It's all in my brain

This is a pointless AU one-shot. It goes on too long and is (as happens too often with my work lately) not fully baked. You’ll see why that’s ironic, or possibly just a bummer, if you read it… the initial idea here was wonderfully supplied by @typeytypeytypey , and all blame for screwing it up—or rather, for not realizing its full screwball potential—belongs on me. It took a turn away from the acerbic, toward the sweet (literally), and I couldn’t drive it out of that saccharine ditch. Also the pacing isn’t ideal… have I disclaimed enough yet? Now that I’ve done all I can to discourage engagement, I want to mention that I’ve lately seen some yelling on this site about how terrible it is to just put likes on posts and not reblog them. Tumblr users of course differ; me, I’m fine with however anybody chooses to interact with anything I post: like it, comment on it, reblog it, read it (or don’t) and move on. Also, lurkers are always welcome.

Alarm

BRAAAAAAP!! BRAAAAAAP!! BRAAAAAAP!!

The noise launched Myka Bering out of her bed in a full fight-or-flight adrenaline-swamped panic—smokealarm! smokealarm! smokealarm!—but no! smoke alarms! so many smoke alarms! all at once! there had to be so much fire! everything on fire! getoutgetoutgetout! No time to think; she grabbed the only thing that seemed in that instant essential to save, and she dashed for the door of her still-dark apartment, frantic to escape what had to be a devastating fire, and in the midst of her darkened scramble she heard someone banging on the door—firefighters, had to be firefighters, such a blessedly fast response, they would save her and the apartment too, please please please no devastation, and she flung open the door to see—

—a woman in an ivory silk dressing gown?

A beautiful woman in an ivory silk dressing gown. A beautiful angry woman (in an ivory silk dressing gown), one who yelled, “It is four o’clock in the morning!”

What did that matter in the middle of a fire?!? Myka grabbed her by the shoulders, trying to turn her around, to push her toward wherever safety could possibly be—where were the emergency stairs, they had to get to the emergency stairs, Why didn’t I memorize emergency exits, why why why??—“We have to get out!” Myka yelled above the din.

The woman wrested her body away from Myka, yelling back, “Don’t manhandle me! Why are you not fixing the situation!”

“It’s a fire! How am I supposed to fix a fire?”

Here’s the second part of my offering to our revered organizer, @kla1991​ (also tagging @bering-and-wells-exchange​), who I hope finds at least some of it to be entertaining… there’ll be a third part, and I apologize for compelling her to receive her gift on the installment plan. This is an extremely silly story about Christmas carols and bickering and a lot of other stuff that resists synopsis, so I recommend reading the first part to get at least a minimal sense of what’s going on. I wish the very happiest of new years to all—let’s go, 2020!

Hark 2

“Pete, you should do the honors,” Leena said. “You’re the one it wants to travel with.”

Pete performed an overdramatic ceremonial lifting of the pages of music, and they began the trek back to its original home. As he walked, he said to the artifact in his hands, “I still don’t know anything about classical music, but I still feel like you belong to Christmas, buddy.” He asked Leena, “Why isn’t it actually supposed to live there? The curtains, I see their point, but this? It’s all over the place this time of year.”

Leena said, “Blame the Victorians.”

Helena cleared her throat. “Well. As the only present representative of said era, I feel compelled to object.”

“Noted, but I have to overrule you. The Victorians repurposed a lot of things—including the Messiah; it’s supposed to be for Easter—into Christmas things.”

Myka said, “Or you could say they put a lot of things together and repurposed them all into one big Christmas thing. Christmas as we know it.”

“I love Christmas as we know it,” Claudia said. “Sounds like we should be thanking H.G. instead of blaming her.”

“We aren’t blaming her,” Myka said, adding internally, Not for that, anyway. Out loud, she said, “The whole Victorian Christmasing is basically a replay of Christianity itself. Lots of things put together and repurposed into a religion.”

Helena didn’t look at Myka, but she said, in something like agreement, “Nothing is truly new under the sun. Older elements recombine.”

They’d done this sort of thing as part of the “fumble back” stage of their pattern before, not quite talking to each other, not yet, but talking beside each other. From the same side. They were walking beside each other now, too: not touching, but not not touching.

Fumbling back, Myka had found, was easier—more expeditious, anyway—in private. Not touching could turn into not not touching, which could then slide its way to touching. Kiss the hot girl… which was not an option right now. Myka resented its not being an option. Perversely, she also resented how strongly she wished it were an option.

A merry early Gift Exchange to @kla1991​, whose not-so-secret Santa I am this year. This is the first part of a story set somewhat in-universe: there’s no season 5 (what could that even be?), and only the first ep of season 4—basically, time wound back to right before the Warehouse exploded in Stand, which aired on Oct. 3, so the Christmas during which this story is set is happening less than three months after that momentous occurrence. I’m postulating that Helena became an agent again, and there was no Artie/Father Data business. (Oh, and Steve didn’t die, so no metronome. I refuse to force Helena through witnessing anyone being brought back non-nefariously from the dead.) I’ll do my best to post the concluding part(s) by New Year’s Day—no promises on that, but I’ll finish as soon as apparitionally possible. Anyway, happy holidays to everyone. Continuing to participate with you all in this wondrous exercise in fandom is a blessing in every tradition, and I’m profoundly grateful.

