Bucket List

“Abigail? What are you doing here?”

“I asked her to come,” came Helena’s voice from behind me. She was making tea, naturally.

“Why?” I asked flatly, my face set as I turned to face Helena. She winced.

“I thought talking to someone who isn’t me might help,” she said simply, handing me a cup of tea. I thought for a moment, and then nodded. There were twin sighs of relief from the other two. I ignored them and went to sit outside on the porch. After a few minutes, Abigail followed me.

“She’s trying to help, you know,” she said, setting her tea on the table and sitting next to me.

“I know,” I said shortly. There was a beat of silence, and then she continued.

“I might be able to help, Myka. If you talk to me. I’m not forcing you, but just think about it.”

I nodded curtly and she went back into the cabin. After a half hour or so, Helena came out to sit by me.

“Are you terribly upset, Myka?”

I turned to look at her. I couldn’t really decide, to be honest.

“I don’t know. I know it’s probably a good idea. I just wish you’d asked me.”

She sighed.

“You would have said no, Myka. We both know that.”

She was right, again. It was getting to be a habit. I asked her if she wanted to take a walk, and she agreed, so we went out for a few hours, leaving Abigail to do whatever she pleased with her time. When we came back, I went into the spacious living room, finding Abigail curled up on the couch with a book, looking very peaceful. I almost didn’t want to disturb her, but I figured she’d come here to help me, so why not?

“Have you got some time?” I asked, and she looked up, a little startled because she hadn’t noticed me walk in.

“Yes, of course,” she said, indicating the chair opposite. I sat, tucking my feet up under me.

“So, how have you been since Helena and Claudia cured you?”

Rage flared in my chest.

“Angry.”

She nodded.

“Do you know why?”

“I thought I did. Helena said she thinks I’m wrong.”

She raised an eyebrow, and I explained. How I thought I had made my peace, and Helena disagreed.

“I must say, I’m inclined to agree with Helena. The last few weeks before they cured you – I would not have used the word peaceful to describe your state of mind. You were so angry, even then. And since they cured you, it seems like it’s worse. Did you ever really forgive her for Boone, Myka? I believe you when you say you understand what happened to her to make her try what she tried at Yellowstone, but Boone – that was an altogether different kind of betrayal, a really personal one, in the circumstances. Do you think you’ve forgiven her for that? Or do you think that’s what’s still bothering you?”

I shook my head and thought for a long moment before I spoke. When I did, I was hesitant and I had to bite back aggression that I knew wasn’t helping me or anyone else.   

“I don’t know, Abigail. She explained it to me, why she did what she did. I understand it, as much as I can be expected to, but I still want to go back to Wisconsin and punch him. He…he got to be with her, and I know we weren’t together; we weren’t anything then. But it still feels like she rejected me. I feel sick to my stomach when I think of him or Adelaide.”

Abigail lifted an eyebrow at that.

“Why did you go to see him? I’m assuming from the fact that you didn’t get arrested that you didn’t go there to punch him. So why did you got to Boone?”

“I don’t know. I guess I wanted some answers. She wouldn’t talk to me because I yelled at her and ran away, and I didn’t know what else to do. Everyone was tiptoeing around me, and I was so mad…”

I pushed my hair back from my face with one hand and huffed out a sigh.

“Everyone was tiptoeing around you because we all heard you shouting at Helena, and because you were so obviously pissed off at us all, Myka. You can’t expect your moods to have no effect on those around you.”

I shot her an irritated look. She held her hands up in surrender.

“Hey, don’t take it out on me, Myka. It’s true. You have been so damn moody, I don’t know how Helena stands being around you.”

She was right. I was getting really tired of everyone else being right all the time. I shrugged irritably.

“Just think about things, Myka. If you come to any conclusions, I’ll be here. Artie says, and I quote,” she said, drawing her eyebrows together in a creditable impression of Artie’s usual expression, “tell her to stay there until she’s ready to work without killing the rest of us.”

