the energy you will burn being angry at him."

Myka doesn't quite let the anger go. But she breathes a little steadier now.

Weeks later, Myka finds a Post-It note on her refrigerator door that she didn't place there and doesn't recall seeing the night before.

It reads: Answer the call. - F

Within the hour, Myka's cell phone rings. No name or number appears on the screen. And when she answers, it's with a tease. She says, "It only took you twenty years to realize you could threaten me over the phone instead of constantly sneaking up on me in public?"

"I told Irene," a soft, distantly familiar voice starts, "you'd tire of her appearing act sooner than most."

The voice hits her hard. Harder than the combined weight of every moment in her past that she has felt sorrow or grief or loneliness beyond measure. She has to steady her hands to not drop the phone. She has to steady her breathing to not fall to the floor.

"Helena?"

Soft breathing turns to soft laughter which turns to soft crying, on both ends of that line.

"Is that really you?"

"It really is."

Myka sits before she falls, carefully lowering herself to the kitchen floor. Clutching that phone in her hands. Her back to the cabinet doors. Her legs folded up before her.

She decides to start off small and easy.

"Hi."

And is rewarded beyond measure.

"Hello again, my love."

#bering and wells #b&w holiday gift exchange #lady-adventuress #dickens draws #sorry this is so late #i usually draw and post and then write when i post #and this writing took on a mind of its own #i wasn't even done i just cut myself off lol

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barbarawar · 7 months

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Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Warehouse 13 Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Myka Bering/Helena "H. G." Wells Characters: Myka Bering, Helena "H. G." Wells Additional Tags: Fluff, Established Relationship, Bering and Wells Holiday Gift Exchange 2024 Summary:

Myka can't wait for winter to be over. On the first day it feels like spring has finally arrived, her and Helena have a picnic.

This was written for @purlturtle as part of the 2024 Bering and Wells Holiday Gift Exchange, who gave me the following prompt:

"how about something spring-themed (since the gifts will be exchanged for Valentine's, IIRC)? Like, being at the tail end of winter and longing for spring, or experiencing the first day when it really feels like spring is in the air, that kind of thing?

Alternately, maybe something to do with chocolate? (I love chocolate)"

I had a lot of fun with the prompt (started writing it pretty much as soon as I got it) and I tried to include everything. Hopefully you enjoy it :)

#bering and wells #warehouse 13 #b&w holiday gift exchange

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lilolilyr · 2 years

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of purple goo and other surprises

My @b-and-w-holiday-gift-exchange fic for @deathtodickens, I hope you'll like it!

3.6k T, no warnings, canon-divergence

setting: Helena is a Warehouse agent along with Myka. They are close friends, but Myka wishes for more... Can an overnight stay during a retrieval mission reveal her feelings?

Beta read by @wellsbering, thanks for the help <3

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kla1991 · 2 years

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Happy B&W Gift Exchange @madronash!

(Virtual) Reality: Helena gives a virtual reality headset from FarGames a try, and Myka watches fondly. Set post-series, in a better version of the series where the silly bullshit didn't happen.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/45041281

@madronash

#B&W Holiday Gift Exchange #@madronash #ao3 #bering and wells #warehouse 13

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purlturtle · 7 months

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Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Additional Tags: Post S4, Truth Artifact, because what else would get these two idiots to sit down and talk, also featuring a potentially familiar tortoise, Bering and Wells Holiday Gift Exchange 2024 Summary:

Helena shrugged. “I figured I would make use of this so very handy closure which, I assume now, you arranged? Then the case got a little… urgent, for me, yesterday.”

Claudia was the first to get it. She groaned, and caught her forehead in her palm. “You got whammied too.”

Helena nodded. “In much the same situation as you,” she told Myka, whose only reaction was another glare.

“How long?” Pete asked with a frown. “How much time you got?”

Helena checked her watch. She did not swear, she did not purse her lips, she did not give any sign of how her pulse had just jumped. “Eight hours and twenty-two minutes.”

for @madronash - Happy Gift Exchange Day!

#bering and wells #warehouse 13 #my fic #The Mouth of Truth #bering and wells holiday gift exchange 2024

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righty-ho-then · 2 years

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Hello it's your gift exchange gifter! Let's say your story has hypothetically expanded to cover four or five short chapters. Would you like your story all at once, or in installments?

well firstly you’re amazing thank you!!! i think id like them in installments please! to stretch out the wondrousness of the exchange :D

thanks again and cant wait for tomorrow!

