Title. break my soul.

Author. totalcapslock, or mickey.

Rating. p.g., for right now.

Fandom. warehouse 13.

Pairing. myka bering/h.g. wells.

Spoiler. season two.

Summary. What does it feel like to be frozen in time? Could even one of our times greatest authors, H.G. Wells, truly illustrate the depravity in which the mind will sink, when left solely to its own accord? This is a story that begins before the larger then life woman strolled down streets no longer cobbled and clobbers by horse and buggy. This is the story of a woman who fell in love with a voice, long before she laid eyes upon its owner.

Authors Note! This is my first foray into IWarehouse 13/I fan fiction, and I find myself completely enamored by the chemistry between Myka and H.G. I see, and read, a lot of fantastic stories about how they would fix the ending of Season two (Which I applaud, good going everyone!). I thought about how it would all begin, how a connection would spark between Myka and H.G. before they even laid eyes on each other.

bChapter one/b; Iburied like a splinter./I

I"Mummy,"/I that single word reverberated in her mind for the millionth time, literally. Today it was just an echo, a faint whisper of her typical torment. But she could picture it all without being prompted anymore. Dark hair lashed across painted crimson, a child's face turned upright in a look of horror. It was a fictional image her mind conjured up, but it seemed real. It was the only grasp of reality she could promise herself. Fiction. An author gets lost in their creations, pulled down into the depths of their imagination, where only their mind is the limit. Decades of darkness, of solitude, proved how great her mind truly was. It had no limit, no semblance of a stopping point. Each constructed detail was perfectly aligned with her false reality.

Living every moment, of every day inside her mind. Inside her own slice of splintering hell. She was unsure even she, one of the greatest authors of her time, would be able to describe utter solitude in words. It seemed to defy any definition that fell across her thoughts. It would be impossible to describe the yawning madness, gaping dark, sinister teeth inside her mind. Devouring what polished light her soul kept once her decision to cease living in the world was made. It claws and chewed through piece after piece of her character, leaving a gnawed husk of unrecognizable proportions in its place. She wondered if she would be able to recognize herself anymore. If the madness crawling under her unforgiving skin could be laid bare in her bronze frozen eyes, ever open and ever blind.

Sometimes, when she remembers that she isn't the only solitary creature in the room, she wonders what the darkest minds to grace the earth think about. Is their existence a bundle of absolute madness, too? How much in common does she have with a child murderer or a genocidal dictator after a hundred years of nightmares? Enough? She was never positive, she could never be positive. Sometimes it almost physically hurt, to acknowledge that she would never share such a simple thing as a conversation. Loneliness, it could bring the greatest of minds to their knees. And that was why they were hear, this was their purgatory, their eternal torment, punishment for whatever they did to Ideserve/I being here. Her torment always came in the shade of dark, innocent eyes and a wide, toothless grin.

"Pete, I don't think that we're in the right isle." The voice was unsure, it reverberated through the bronze nestled over her body; hugging her like a devil's embrace. "What're all these…statues…" Again, that voice. She hadn't heard a single nuance of language that hadn't been a byproduct of her mind in…how long had it been? Decades? Centuries? What was the world like outside the shell of unforgiving metal that was her home? Ears strained to hear the steps, moving closer, further away; there was no discernable rhythm to the steps. When she couldn't hear them any longer, her mind relaxed, as if it had replaced every unmoving muscle in her body. It settled back into the swallowing darkness of her mind, setting upon its hunches and waited for the next wave of thought to roll through.

"This one doesn't look like the rest." Out of nowhere, phantom fingertips. There were a painful jolt through her body, but she knew that they couldn't actually be touching her. She was a glorified statue. "All the others look angry, this one looks…sad." Whoever this woman was, she found herself actually hoping that it wasn't just her mind. That this beautiful voice wasn't just some aspect of her solitary madness; she didn't want to taint the inflection, the shocking, almost painful touches. It was the first thing she had truly felt in…a century. The warmth of fingers pushed through the bronze to rest upon the pale cheek hidden within, she could almost imagine that the fingers belonging to that perfect voice were truly settled on the curve of her cheek. Not the bastardization of metal that was formed to look like it.