I rolled my eyes and sighed. Abigail laughed and walked off, leaving me even more irritated. She was pretty unflappable. I could see why Mrs Frederic had recruited her.

We talked over the next few days, Abigail and I, and she helped me to defuse some of my anger, to think about why Helena would have done what she did. I tried to understand, but I still couldn’t, not really. Because for me, it didn’t make sense that she would leave me the way she did. I loved her, and if she loved me, then why did she leave? Let alone shack up with some dude and his kid. It came to a head, eventually, when she asked me quietly how my sessions with Abigail were going. She was drying the dishes, and I was sitting at the table drinking tea.

“How do you think they’re going, Helena?” I snapped, my anger flaring to life yet again.

“I don’t know, Myka. That’s why I asked,” she said, holding the bridge of her nose between thumb and forefinger and sighing.

I sighed, too, glaring at her, and that’s when she finally cracked. She rounded on me, and for the first time since Yellowstone, I saw her anger and pain unfettered before me.

“Do you really imagine, Myka, that you have the right to be angry with me? After everything that I’ve been through? You say you love me, yet when I was incarcerated by the Regents, you left me to their tender mercies. I was left in the dark again, terrified. When someone activated that sphere, I never knew whether it had been a day, or an hour, or a month since I’d last been in the world. And all the while someone else was walking around in my body. Can you imagine the scale of that sort of violation? I know what I did was unconscionable, Myka. Of course I do. But it should have been clear to you all that I was ill, and that I needed help. Had I been given the opportunity to mount a defence, any psychiatrist would have found me unfit to stand trial. Instead the Regents locked me away without trial. I ran away from the Warehouse, Myka. Not from you. The Warehouse. Not the place, but the organisation – because they Bronzed me, then they ripped me from my body, and sent my body out with a counterfeit consciousness to do God knows what. I needed time, Myka. Time to heal. If I had thought you would be willing to leave the Warehouse, perhaps I would have asked you to come with me. But I knew you would not, not when there was still so much danger. So please, try to understand why I left. Why I sought a life that would be a little kinder to me than this one has been, even if I was lying to myself.”

She was pleading with me, but she was angry, too. I was ashamed. I knew she wasn’t in her right mind back then. I let the Regents do what they thought was best because…well, first, because I didn’t trust my own judgement after she betrayed us all. And then because it seemed like it was done, and I didn’t know how I felt about it all. I didn’t know that her body was out there. I thought – we all thought – that she was just in some cell somewhere that she couldn’t escape from, and that the Pokéball, as Pete always called it, was just a holographic transfer thing. I didn’t realise that her consciousness was actually trapped in there. I…I never asked. I didn’t want to know. I looked up at her, and I couldn’t honestly think of a thing to say.

“You blame me for leaving you and I understand that, Myka, and I’m sorry. For the hurt I’ve caused you. But you are not entirely blameless, Myka. You have hurt me too. So continue stamping around like a petulant child if you wish, but do not expect me to put up with it any longer.”

She stormed out, and I stayed where I was, gaping. I stayed there for a long time, thinking through what she’d said. I was ashamed, for many reasons. Leaving her in the Janus coin, letting the Regents just do what they wanted with her, and not being brave enough, even after Sykes, to find out where she was. This country had laws that I believed in, and she was right. No matter how awful her intentions had been at Yellowstone, it was true that she wasn’t in her right mind. If she had been apprehended by any other law enforcement organisation, she would have had the right to be tried by a jury of her peers, not just Adwin Kosan. She was dangerous back then, yes. But she was suffering, and she was mentally ill. Could I really blame her for leaving the organisation that had inflicted the Bronze and the Janus Coin on her? I had been given a small taste of that horror when Alice took my body and left me in her mirror. I couldn’t imagine what it would have been like to stay in there, to know that Alice was doing God knows what with my body for the best part of a year. Emily Lake wasn’t Alice, but she was still walking around in Helena’s body doing whatever she liked with it. It was a violation the likes of which most people couldn’t imagine.