#bering and wells holiday gift exchange #bering and wells

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anandabrat · 2 years

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Chapters: 1/? Fandom: Warehouse 13 Rating: Not Rated Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Myka Bering/Helena "H. G." Wells Characters: Myka Bering, Helena "H. G." Wells, Claudia Donovan Additional Tags: Gift Exchange, uh I can't write short things anymore, so this is just the first chapter of... some chapters, you know how it goes, Established Relationship Summary:

Myka and Helena are in Paris on a retrieval - which is already complicated enough for these two - when something even more complicated is put in their path.

For @mfangeleeta - happy gift exchange!

#bering and wells #myka bering #helena wells #b&w holiday gift exchange #my fic #warehouse 13

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lady-adventuress · 2 years

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A @b-and-w-holiday-gift-exchange gift for @sharkbatez . Happy Bering and Wells Day!

#warehouse 13 #helena wells #myka bering #bering and wells #b-and-w-holiday-gift-exchange #sharkbatez #bering and wells exchange

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apparitionism · 7 months

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Asleep

Happy @b-and-w-holiday-gift-exchange to @kla1991 , our fearless leader, who of course knew I was their gifter, and who requested “a bed-sharing scenario that doesn't immediately turn sexy,” one that might involve tensions and/or physical discomfort. I’ve tried to approach that assignment in the appropriate spirit, with a bit of spin, although I suppose it all really depends on what any given person considers “sexy”... anyway, I’m pretty sure there are two sides to every story. Two sides to every bed, too. Here’s the first side. (This takes place in a post-season-five world, because why not raise the difficulty level?)

Asleep

My arm is asleep.

Normally, a person would, upon realizing this, shift position so as to restore blood flow.

Normally.

But very little is normal about the situation in which Myka’s arm is asleep.

She is in a hotel-room bed, in the dark of night, lying on her left side, with her left arm, her now-asleep arm, pinned beneath her. So ends the extremely limited “normal” portion of the situation.

Here begins the rest: she absolutely must not move. This is because she can hear, and can as a molecular disturbance feel, the steady push-pull of Helena’s breathing, near her neck, so near. She feels also the unfamiliar proximity of Helena’s body, offering heat across what must be only nanometers separating her from Myka’s back. And then there is Helena’s hand, what must be her right hand, resting in sleep, what must be unconscious sleep, on Myka’s hip.

They have never been in a bed together before tonight—but also, sadly also, they are not in a bed together now. They are simply two people in a bed in a hotel room, one of them obviously sleeping, obviously fulfilling her role in the “two agents are sharing a hotel room and getting some rest” play they are performing.

Myka, however, is not asleep. No: instead she is on fire because of Helena’s breath and heat and hand but unable to do anything about any of that, and thus desperate to escape and suffer her mortification in private but unable to do anything about any of that either—a terrible combination.

And now her arm, as if in intentional mockery, is asleep.

She has arrived at this pretty pass due to a series of events that had seemed, in their unfolding, to be at the very least manageable...

... starting with Helena’s return to the Warehouse.

That return had at first struck Myka as a beautiful dream—and, equally, a reward for awakening from a nightmare.

The particular nightmare from which Myka had awakened was the fugue in which she’d imagined she might have romantic feelings for Pete. How perfect it had seemed, then, for Helena to present herself to resume agent duties at the Warehouse, so soon after that enormous error had been rectified. “A reboot, I believe it’s called,” Helena had said of her change of heart, and Claudia had laughed uproariously at that, shouted “Turn it off and turn it on again!”, and hugged the obviously befuddled, but just as obviously pleased, rebooted agent.

Myka had not hugged Helena, not then. She’d thought to save such an action, such an aggressively bodily action, for an even more meaningful time, progress toward which would, at long last, begin.

But progress had not begun. In the reboot, Helena was a collegial colleague to Myka.... and that was all.

Helena did not, as she had in old times (old shows?), make comments that even usually-oblivious Myka could read as flirtatious. She did not step close, too close, as she had in old times, waking Myka’s body to possibility and want. She did not, in fact, mention old times at all. No words about “Wells and Bering”—as Myka had hoped to one day again correct, however incorrect Helena found the correction, to “Bering and Wells”—having ever done anything together.

And Myka of course could not assault such a collegial colleague with an anguished Why? She could do nothing but wish for a reboot of her own, or at least a do-over, one in which the minute Helena stepped from Claudia’s embrace, Myka herself initiated one that made her hopes clear.

But no such reboot was forthcoming.

That disappointment was, Myka found, manageable. Crushing, but manageable. It was made more so by the fact that Artie sent Helena on retrievals with Steve, sometimes with Claudia as adjunct; thus her collegial interactions with Myka did not have particularly meaningful stakes. At least, none that were Warehouse-specific, and that was what counted. That had to be what counted.