Hark

“Your upstart nation stole ‘God Save the Queen’!” Helena seethed at Myka.

For whom “upstart nation” was really too much. “Nobody owns that melody!” she fumed, reciprocally, at Helena. “You can’t steal something nobody owns, our version is perfectly valid, and anyway I’m pretty sure other countries stole it too. Look it up!”

“I’m not in other countries. You look it up.”

“I’m driving! Since when are you such a fan of the monarchy anyway?”

“Stop questioning my patriotism!”

“I couldn’t care less about your patriotism!”

“You brought up citizenship!”

“Because you don’t have any!” Myka had genuinely thought they would be having an intellectual conversation, one about documentation and—

“I did at birth!” Helena raged, and then she scowl-sang, “God save our gra-cious Queen.”

This gave Myka pause. She reflected that she had actually never heard Helena sing before. She then concluded that she never wanted to hear Helena sing again… because Helena could not sing.

However: “My country ’tis of thee,” Myka sang back, frustrated. It was the only reason she herself would ever have sung, because—

“You can’t sing,” Helena informed her, in the tone of a doctor trying to conceal joy at having to report that the patient would not recover.

Whenever zoo’s tried to put lions and tigers in the same enclosures, the tiger would eventually try to groom the lioness and play constantly. The lioness would lose patience and snaps at them

So basically what I’m saying is that you have a regal and refined gf who stands at the edge of a balcony during parties, sipping champagne

WOMEN

Powerful, bad-ass women of all personality types who are strong in their own way.

The DEVELOPMENT of characters ( Stevie, Alison, Matt and Henry to name a few)

How each season influences the next

Healthy family relationships that have their ups and downs

Henry and Elizabeth’s relationship (aka one among the few healthy relationships in TV) 

It tackles extremely important real-world topics like climate change, sexual assault, bi-erasure and the effect terrorism has on the perception of Muslims.

The show creates a president and a cabinet that is dedicated to issues such as climate change, education for women around the world and healthy relations with all countries.

Shows that women can have a healthy relationship AND a career.

The fact that Elizabeth eats 24/7 and is always hungry 

’Speaking of lunch, have we had lunch?’, ‘No we have not had lunch’, ‘No wonder I want lunch’,  ‘STOP SAYING LUNCH’

The fact that everyone in Elizabeth’s staff takes care of one another and are always there for each other.

Blake,the neurotic bisexual child who owns my ass.

They make the people in the cast who can sing ACTUALLY SING. ( Blake’s version of ‘I Love you baby’ is the most goosebump-inducing thing ever) 

Literally, everyone on this show is so pure and sweet, even Russell.

Inktober 2: Don’t worry, she’s certified!

Previously on Helicobacter, Myka called Helena on the phone. In the middle of the night. Because nobody was asleep. And this part is what ensues during that call. It’s not salacious, so I guess you can take “don’t worry” or “sorry” from me on that as you prefer. (I’m in fact not sorry at all.) As for who Myka’s boss is, I didn’t even try for anything new or interesting there; that’s definitely a “sorry.” Another “sorry” is that in this part, I got lazy with regard to tags and actions—you’re seeing only Helena’s side of the phone conversation, and I could have worked harder to move her around in the space, make her pick objects up and put them down, all the things we do when we’re alone and talking to someone who isn’t present. There’s no excuse for laziness, so I’m calling it what it is. There also may have been some slothfulness in part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7, part 8, part 9, part 10, part 11, and part 12. Just to remind you, THIS IS A VERY SILLY STORY.

Helicobacter 13

The idea of Myka working on an idea—well, that provoked in Helena yet more heart-hammering, accompanied by nervous speculation: who would be pretending to have what relationship with whom? For whom would the pretending take place? And who would be presumed, possibly erroneously, to have foreknowledge, or no foreknowledge, of the relationship that was being pretended but was also most likely real? Helena leaned her upper body forward, onto the counter, beside her telephone, hoping that the cool of the manufactured stone against her torso might calm her…  it was no help. “I wish you wouldn’t,” she lied.

“I don’t believe you. Like I said, we have to make this work.”

“We don’t have to,” Helena said. Not a lie, but close.

“How can you say that? It’s practically a religious obligation at this point.”

Helena heard herself make Charles’s question-noise.

“You’re awfully cute,” Myka said, and did that have to do with the noise itself or with what she saw as Helena’s dimwittedness? “Call it karma if you want, but honestly, why would any god who’d sell me your undergraduate city planning textbook and give me cancer and make me throw up on you and put Rick in the hospital they took me to even bother to get up in the morning after all that if the point weren’t for us to at least try to be together?”

Frederick is not so keen on the art nouveau pieces, but I love nature. And women.