And Helena was right that I shouldn’t have slept with her and left. Maybe I wasn’t in my right mind then either, but she had forgiven me. I could forgive her.

I went upstairs and heard the water running. She was in the shower. I stripped off and went in after her.

“I’m sorry,” I said, as I stepped into the shower stall. I kissed the back of her neck, and she shivered. She turned round, her eyes still angry, but her face was serene. I gave in, then, to what was most likely inevitable. I bent my head a little and I kissed her.

“Are you sure?” she murmured against my lips.

I answered her by kissing her again, more urgently, and we both gave in, then, to each other. It was, this time, as it should have been. Tender, tentative, beautiful. We moved to the bedroom after a while, damp and sweating and moving against one another, our hands and mouths in constant motion. It felt, somehow, like what had broken in me in Boone was being knitted together by the work of her hands. Her mouth, her kisses, they brought me back to myself, to who I had been before. Her eyes were dark and glinting and knowing and loving all at once. She brought me over the edge with those hands that had moulded time itself, her eyes on mine, and I felt healed.

“You can’t leave me, Helena. Not again,” I murmured, as I began to drift off.

“I promise,” she whispered emphatically, leaning down to kiss me. I relaxed myself against her, her arms around me, and I slept.

I didn’t wake until the following morning. When I woke she was still wrapped around me. We spent a silent morning together. But it was comfortable, now, and occasionally one of us smiled at the other. Abigail was nowhere to be seen, presumably having absented herself after our fight the night before.

“Can we talk, Myka?” Helena asked unexpectedly after we’d eaten dinner on the porch, the impressive sight of Pike’s Peak before us.

“Of course,” I said, quietly. I was fairly sure I didn’t want to talk any more about things, but she seemed to need it.

“I know that you blame me for staying away. And I understand why. Of course I do. But there is something that I want you to know. I wanted to keep you safe. I have put you in danger so many times, Myka. I was so frightened, after Sykes, that I would be the reason you left this world. And I knew that without you there would be nothing at all to stop me from going completely mad. I knew that without you I would do something unforgiveable. As I almost did before.”

She put her head in her hands.

“I realised, when you came to Boone…when you told me about your cancer, that all of that didn’t matter.”

I shot her an incredulous look. Her fear that she would destroy the world didn’t matter?

“Hear me out, Myka, please.”

I nodded, saying nothing.

“I realised that it means nothing, any of it. My fears of losing you, of what I might become? They are irrelevant. Because I cannot control those things by staying away from you. The appearance of a bloody artefact on my doorstep in Boone is proof enough of that. And you getting cancer is proof that life is no fairer to you than it is to anyone else.”

She was crying. I didn’t understand what she was saying.

“What I did by leaving, Myka – I know it was cowardly, not to tell you that I wasn’t coming back. But I knew that if I spoke to you, you would talk me out of it. And I was determined to protect you. Because all I have ever done is put you in jeopardy. But it doesn’t matter, because the rest of the world will not show you that courtesy. You are not safe, not even from your own body. I am sorry that I left you, Myka. I didn’t want to. I knew it would hurt you. I thought it was the lesser evil, but the sacrifice I made by leaving – it means nothing, after all. I tried to be happy in Boone with Nate and Adelaide, tried to forget you, but I’ve been miserable, Myka. And it was all for nothing, because I couldn’t protect you from anything.”

I had heard enough. I stood and I pulled her to her feet, wrapping my arms around her and whispering soothing words in her ear. I understood, finally, what she had done and why. And I forgave her, finally. I forgave her because while she had hurt us both, it wasn’t because she wanted to lie or live a normal life or any of those things – she did it because she loved me and wanted to protect me. And I couldn’t blame her for that, could I?