Until one morning at breakfast, when Artie tossed a folder at Myka and said, “Tomorrow you’re going to San Antonio to bag a camera.”

Then he pointed at Helena. “And you’re going with her.”

“Am I?” Helena asked, even as Myka voiced, “She is?

“She’s the one who stole it from Warehouse 12,” Artie told Myka. To Helena, he said, “So I assume you’ll know it when you see it.”

Well, that tone in Artie’s voice was like old times—old shows. But Helena did not respond with her back-then defiant chirp. She said a simple “oh,” a chastened wince that seemed pulled from a different show entirely.

Artie should not be inflicting this on her, Myka thought. After a moment, she revised that to, Artie should not be inflicting this on her or on me. Her first counter: “Maybe Helena could just tell me what it looks like.”

“If that would be easier,” Helena said, with a quickness suggesting she agreed that something was indeed being inflicted on somebody, “I certainly—”

“Did I stutter?” Artie demanded.

He didn’t. But after a bit of time, Myka thought she could, just maybe, manage the situation, both because of Helena’s apparent trepidations and as a way of sidestepping her own feelings. “I’m not sure this mission with Helena is a good idea,” she tried saying to Pete later that morning.

“How many times do I have to tell you the vibes aren’t bad anymore?” he asked, annoyed, as if she’d been making a habit of hitting him with this concern whenever he was trying to get comfortable with a comic book.

In fact, he’d told her that once since Helena came back. Once. It had happened when Myka had said, in a moment of exhaustion that had allowed her management to slip, “I miss how Helena used to be,” and he’d rolled his eyes and told her, “That’s dumb. The vibes aren’t bad anymore.”

Now Myka said—because why fight about it?—“Obviously more than once. But I just don’t think it’s a good idea. For her, I mean. Artie said that thing about the stealing and she... I don’t know. Wilted.”

“Okay, so tell that to Artie.”

Was that vaguely reasonable advice? “I guess I could give that a—”

“Like that’d work! Ha!”

“You’re very unhelpful,” Myka informed him.

“Keeping it on brand.” He flexed his biceps. “Just like these big boys.”

To which Myka could say only, “I am so devoutly grateful we aren’t together.”

“Me too. Different reasons though.”

“I’m devoutly grateful for that too,” she said.

She was grateful also, when it came down to it, for his total lack of interest in parsing the differences between their reasons.

Pete’s unhelpfulness aside, she still had the greater part of a day before her scheduled departure on this Helena-accompanied retrieval, and she hoped it might still be possible to extricate herself, Helena, or both of them from it.

Who would be more helpful in such an endeavor: Claudia or Steve? Claudia, who might be more sympathetic to the overall difficulty... or Steve, who would probably be more persuasive in helping to take a plan to Artie...

She went with Steve.

She opened with, “I need to talk to you. No, wait, before you wince: I need to talk to someone, and I think you’re my best bet.”

“I’m not overly flattered, but my prefrontal cortex appreciates the revision. Also my sinuses.”

“I have a problem.”

“My prefrontal appreciates that too: direct, no nuance. And I know we haven’t talked about this out loud, but if your problem’s with me? Totally justified. I got the you-and-Pete thing wrong.”

“No, my problem’s with Helena.” That was probably too revealing. “But the other thing, he and I got it wrong. You were just a witness. Regrettably.”

“But I... pushed?”

“Probably it was a thing he and I had to test to know for sure. And we did, so now we do. I like to think I don’t make the same mistake twice.”

That got her a twist of a smile. “You like to think, but this H.G. thing. I know you two have history, so is this that?”

Myka would have preferred to say “no,” but she figured she should continue giving his sinuses a break. So instead she said, “See, you’re discerning. This is why you’re my best bet.”

“What’s the problem then? You both seemed less than thrilled at breakfast, but—”

Now Myka could tell a truth. “Exactly. She clearly doesn’t feel okay about this artifact, and she shouldn’t have to deal with anything that would make her regret having come back. Right?” Before he could agree or disagree, she presented her plan: “You should do the retrieval with me instead. And I’ll need help selling this to Artie, so if you could gently ask her about the camera and then tell him you’re just as likely to recognize it when you—”

“Wanting to spare her discomfort is admirable. Really. But that wasn’t your issue, not at first. The very instant Artie said H.G. was going too, you tensed up.”

He is your best bet, Myka reminded herself. She sighed and said, “Fine. I’m not sure I can go on a mission with her.”

He winced and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Okay, yes,” she acknowledged. “I’m sure I can. I’m just not sure I want to.”

