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Claudia stared at the phone. She had tossed it just out of reach from where she sat cross-legged on her bed, having nearly given up on ever swiping the “Lake, Emily” entry in her contacts. It wasn’t the logistics of it: she’d gotten the number from Myka’s phone weeks ago, and earlier in the day she’d checked it was still active using methods Artie would definitely have hated. So the number was right, she knew, even if the name would always be wrong; but there was no way Claudia was entering any information under H.G.’s name until — unless? — the woman came back home.
Claudia liked to tell herself that as caretaker-to-be she had to look out for the best interests of the Warehouse and keep the mission of snagging, bagging and tagging at the forefront of her mind. That thinking of H.G. as a an active member of the team, no matter what the board might read, was dangerous if the woman herself had turned her back on them in favor of a civilian life. That keeping Emily Lake’s phone number was a prudent precaution, but that calling the woman anything other than that name would be begging for disaster (If Myka ever used her phone. If Artie ever asked. If H.G. never returned).
But really Claudia simply wouldn’t have been able to bear seeing H.G.’s name glowing at her every time it came up on her screen. (And she had months ago stopped questioning why she ever scrolled through every name at all, especially given how seldom she needed to look at her entire, and very short, contacts list for a number that wasn’t a shortcut.) H.G. who had made her so nervous at first. And for a long time. And still sometimes.
Because she was a genius and clever and sophisticated and had seen the world. Because H.G. seemed to understand the Warehouse way easier than Claudia thought she ever would, and maybe H.G. would really have been better suited to this whole caretaker thing anyway. Because the prison H.G. had been trapped in had been one she went into willingly, and her madness had been real and even kind of justifiable. Because H.G. looked at Claudia the way they each looked at a gadget or a pile of parts, and most of the time Claudia wondered what finished product the brilliant inventor saw underneath the hair and the denim and the stubbornness. Because the things H.G. seemed to understand about Claudia made the younger woman feel the weight of expectation in a way that not even Myka’s, well, perfectness could.
Myka.
And Claudia was back to the reason she was staring at her phone, running her fingers along a piece of paper that held a script copied over from the several drafts that now cluttered her bedspread. Why she needed to touch the damn screen over Emily Lake’s name. Why she needed to talk to Helena.
No one had called her. Hell, no one was even saying her name. And Claudia got why Myka didn’t want to think about what wasn’t there as she tried to figure out a plan of attack to take on what was there. And she got that Pete was focused on Myka, and that Artie was focused on the Warehouse. She got that Jinksy didn’t want to get in the middle, probably because he knew just how many lies everyone was telling about how Myka’s…how her cancer… was affecting them. She got that Abigail didn’t know H.G., and that the shrink’s biggest concern was keeping everyone from falling into totally destructive behavior that could lead to something like, oh, the end of the world.
But someone needed to call Helena. For Myka, mostly. But also because H.G. deserved to know before it was too late for her to change her mind about stupid Nate and stupid Wisconsin and stupid “normal”.
And this is why Claudia had put the phone down. Because if she called H.G. like this, with the rambling and the scowling and the tears then the older woman would hear it and she’d know that Claudia so wasn’t in control. And Claudia really really wanted H.G. to know that she could handle all this — the cancer, everybody else’s dumb decisions, making her own decision that Artie wouldn’t like (eventually being caretaker). And every time she thought about all that, she kind of wanted to crumble, and she hadn’t felt like she wanted to crumble since before H.G. had come back the last time.
Claudia had worked out what she was going to say, though. She could make the call; she could keep it together; she could get H.G. back to the Warehouse; she could do everything on the list she’d made up as soon as Myka, with Pete standing there with her, told the rest of them about the cancer, the list that laid out every task (finding a cure) she could think of.
She took a deep breath, and spent a moment trying to mimic one of Steve’s meditative poses, leaned forward and picked up the phone. And called. And listened to the ring as her heart beat faster and her hands started shaking.
“Hello, this is Emily.”
Claudia sobbed a heaving breath and begged, “H.G. please come home. I need you.”