I promise no regular updates, but this thing has at least three parts to it.
/
It was, by her estimations, just past 9am. The winter air was thick and grey, clouded over with a relentless gloom that fit her mood. She was hungry and tired – oh so very tired – and the countryside simply did nothing to help. The thick snow swallowed her every footstep, and the bitter cold – tolerable only thanks to the later morning hour – sapped her strength.
But she trudged onward. She had no choice.
No one could ever have accused Helena G. Wells of being clumsy, but the skill of stealth was something she had practiced long and earnestly before she acquired it. Even still, it had been practiced on human quarry, in alleys and dark roadways. She'd used shadows and the bustle of modernization as her camouflage, and her quick reflexes as her weapons.
In the wilderness, amongst grey, barren trees and a white terrain, even dim light failed to give her any familiar advantage. She cast the largest shadow for miles, and the thick blanket of ashen snow absorbed all the sound around her. In this chase, she was as much prey as predator, searching for a target with better senses and faster reflexes than even she possessed in an unfamiliar terrain populated by hungry, desperate wildlife. She could just as easily be eaten as find something to eat.
And she would deserve it, truth be told. If a wolf or a bear came across her and had her for breakfast, then the world will have achieved a natural form of justice.
She caused all this, after all.
What little sunlight that managed to penetrate the thick, ever-present clouds moved on the ground like a dying thing, thrashing and twisting across the land, and somewhere in the frozen undergrowth, maybe a hundred yards off, she spotted movement. Slowly, quietly, she crept forward, raising her weapon as she neared the movement. When she gained twenty yards, the movement suddenly turned into a standing animal – a deer.
She wasn't skilled with that particular weapon, but she nonetheless sank to one knee and steadied it as she aimed the center of her sight at the animal's shoulder. Out of hunger or exhaustion or cold…or maybe loathing…her hands shook ever so slightly as she took one long, frigid breath. On a slow release, her hands steadied.
With a smooth squeeze, she pulled the trigger.
The animal dropped, having hopefully never felt the bullet that ended its life. The gun was slung along her back, its worn leather strap laid across Helena's chest. She would have to work quickly – the gunshot scared everything around her away, but it would not be long before the real predators swarmed to the smell of blood. With practiced motions, she cleaned her kill, then wrapped it up so that she could sling the creature around her, as well. Within minutes, she was on the move, having left enough entrails behind to throw the wolves from her scent.
She hated hunting. She hated killing other animals so that she might survive, but her tiny little vegetable garden was months away from yielding anything…if it ever would.
Most of all, though, she hated that necessity forced her to use a lethal firearm.
Guns did not belong in a civilized society, she had once said, and yet it was by the barrel of a gun she now survived.
There was no longer such a thing as civilization.
She had made sure of that.
/
"I want you to look me in the eyes and take my life."
H. G. Wells had spent a very, very long time planning that moment before her. She'd spent a century within her own mind reasoning out all the sins the world had committed that would make it deserve destruction. Upon her reemergence into the world, it had done little to convince her that the human race didn't deserve to be culled any more than it had a century before. In fact, it deserved her wrath more in 2010 than it had in 1899, and she was all too happy to oblige.
Oh, she had seen precious little to convince her that any progress made during her incarceration wasn't countered in equal part by atrocity. She had yet to find a freedom granted to civilization that hadn't come at the cost of another. She had immediately longed for just one person in the world whose ideas and ideals matched what the modern utopia should have made of all its citizens.
As she stared into Myka Bering's pleading green eyes, she realized she had found that very thing within days of being thrust back into the world. Of all places, she had found it staring harshly at her from across the barrel of a gun.
Now, months later, their positions were reversed, but the circumstance was the same. She held a snub-nosed revolver point-blank against the forehead of the only friend she had left. She held a gun to Myka's head.
"Go on. Do it."
And Myka was begging her to pull the trigger.
"DO IT!"
But she couldn't.
With a roar, she dropped it, but in the same moment she also lifted the Minoan Trident to strike one last time. Myka lunged for the handle, desperate to stop its final strike, desperate to halt the inevitable, but Helena managed to swing it upward and across her temple before she could get any closer.
The other woman collapsed, unconscious. For an instant, Helena felt her heart hold still, her limbs freeze in fear, but she pushed the feeling away. It didn't matter.