He didn’t release the pinch. “Unfortunately for both of us, that’s also a lie.”

That one, she resented. “Maybe you’re too discerning.”

“And yet I’ve heard I’m your best bet.”

“Right. Maybe I do want to. But the problem is, everything’s different now.”

“Also, I’m sorry, a lie. That last part. Everything isn’t different. What’s the same?”

Far, far too discerning. “I don’t want to say.”

He smiled. “Aaaaah. Very truthful.”

“Here’s something I do want to say: would you take my place instead?”

“Either way,” he said, his smile morphing into an apologetic grimace, “I don’t think that’s how this works.”

“We just have to make a case to Artie, which I know is a heavy lift, but something like how much easier it would be for Helena to go with you since you’re her wrangler now, so—”

“No, I mean logistically. I’m not her wrangler at all, by the way, but also the plane tickets are already in your names, right?”

Well, that was annoyingly true. “Fine. I hate it, but fine. And even if I could find an artifact that would change names on plane reservations, I couldn’t use it because that would really be personal gain.”

“Would it though?” Steve asked, lightly, but with an undercurrent.

Myka did not want to answer that question.

So she and Helena went.

On the plane, Helena said to Myka, “I’m sure you’re wondering about Artie’s statement.”

Accurate, but: “Not if you don’t want to talk about it,” Myka said. “In that case, any and all wondering canceled. Canceled like... an underappreciated cult TV show.” That was something a colleague would say, wasn’t it? A particularly collegial one, such as, for example, Claudia, from whom Myka had copied and pasted the words about television.

This wasn’t the first time she’d plucked words like this; articulations of her own, she feared—even more so now than in the past—were likely to reveal too much.

Helena raised an eyebrow. “You sound like Claudia.”

Mission accomplished, if a bit too well, so Myka shrugged and said, “I’ve heard characterization can get weird in a reboot.” That was also from Claudia, who had asked Myka, not long ago, “Do you think H.G.’s okay? I know characterization can get weird in a reboot, but she seems a little off,” and Myka had pleaded ignorance as to the entire concept, despite her wish to opine at length on how Helena seemed definitely, from Myka’s perspective, not okay. Definitely off. More than a little.

“I did use that word,” Helena said.

“You did.”

“I did also steal the artifact in question.”

“Napoleon Sarony’s camera.”

“Yes. I gave it to Oscar Wilde.”

“You did?” Oscar Wilde. Okay.

“I told him to have someone use it to take his photograph.”

Obviously this has something to do with its effect, but Myka has no idea what. Helena clearly wants to be drawn out on the point, so Myka probes, using what she knows, “Because it was what Sarony used to take those photos of Wilde when he was on his big star-making tour in the U.S.? Or because of the Supreme Court copyright case about that one Wilde photo he took? Oh, that case, I bet it’s why the camera’s an artifact, but—”

“You’re correct on the why of the artifact. But do you know its effect?”

“I didn’t have time to look it up before we left. And it’s not in the file.”

“Artie left it out, I suspect.”

“Because it’s exculpatory?”

“Because it’s explanatory. As far as anything could be, given that time. Obviously nothing is exculpatory.”

Isn’t it? “Do you want to explain?”

“Want,” Helena said, and oh god if Myka could have given herself leave to understand that word said differently. But this was not that reboot. After a throat-clear, Helena went on, “It was... post.”

Myka didn’t need to ask post-what.

“So many artifacts there were,” Helena continued, “so many unhelpful to me in my extremity. Nevertheless I thought to help. To make some difference. Where I could, as opposed to where I could not.”

In old times, Helena had not said this much about her mental state... post. Fleshy, this admission was, and Myka did not know what to make of it. Was it a step closer, akin to the old sort of physical proximity? Or was it just... explanatory? “The effect?” she prompted, gently, hoping for clarification.

“Artistic enhancement of the subject photographed. Oscar too was... post. Imprisonment had diminished him so terribly. I thought an artifactual photograph might help restore his writerly prowess.”

“Did it work?” Myka asked.

“I can’t prove causation,” Helena said. “Nevertheless, post-photo, he did write ‘Ballad of Reading Gaol.’”

That was one of those utterances Myka would be processing for quite some time. Separate and apart from her outsize feelings for Helena as Helena—as a physical body to which Myka’s own body has for years now compulsively responded—there was the ongoing absurdity, the near high comedy, of Helena speaking factually about events of such cultural-historical import. “I can’t think that was a bad outcome,” Myka eventually managed to say.

“I can’t either.”

They had not had so genuine, so genuinely substantive, a conversation since Helena’s return.