"You don't belong here, do you?" II do./I The world were whispered harshly through her mind, wishing she could warn off the faceless cherub that was caressing the metal of her prison so fondly. Like she knew what lay just beneath it. She didn't deserve this treatment, but how she craved the fleeting warmth of wistful fingertips. She would have offered up what portion of her soul still rested within her; she would have wrestled her own madness to bare everything to the voice caressing her devil's ears. She wished that she could nuzzle her face into the scalding warmth of the hand, so close, but so far. Her body didn't even strain to move, unable to in the smallest of senses.

"I don't remember reading anything in the manual about this place," again, she wanted to answer back. Open her mouth and tell this beautiful voice to turn around and save herself the torment of residing amongst them. IThem./I She now considered herself a at-home addition to the darkest minds and souls to grace the planet when a Warehouse has also accompanied the earth. She had heard the scratching of new bronze being forced into this hellish mull of sinister feeling. There was never a feeling of the living treading between and around the metal-dead. Except for this caress of humanity, currently resting a hand on the slope of a narrow, unmoving bronze shoulder. She wished to free just a hand, to study the face of this salvation with her fingertips as a blind man might. The slope of a nose, the plush of lips, the cupid's turn of a cheek.

"Myka!" The voice shattered her delicate balance of nerves, her mind recoiled at the sharp male voice hollering from the distance, "Myka, where'd you go? This place is really giving me the…" Rushed, heavy footsteps came to an abrupt end not far from her. She could imagine with an author's mind his bewildered anxiety; eyes unsure, and mouth slightly open. She didn't not need to remember what a man truly looked like to know the gate of easy steps and the hush of expressive arms. "…creeps. Whoa, what's with all the statues?" She did not connect with the voice, he was merely background music; a noise that distracted her darkening senses, waiting for the warmth on her shoulder to reassert itself. Herself.

"I'm not sure. I think I saw a statue of Ghangis Khan somewhere over there," the phantom touch left, and her tether to the world was cut. Anxiety began to crawl up her throat like it hadn't in decades; the first ten years are the worst. Getting comfortable in the silence, settling into the darkness of only a unstable mind. No outside influence, no promise of redemption. There is nothing to harm, or be harmed by in the Bronze Section; except one's self. Ears strained to catch the slight, barely there rustle of clothing, the scrap of shoes across the floor and the whisper of an unnoticed breath upon her frozen shell. This moment felt like she was beginning her sentence of loneliness all over again; her mind was more awake than it had been in years, stretching its metaphorical wings, stretching outward to the source of that perfect, touching voice.

"We should probably get going, Myka. Not that hanging with all the creepy angry looking statues isn't awesome," the male voice persisted once again, his voice growing more distant as he sauntered off. She decided she hated him, as deeply as she could hate a man she never pick out of a line-up. "But you know what will be more awesome? INot/I hanging out with the creepy angry looking statues." His voice was almost far enough that she couldn't hear him anymore, his voice barely a vibration in the burnt amber of her human shaped cell. An exasperated sigh rung out against the shield on her cheek, the hand returned; except this time it wasn't a caress to her shoulder or cheek, but a agitated pat to the flat of her collarbone.

"You're so childish, Pete." Her angel, Myka, exhaled with something of a laugh; a sound that practically broke her withering heart. She wished to laugh along with her, to cause that small, exasperated sound. But she was only rewarded with the faint cry of shoes leaving. Her seraph of salvation was leaving her alone. "I should really ask Artie what this place is. They don't look like artifacts." Faint, soft and forgetting. She was nothing more than a human shaped artifact from another time. A frozen reminder of what her time had been like, forgotten to the world around her. She was a relic, that didn't even know it yet, but she had found some hope. Hope that came with the disembodied voice of a woman who could read something in the bronze of her eyes. Myka. The name trounced through her mind like a whirl of new thoughts; the first fresh name to add to her madness, the first diversion from her personal brand of torture. And yet, she felt calmed; even with the itch of anxiety worming around in her chest, even with the fright of being here forever. She couldn't think of those, not at that moment.

She could only remember the faint brush of warm, human fingers.