Soon, it would all be over.
/
It took her an hour to return to the small two-story house by a wide, partially frozen lake that had become her home. It had previous owners – that much had been obvious when she arrived – but they had fled quickly by the looks of it. Everything of sentimental value had been dragged from their dusty places, along with any non-perishable food item in the house. The occupants had kept firearms, and lots by the size of the open gun safe in the corner of the living room, but they left behind an older, bolt-action rifle and its ammunition.
With what remained of the perishable vegetables, Helena had planted a garden in the warmest, best-lit corner of the house. With what remained of the ammunition, Helena was living off what remained of the land until something managed to sprout.
When she got through the door, she dropped the deer, then the gun, then her supply bag to the floor and stumbled to the fireplace. The cold had seeped into the house in her absence, and she needed to restart the fire before she could cook. There was a stove in the kitchen, but with the electricity out it was useless, as were a great many conveniences. Instead, she had taken to cooking in the hearth.
The fire built, she eyed the old blue sofa, longing for a nap. She was considering it when a long, agonized groan flooded the house.
She rushed up the stairs, adrenaline and fear fueling her speed, and came to a halt next to a bed in the only bedroom as its occupant weakly thrashed against her own pain. Helena carefully took a seat beside her charge and stroked a fevered forehead with her cool hands until the long, lanky woman finally stilled.
It had been several long weeks with Myka, during which the other woman's body had fought off injury and infection. The former secret service agent had been in near-constant pain, and it hurt Helena to watch. She didn't deserve that kind of agony. She only deserved the best kind of happiness.
But Helena had robbed her of that.
"I found some meat, Myka. Let me go downstairs and try to make up a meal. You need to eat something. You won't heal if you don't."
Lucid only for a few momets before falling back into a troubled sleep, Myka whispred back the only words she had spoken to Helena since that day in Yellowstone.
"You should have pulled the trigger, Helena."
Each time, the words tore through her heart and added to her guilt.
There were a great many things she should have done.
/
"NO!"
The man to her left shouted out in a familiar kind of pain, and Helena G. Wells's heart seized. She had made such a sound once, released such heartache in a mournful wail. Artie's shout carried all the notes of her own deepest regrets, and none of the grief one would exect to hear from someone who had just failed to save the world.
He was a parent, and he'd just watched the almost certain death of his child.
"You can't! Please! You'll kill everyone!"
Her dark eyes flew to the older man to her left. "That's rather the point, Artie," she said. "or hadn't I made that clear?"
"Not everyone deserves this fate, Wells!"
"And they will have their chance at survival. The species survived the last ice age. Perhaps this time, the human promise will shimmer a little longer before its luster is stripped away."
She hefted the trident, heavy with the mass and weight of the power its final blow would unleash, and with one final, angry cry she embedded it into the ground.
The geyser, not far behind them, shot exponentially higher into the sky, dumping a hot rain onto her. She welcomed the sting, and the fire that would follow. She welcomed the burn, and her end.
"You are a Warehouse Agent! I have known you, Artie, long enough to understand that you are not blameless! No agent ever is!"
"She is, Helena! Myka is! She is the best of us! She is everything you claim the human race isn't anymore!"
Hadn't Myka Bering been kind to her? Hadn't she genuinely counted her as a friend, despite her scheming and machinations? Hadn't she cared for the woman, this modern marvel of intelligence and education and compassion?
She cast her eyes back to the ground to the right, toward the edge of the rising stream. Myka's crumpled body lay too close to the water's edge, and too close to the woods, where trees that should have long ago been felled were beginning to take their final bow.
Underneath unruly curls, lids closed to the devastation, the other woman's flawless face seemed at peace. She seemed in unconsciousness everything that Helena was meant to be in her success. Instead, her heart hurt, spreading a searing paing out across her chest and everywhere else at the sight. Myka was her only friend – the only thing left in the world that she even cared about – and she was in mortal danger.
It would be kinder, she thought for a moment, to let her sink into the river, or to let the inevitable lava breach flow over her. She should not have to experience fear before the end. The longer she remained alive, the more chance she had of waking.
Helena didn't wish her pain.
"You should have just pulled the trigger, Wells! It would have been kinder! Why did you even bother to spare her life if you were just going to let her die, anyway?"