However, their renewed familiarity, if that’s what it was, did not outlast the plane.

They found the camera, and they neutralized it with minimal difficulty—if a bit more consternation on the part of the gentleman who believed he had the right to possess the piece.

That was all very... collegial.

And—but—they then tried to check in at their hotel. Or rather, Myka did. Helena was occupying herself with the snacks on offer in the lobby. “Steve usually checks in,” she’d said. “Do you mind?”

How could Myka have been less accommodating than Steve? Also she was—she had to concede—more than a little charmed by Helena’s seeming admission of... well, not incompetence. Just a slight slink away from responsibility.

Please, a more cynical part of her said with a snort of derision, you’re charmed by the way she does everything. Walking, talking, existing. Inspecting potato-chip bags across the lobby in a hotel’s snack pantry.

“Bering and Wells,” the desk clerk said in confirmation of the reservation, and Myka wanted to thank him for that ordering of names. He followed up with, “One king.”

She didn’t want to thank him for that. “No,” she told him, and it was good that Helena was out of earshot. “Two. Kings, queens, doubles, twins, I don’t care. But two.”

“Sorry,” said the clerk. “Full up.”

So one king it had been.

And now, in that one king, Myka’s arm is asleep.

“Are you asleep?” she wants to ask of Helena, aloud, to ascertain the true contours of the situation, but the very asking might—would?—change the contours, and Myka isn’t sure she’s in any kind of state to handle any certainty or any change. So she thinks the question at Helena instead, thinks it over her shoulder at that warm body over and over, Are you asleep, are you asleep, are you asleep, are you asleep, until she’s estranged from the question as anything but words, until “asleep” in particular begins to strike her as bizarrely archaic, its construction completely uncontemporary, and she interrupts her telepathy to think, It is archaic; we don’t ask “Are you abed” or anything like that anymore—

—but she interrupts herself again, for that doesn’t ring quite right. So she calls up the dictionary, the A’s, riffling her way through, and the exercise offers her all sorts of examples that show how very unarchaic indeed it is to say “asleep”: ablaze, abuzz, aground, ajar, alight, aloud, amid...

The list goes on. It’s far longer than she expected, but she continues, doggedly, to the end of the A’s, through “astray,” “aswoon” (she doesn’t linger on that one), on to “atingle” (that one either), on and on, ending with “awhirl.” She’d been by then vaguely looking forward to something like “azoom,” but alas.

Such a lengthy jaunt through the initial chapter of the dictionary surely must have eaten up significant time, perhaps even more than she imagined; perhaps morning is at last approaching, and the alarm will ring, and all this physical consternation can be resolved by sudden wakefulness on everybody’s part.

The clock on the nightstand tells her the journey took three minutes.

Spectacular.

Well, fine. If the A’s were three minutes, the rest of the dictionary should offer her at least an hour of distraction—both from her arm’s discomfort and from the physical, emotional, and existential discomfort created by the presence at her neck, back, and hip.

She starts in on the B’s. First comes “b,” defined, in entry 1a, as “the 2d letter of the English alphabet.” No doubt it’s important to periodically refresh one’s memory of such things.

The B’s proceed, slow and thorough; after “b” comes “baa,” and on and on... “bedlam” catches her attention, in a Warehouse-y way; “bed of roses” does too, as it’s “a place or situation of agreeable ease,” which this certainly is not—

—in sudden, striking emphasis, Helena’s hand on Myka’s hip moves, a minimal slide-glide toward thigh, and oversensitized Myka can’t control a too-violent twitch in response, one that jolts her toward the bed’s edge, which was nearer than she realized, for now its surface is an abrupt absence, and a crash to the floor is imminent, and instinct, instinct: her brain shouts for an arm to break her fall, but the volunteering limb is the stupid somnolent one, and OH GOD she has never known pain to manifest like this—she’s taken a bullet but this is more, for “seeing stars” is no mere metaphor, as she’d always imagined; her vision is literally stellating, even as she hears herself yelp in prelinguistic anguish.

The horrific fullness of the situation settles on her as she additionally hears, directed at her from some angel perspective, the voice of her dreams but now this nightmare saying “Myka? What’s wrong?”

“Everything,” Myka moans at the unforgivingly injurious floor, and then the stars win.

TBC

#bering and wells #warehouse 13 #fanfic #Asleep #B&W holiday gift exchange #kla1991 #endured bodily discomfort can lead to terrible outcomes #or maybe eventually to nonterrible ones?#we'll see #all definitions quoted from Merriam-Webster's Collegiate 10th Ed #(it's nearest to me on the bookshelf)#(and maybe was once nearest Myka too)

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