Abigail left the following morning. The next few days were quiet, spent in a sort of odd domesticity that I wasn’t used to. Helena was used to it, after her time with Nate and his daughter. That should have grated on me but it didn’t. She made tea – not raspberry and quince, thank the gods, but normal British tea – and cooked, she washed the dishes with a soft smile on her face, she rubbed my feet when we sat on the couch reading or watching television. She was so content, it made me wonder if she’d been like this with her daughter back before she was Bronzed. For someone who had railed so incredibly hard against the confines of a woman’s life in the Victorian era, she was settling herself nicely in the role of happy housewife. One morning, she caught me smiling at her. We had spent the whole morning in bed, and she went downstairs and came back up with two cups of tea without me even having to ask.

“What are you smiling at, darling?” she asked as she handed over my tea, making me feel that same stupid jump in my chest that I felt when she first called me ‘darling’ all those years ago.

I took a sip of the hot drink, giving myself a moment before I said anything. I didn’t want to offend her, and I didn’t want to make myself angry by thinking about where she’d learned to be like this.

“You look really content. I never imagined you like this, cooking and being a domestic goddess. Well, maybe the bedroom part of domestic, but not the rest of it.”

She quirked an eyebrow at me.

“And do you like it?”

I considered.

“I do, I think.”

She smiled knowingly.

“But it makes you think that I learned to be like this in Boone, that I learned to be content with domesticity because of Nate?”

I nodded, biting my lip.

“Well, I can set your mind at rest on that point at least, my darling. I was already a domestic goddess, I just hid it well. I learned how to cook as a girl, as every female in my time did. All I learned from spending time in Boone was how to cook more modern food. I never wanted to undertake domestic tasks when I was removed from the Bronze sector. It reminded me too strongly of Christina and of everything I’d lost. It was much easier to reject all that and focus on my plans back then.”

She smiled wryly, more to herself than to me.

“When I was released from the Janus coin and after the Astrolabe, I was more than a little lost. I had no more world-ending plans, or any plans at all really, apart from keeping my distance from you and the Warehouse. Taking cooking lessons – it was a way to socialise, along with giving me an opportunity to learn some newer recipes and techniques. And then I met Adelaide. As you pointed out, it was about her and not Nate. I was looking for someone to fill the void in my life and she was the perfect fit. Nate was just a distraction. I very much enjoyed the part of that life that involved looking after a family, however.”

It still irked me a little, that he had seen her like this before I got to. But she was so beautiful and content that I couldn’t be too mad or jealous.

“It suits you,” I said, quietly.

She was settling herself into bed with her tea as I spoke, and she froze, turning to me with a slowly growing smile on her face. I think she had expected me to snap at her or make a snide comment about Nate or Adelaide.

“Thank you,” she said, dropping her gaze slightly from mine. I leaned over and kissed her on the cheek.

“I love you.”

The smile I got in return was luminous. I couldn’t possibly have loved her more, I thought, than I did at that moment. I was wrong, of course, but then I was getting used to that when it came to HG Wells.

The following morning I left her in bed and I went for a run. I went on a long loop, and on the way back I stopped on the banks of West Creek, which ran through the property we were staying in. It wasn’t a particularly beautiful spot, but something about it just made me feel…still. Still on the inside, like I hadn’t been since I first heard the word cancer. Or Boone. I sat down on a flat rock and drank some water. It was warm enough that I was still comfortable as the sweat dried on my body. There were birds singing, faint animal noises from the trees nearby. It was perfect. I stayed there for a half hour or so, and then I walked back. When I got to the chalet, Helena was sitting on the deck drinking tea. There was a pot on the table, and after looking at me with a raised eyebrow, she poured me some. I sat next to her, looking out at the view of Pikes Peak. I drank my tea, and she took my hand, and that was when I knew I would be okay. Because I believed that she would still be holding my hand the next day, and the next day, no matter where we ended up. For the first time since I’d woken up after my impromptu surgery at the Warehouse, I wanted a future, and I wanted it to be with her.

“Thank you,” I said. She raised an eyebrow.

“For saving me.”

“You’re welcome,” she murmured, and smiled. I kissed that smile and turned my face up to the sun.