/
It took longer than it should have to cook a meal. Without the aid of electricity, preparing and keeping any sort of food items was difficult. It was fortunate, then, that her childhood was spent in an age without such luxuries as refridgerators and stovetop ranges. She knew how to stretch a kill for as long as possible.
The stew was meager and barely palatable, but the best thing she'd fed herself all week. What rations they had and could spare were put toward Myka's nutritional needs, just as what few first aid items they had were used to keep the other woman's injuries under control. There had been infections - fevers, even, and no small amount of pain - but the danger had been kept under control. She had no sepsis, and what open wounds remained were healing with healthy tissue.
Physically, Myka would recover. Mentally, Helena couldn't be sure.
She walked wearily back up the stairs with a tray filled with a bowl of stew, a pitcher of clean water, and clean bandages. As quietly as possible, the former agent pushed the paint-stripped door open and stepped inside the bedroom.
It was a small room that had, perhaps, been built by the hands of the house's true owner. The walls were paneled by greyed, old wood that seemed to match the sky outside the single window to the right of the door. It was sparsely decorated - a table lamp sat on a natural wood dresser beside the closet at the back of the room, and another smaller one sat on the floor beside the lone wooden nightstand, where Helena had placed it to accommodate all the supplies that Myka needed. The bed was a beat-up wooden four-poster, and the mattress was draped by a tattered and faded quilt - it may have once been colorful, but that color had long since been washed out. The window bore the only other decor, a simple set of wispy white curtains.
In all the room, it was Myka who bore the most color.
Helena placed the tray on the nightstand and poured some of the water into a waiting bowl. She took one of the bandages, dipped it into the water, and began wiping the still-sleeping woman's face.
The darkness within her had blinded her to the truth written across that face, a truth Helena should have been happy and grateful to discover. Her blind rage at a world gone awry masked it from her, buried it, made it insignificant in the light of that burning desire to tear everything apart.
Had she paused in her plans for just a few moments longer, had she given the truth just a few more moments to break through the darkness, it would have cleared long ago.
The truth was she was in love with Myka Bering, and she had denied it for months. She denied it at Yellowstone as the other woman begged her to reconsider, then begged the time traveller not to force her to bear witness to the end of her world.
She had seen that truth too late to spare the world from her wrath, and she had nearly seen it too late to save Myka from the same.
/
It was the tree that made her decision.
Seized by her indecision, by her conflicting emotions, she had been rooted to her spot, hand still on her instrument of ultimate triumph. Artie's voice was weaker, and Helena suspected the blood loss was finally taking its toll. But in his tone came an accusation: one she had heard only minutes before from the very subject of her debate.
She was a coward.
At once, she realized how right Myka had been, and how blind anger had made her to that truth. She realized how cowardly it was to deny her friend that quick death, rather than leaving her to suffer the same painful, fiery end Helena had consigned herself to.
She realized that her rage and drive for revenge had carried her one step too far, ruining the last good thing left in her world for the sake of ridding the world of everything she perceived to be evil.
Stricken, desperate, the hands that were still curled around the shaft of the Minoan trident yanked the object back out of the ground, but it made no difference. The quakes continued, the rain grew hotter.
An ancient, barren tree snapped off its base at the edge of the treeline, hurtling toward the ground...towards Myka. Her reflexes had been dulled by immobility and time, but they were still fast enough to grab the other woman by her shoulders and give a mighty heave. to clear them both. It was far enough to avoid the massive trunk, but not enough to avoid a thick, thrashing limb.
Helena herlsef eas knocked backwards by the impact, and the grip she had around the taller woman's shoulders was wrenched free. A cry came from somewhere as she hit the ground, muffled by ringing in her ears. She couldn't tell which of the three of them it had come from.
Another low, feminine moan came from the direction of the fallen tree, and she had her answer.
"Myka!"
Artie's voice was low and weaker, but alarmed. Quickly, Helena rose to her feet once more.
She had saved the pair of them from the trunk of the tree and a certain death, but not the branches. Myka was trapped beneath them, pinned at her legs and chest, and moaning in agony.
She damned her slow reflexes, and damned herself on the next heartbeat.
/
"Myka...wake up. You need to eat something."
