Work Text:
Helena had once claimed that the warehouse smelled like apples. What does Myka smell when she steps inside the world of endless wonder? An easy answer springs to mind—books, the faint vanilla aroma of aged lignin, the odor of sanctity. And maybe she does.
But what if instead, for her, the smell hasn’t been so apparent? What if, when she first huffs into Artie’s office with one eye on the front door and one foot on the outside, she doesn’t smell anything but the anticipated musty odor of aged things, or the smell one expects when the heater is turned on for the first time in months—burnt dust. It would be an accurate assumption that that’s precisely what it is, she reasons, after ducking and covering as purple sparks snap from artifact to the next, up one aisle and down the other.
Of course, something changes. She gives the warehouse a chance, and the wonder itself wastes no time taking up comfy residence in her heart. Myka and Warehouse Thirteen have a lot to give each other: knowledge in exchange for experience, astuteness in exchange for clarity. The warehouse knows the woman can and will tolerate, even enjoy, it and as such, doesn’t hold back. Myka, true to form, accepts the challenge.
But the warehouse knows nothing can be learned if things don’t change. In time, it releases Helena from her bronze prison. Soon after, Helena claims she once smelled apples. This is startling to Myka. It’s this sort of subtle detail she assumed she would’ve picked up on herself, either by observing it or reading about it somewhere in the giant warehouse manual. But Myka doesn’t smell anything. Certainly not anything so…unique.
The warehouse brings them together and knows it can only be a matter of time before humans, in their flawed ways, push each other away, no matter their intentions. The warehouse half-expects Myka to leave—it wouldn’t be the first time the warehouse drove someone away, or worse, and the pain of it does linger in the cavernous room—but also hopes that it’s not the end of Myka Bering.
Because her presence was a gift. It had been nice, the warehouse admits, being paid mind, and not just chastised or reprimanded or covered in purple goo by Artie.
So the warehouse gives Myka time. Thirteen has plenty of it.
And when Myka returns, the place smells different. Better, even.
When Myka sees the pleasantly surprised faces of her warehouse family, she inhales deeply, reassured. That’s when she notices—
Of course. How many times had she smelled it before? When Helena whisked past her, full of exhilaration, after days of hunting an artifact, or when she angrily drew closer, a trident and pistol between them, as she dared deny an entire planet its existence.
Of course. Myka had smelled it before, that achingly sweet vanilla aroma. But it wasn’t aged lignin. How had the warehouse known?
The garden heliotrope was enormously popular in Victorian England; it would have lined the parks and spilled out of gardens. In such great numbers, the smell would have been everywhere, like perfume. And any decent mother, Myka reasons, would have taken her daughter to the park for an afternoon in the sun.
The heliotrope graced Emily Dickinson’s coffin, Myka recalls. She read it in a book once, and remembers crying at the mental image—mounds of lilac-pink spilling over sleek wood before being consumed by the earth for eternity. To Myka, the heliotrope was life, and it was death.
So when Pete, Claudia, Leena, and Artie smile graciously at her return, Myka breathes again. And she smells the heliotrope. She smells Helena. So long as she had that faint reminder of a distant happiness, the pain of experience would someday resolve into something bittersweet.
The warehouse crackles to life and Myka breathes deeply once more.
Welcome home.