"I hope, or I could not live."

Helena, immodest as she admittedly was (and modesty was, after all, a useless social construct created to constrict individuality and self-fulfillment), she wasn't the type to quote herself, even in her own head. But the words were ones she had lived by, they were what made it so hard to go on after her the loss of her Christina, they were was what made it so difficult to let go of her plans of destruction, which had been the only hope she'd clung to all that time encased in bronze.

The words were just as true now as they had been when she'd penned them over a century ago. She could hear the steady rhythm of her breathing. She could feel the gentle bite of the night air; the season was shifting, summer was turning into fall. And to think, she shouldn't be feeling it. She should be dead. Had been.

Despite her disarming bravado earlier that evening when she'd seen Arthur, Helena had been more than a little upset upon piecing it all together. In the moment after Arthur had saved her and Myka from that blasted rope, Helena immediately noticed a change in the man. But she had been more focused on trying to catch her breath, both from the rope and the butterflies in her stomach. She'd found the phrase dreadfully prosaic upon first hearing it, but at that moment with Mary Celeste's rope coiled around her neck and Myka's solid body pressed firmly against her from shoulder to knee, it was all she could think of. She'd blame it on the lack of oxygen if it didn't still feel like a terribly accurate description.

H.G Wells did not get butterflies. But after it was all over and later when she had bid the regent in charge of watching her goodnight and gone to the room she'd been provided, it all fell together in her mind, suddenly so blatantly obvious that she chastised herself for not seeing it earlier. How Arthur seemed to know exactly what was going on, the way he looked as he concentrated, he wasn't thinking through the problem, he was remembering the solution. And then there was Arthur's adamant support on her behalf, the way he kept avoiding her querying gaze. And it wasn't just with her; the man was avoiding all them, fidgeting very much like a man with a secret, shoulders weighted down with the burden of having messed with powers far beyond his ability to control, and now in fear of their consequences. It was a burden with which Helena was intimately familiar.

The air had been thick with tension; there was a distinct contrast between the arguing warehouse agents impassioned by the adrenaline still coursing through their veins and the reserved and frustratingly patronizing tone of the regents. And through it, Helena was struck dumb, not a feeling she had much experience with.

She smelled apples.

It was a clear sign of forgiveness that she did not think she had earned. But while she didn't think she'd earned it, she felt it. The guilt and pain that had weighed on her for so long finally felt lessened, not gone by any means, but from a festering wound it had turned into a scar beginning to mend. And it was with that revelation that Helena had known she had died. Of course that would be the only way her conscience would loosen its grip on her tired soul.

For she was tired. And after the initial shock, she'd gotten quite angry with the man for taking her ending from her. Hers was a long tale, and she would have gone out magnificently. She would have saved the warehouse that had given her so much, she would have earned the forgiveness she had sought but never hoped to achieve. She would finally be able to rest. She had felt this on her way to the bed and breakfast; she'd felt it while she'd talked to Arthur and found confirmation in his worried gaze; and she'd felt it swathed amongst the trees and unable to leave just yet. The regents had a tracker on her; it's not like they didn't know where she was.

But when she saw her, sliding out of the passenger side, laughing at some antic of Peter's that involved him wildly waving his arms around, she couldn't feel that way any longer. Her hair bounced around her face as she shook with laughter and the cool weather had brought a flush to her cheeks that was most becoming. And Helena felt butterflies. And with the aroma of apples and the fluttering tingles that stroked her from the inside out, how could she not hope, how could she not ask for a bit more time?