Soft fingers met the secret service agent's cheek and lightly caressed it. She didn't deserve to be able to do such a thing, but she hoped that the gentleness would rouse her charge without alarming her. Too many times in the past few weeks, she had been startled awake, and her arms swung and her legs kicked by instinct. More than once, the exertion had ripped stitches open. Their supplies were dwindling - Myka could afford no more such setbacks.
But the other woman didn't stir. Helena sighed, placing the hand gently against her arm.
"Please, Darling. Wake up."
"You don't get to call me that."
The words, she knew, were meant to be harsh, but they were carried on a weak voice. Still, they were words, and different ones, and they gave Helena a small amount of relief. It was progress, and she would take what she could.
"You need to eat something," she repeated, stern in volume but soft in tone. Green eyes opened, barely, and looked at her. Even through the other woman's pain-clouded expression, she could plainly see the accusations and the betrayal that marred the perfect surface of Myka's beauty. Not for the first time, a tide of guilt rose quickly, threatenng to close her lungs and throat and drown her. It was only for the woman before her that she bothered to continue living, a wretched creature that deserved every scorn that could be thrown at her. Every scorn that Myka would hurl upon her, the moment she was fit.
The stew was spoon-fed to the patient, still too weak to handle feeding herself without making a terrible mess. Helena was pleased by the amount she managed to get Myka to eat this time, and how much of what little variety remained to them that meal had included. Too soon, though, Myka was nodding off again.
"You should have..." came the whisper, and as she cleaned, Helena mentally braced herself for the impact of those same haunting words. For a moment, she thought she was spared as her charge seemed to have nodded off, and she expelled a breath she hadn't realized she was holding. She continued her clean up.
The words caught her off guard, then.
"You should have let me help you, Helena. You could have talked to me."
Her breath hitched as she whirled back to face the woman on the bed, to acknowledge that she was right, to beg her forgiveness, but she knew immediately that Myka had fallen back into a restless sleep.
Items gathered, she descended the stairs once more. It took some time to clean and sterilize and tidy as best she could. She placed a lid on the pot she had prepared the meal in, cooled by the time her chores were complete, and placed it outside beneath the snow. Then, she ascended the stairs once more.
Myka wouldn't approve, but Helena had taken to sleeping beside her. It was a decision born of necessity - the stubborn younger woman had attempted to get out of bed about a week ago and had promptly collapsed back onto still-fractured legs. The pain-filled wail was enough to keep the inventor's adrenaline running for an entire day.
Ever since then, she had watched over the sleeping woman like a hawk. She reasoned that it was her penance, her sentence to watch over her, to care for her, as if repairing Myka's body would make up for some of the damage she'd done to the planet. It was a ridiculous notion. No penance could fix the betrayal. No punishment would be enough to make up for everything that had happened.
Helena scooted close enough to Myka to feel her move, if she did at all, but far enough away that she didn't touch. Her head hit the pillow and her mind shut off.
She held no expectations. Not anymore.
/
The trident was the only sharp weapon available to her.
She picked up the instrument and rushed to Myka's aid, Artie's curses and anger fading into the background as she worked quickly to pierce through the limbs. It was an imperfect solution, one that possibly did as much damage to Myka as the limb, but she had no options.
By the time she finally freed the agent, she was unconscious again. She carefully gathered Myka into her arms.
The world rocked violently just as she steadied herself. The water had ceased falling some time ago, and it came of the geyser so hot now that it hit the open air as steam. They were out of time.
And she had to save Myka.
Artie's eyes were shining when her eyes met his moments later, a silent apology passing from the destroyer of the world to its would-be savior. He had a small smile on his face, but she knew it was not for the apology. "Thank you," he mouthed. Then, his strength found its end, and he pitched over, unconscious.
She would never be able to move him, and there would be no time to go back to try, but somewhere in the back of her mind his relief was registered, and his acceptance was logged. She convinced herself that he knew this, that he understood what begging Helena to save Myka meant for himself.
The ground continued to pitch and roll beneath her as she staggered to her car, cast off-balance by her heavy charge, but it was with care that she strapped Myka into the front seat, and with haste that she pushed the vehicle to its limits and a skill she knew she shouldn't possess, she escaped the physical manifestations of her own wrath and found a southbound highway.