Disclaimer: It's been a while

AN: I got engaged, broke up, got a new girlfriend, moved halfway across the country and got two new jobs and lost my laptop charger in the move. I'm so sorry for the length of time that has passed. Please forgive me if I'm rusty.

Chapter Eleven: Almost Normal

Time moved forward. Much as Myka tried to dig her heels in the present, she found herself hurtled towards the future. A scary, uncertain future where everything was tense and things scarcely made any sort of sense.

Sure, things had gone back to almost normal, but that just seemed to make things worse for the agent. She and Pete went on retrievals, and he slowly stopped giving her the cold shoulder. He had been angry that she had left without even talking to him first, especially after everything they had been through in the last few years. Now they bantered like siblings and laughed like best friends once more.

They spent evenings with Clauida and Steve, playing video games and watching TV with Christina. She started her weekly sessions with Abigale once more, nightmares revisiting her from the past worsening her ever growing fatigue.

There was a forced, cold civility between her and the woman she loved now that wasn't there before. A more concentrated cloud of what hung over all of them since Myka's storm off. Helena was angry, perhaps more righteously than most, that Myka had left without looking back and had stayed away for so long. She was hurt, and still scared that she and Myka were truly no longer together.

Myka had left a ring and a letter that was almost a proposal, and Helena hadn't taken the ring off since, but she was also too afraid to talk about it, afraid that Myka would take it back, afraid things between them wouldn't get any better. She couldn't even allow herself to be alone with Myka anymore.

She too was speaking to Leena about her foggy head and torn heart as she hadn't done since college.

Christina seemed to be the only one immune to the awkwardness around her mothers. She still demanded to sit between the two of them while they watched movies. She still requested they both put her to bed every evening. She constantly asked for them to do activities together, like the water park or the arcade.

Myka and Helena had done a very good job at skirting around one another as one week fell away after another, but their family couldn't let that go on. They conspired quietly on ways to get the two women alone without the knowledge of either.

Helena was on inventory again, wondering where her partner had wandered off to. Steve always seemed to disappear when it came time for a census of a dozen or so of the seemingly endless rows of artifacts.

The work was mindless, something she normally detested, and yet welcomed as of late. She stayed away from the H.G. Wells section and avoided Wolly, hoping that when – she refused to say if- she and Myka talked, she could show her some improvement, willingness to work on herself.

"Helena?" a shaky voice called out, and HG almost believed she had conjured it from her imagination, letting her mind get out of hand thinking of Myka so often while so alone. She didn't immediately respond, and when the voice called out again, this time sounding much closer she simply stopped her writing, lowering her clipboard and tilting her head.

"Myka?" she attentively responded at a level barely over normal conversation tone.

The steady tapping of shoes on the floor drew ever nearer, announcing Myka's approach just before she walked past the aisle Helena was currently working.

"Myka!" She called out with a bit more force, starting towards the end of the aisle to try and catch her before she wandered too far.

They collided with twin sharp exhales at the top of the row, sending them both to the floor even as they tried to steady each other. After a heartbeat of embarrassed, startled silence, they both burst into laughter, each forgetting for one moment, the unsurpassable chasm of space they felt between them. For one moment they were who they had always been together.

The laughter cut off suddenly as Myka's face contorted in a spasm of pain, looking vaguely nauseated as it passed.

"Are you alright?" Helena reached out without thought, caressing her love's face, smoothing out the lines there with a gentle thumb.

Myka leaned into the touch, a longing could be seen in her eyes just before she shut them tightly, pulling back once she remembered herself. "I'm fine," she insisted, pulling her knees to her chest, but making no move to stand, "I just haven't been feeling well lately."

Helena's heart turned violently inside of her chest, a sense of foreboding settling in a choking embrace around it as it settled. Myka still wasn't feeling well, it had been weeks since her return, and she had supposedly been feeling sick for weeks before that.

"Artie sent me to do inventory with you," she spoke without preamble, "something about being against regulation to do it alone and Steve being mysteriously unavailable."

"Ah," Helena nodded, "Since Arthur is getting involved with their scheming, it must be time that we give in and talk to one another. Would you like to start, or should I?"

"You lied." Apparently Myka would start, and Helena nodded. A sign of acknowledgement, a sign for her to continue, "We were supposed to have a night with our daughter and you lied to get out of it. You spent the night hanging out with Wolly, playing in the H.G. Wells section. What was so important to you that you lied to me, that you manipulated my feelings and ditched out on your daughters night?"

Myka took a breath, and Helena began her explanation, looking everywhere except her demanding, accusatory eyes, "The lie built. I found the H.G. Wells' aisle, a whole aisle, Myka. And I wasn't supposed to, that much was clear since it was left off of all the inventory lists. And I had to look, my curiosity worsening the more boxes I looked into, the more journals I read, and I wasn't supposed to be there, I know that. I was breaking all sorts of rules, but I couldn't stop. He was so brilliant, so much so that most of his work ended up archived as artifacts.

"Wolly caught me one night in the stacks I guess. I'm not sure, but that's when he started blackmailing me. And it was easy to let him, because what he wanted was what I wanted, to keep researching Well's and the artifacts and half built machines. I should have told you, I know that now. I wanted to keep you safe. I wanted to protect you from the fallout when they found out what I was doing. It was stupid and I'm sorry."

There was a moment of silence, and Helena had to look at Myka, had to try and make sense of what was going on in the other woman's mind after her monologue. She found a blank stare that saw through her, Myka far back in her own mind, processing all she had heard. It was all Helena had tried to explain before Myka left, except now she was actually hearing her.

"I accept your apology," Myka nodded, her eyes finally meeting Helena's, "Though that doesn't make it okay," she pointed out, "I understand."

Helena let out a long breath, a weight leaving her shoulders that had been slowly crushing her, "thank you," she whispered, "I haven't been back since that night. I couldn't go back there after."

"I would like for you to show me sometime." Myka gave a small smile, nothing compared to the one she used to save for Helena alone, but it was a start, a small ray of hope there may be a future for them yet.

Myka looked at her shoes, playing with the laces, "It's your turn." She so softly Helena almost missed it, and then almost missed her meaning, then her own anger came.

"You left." Her tone was sharp and Myka flinched, "You didn't stay, you didn't try to talk to me, you just left us, your family, your daughter… You left us only with a letter and not a chance to fix anything. You ran away, Myka." Helena felt tears brimming her eyes and she swiped angrily at her face before they could fall.

"And, granted, most of the time you were gone is a foggy lapse in my mind, but that almost hurts worse." Her voice cracked and Myka squeezed her eyes shut, "I don't remember anything but missing you, wanting you. Even that shell of a person I was when you returned knew that you had hurt me and she still wanted you more than anything. You were gone for so long, and you've avoided me so thoroughly since you've been back and it's torture, damn it. Having you so close, and yet you are so terribly far from my reach is a hell I thought I had escaped from long ago. I miss you Myka. Can't we just… start over? Can't we go back to how it was before?"

"No, we can't," Myka shook her head and the pain that exploded in Helena was almost too much to bear and a small sob clawed its way free of her chest, but Myka kept talking, "But we can move forward. I don't want to go back to how it was before, I want us to be better than before. No more lying, no more running away."

"No more lying, no more running away," Helena echoed, feeling a warmth blossom in her as she realized Myka still loved her, hadn't given up on her.

Helena rose to her feet, offering a hand out to Myka, pulling her tightly to her chest once she was upright, never wanting to let go.

"We're taking this slow," Myka warned sternly, pulling away slightly, and while that hurt, Helena was just glad they were moving forward together, whatever the pace.