Reset by scotchplaid is the perfect fix-it fan fiction story to finally atone for the injustices that Warehouse 13 inflicted on the shippers and characters.
Those who have read my previous fan fiction reviews know how much I despise TV shows that do everything to queer bait their viewers only to lose the nerve (or who, in fact, never have had the nerve) to bring the two characters whose chemistry is off the charts. I despise queer baiting in TV shows and it has been the reason why I stopped watching so many of them (OUAT, SuperGirl). Warehouse 13 fits squarely into the same category. The show had a great premise and an interesting cast, except its main heroine Myka Bering was head and shoulders above all the others and clearly no matter who the writers seemed to want to pair her with, was just too small, or shallow, or completely unsuitable for her.
Myka was not just a Warehouse Agent. As former Secret Service operative, she had the nous, the skills, the intelligence for anything the job at the Warehouse throws her way. But she was also a deeply introverted, by the book, nerdy character that captivated the hearts of the viewers. Gentle, sweet, but unquestionably badass. She needed someone interesting, outside the box, someone who would pierce her nerdy shell and make her throw caution to the wind.
Enter Helena Wells. Over 100 years old, sex on heels, with swagger, brains, beauty, a dark past, and an awful slew of misdeeds to her name – Helena was perfect for the straight laced Myka… Yet Helena was also a bruised, battered, wounded to the core woman who has lost it all and who is ready to make everyone and anyone pay for taking away what was most precious to her.
One look at the sultry brunette with wounded eyes and Myka was a goner. Their chemistry was off the charts, they fit together like pieces of the puzzle and it all just makes sense. Myka could help Helena heal her wounds and Helena could make Myka finally come out of her shell… It just made sense. Right? Wrong, said Warehouse 13 and turned both of these women’s stories into a something that is frankly beneath both of these characters.
Who will save the day? Scotchplaid, one of the most prolific Bering and Wells fanfic writers on AO3. Reset, among their many stories, is the crowning jewel. It is the perfect fix-it to all the injustices Warehouse 13 has inflicted on this ship.
Scotchplaid doesn’t change anything in Reset. She leads the reader to ten years after the show ends (in that horrible manner that it did) and then page by page, undoes all the damage and finds solutions and fixes to all the injustices done to Myka and Helena’s original storyline.
When Reset starts, we find Helena adrift, a rich, bored art appraiser wasting her life, alone and lonely. An invitation to Artie’s retirement party at the Warehouse jostles her out of her boredom and for the first time in ten years, she return to South Dakota to find a distinctly different landscape. She’s ready to forsake Myka forever, in fact she already has, only to find that perhaps her readiness has been useless all along.
Myka has finally divorced Pete (whoever thought those two would make a good couple… just no) and one look at the still lost and still wounded Helena, as always does the trick.
They are clearly made for each other, they have finally shed the shackles of their past and nobody is standing in their way… Except for the Warehouse itself and a plot that is so devious, so underhanded and dangerous that will either claim their lives or save the world. So, basically par for the course for these two.
Pros
There have been several attempts to resolve the absolutely horrid ending that the show gave to this ship, but out of all of them, Reset has it all. It stays true to the storyline, to the characters and to the mythology of the show. And it maintains that absolute faithfulness to who Myka and Helena are, underneath it all. When all is said and done, this is the only way I imagine that Myka Bering and Helena Wells could have found their HEA.
The supporting cast is also brilliant and utterly satisfying. As is the mystery at the core of the story.
Scotchplaid weaves a very engaging tale, it’s hard to put down. The writing is crisp, free flowing and enchanting.
Cons
The story is long and in one chapter goes into in depth recollections of Helena’s past, including some of her most appalling deeds that she has perpetrated in her quest for justice for her daughter. There is violence on the page in this particular chapter of the story.
Conclusion
If you were left bereft by how awful this show was to both Myka and Helena, this is the fanfic that will save you. I have re-read it several times and it remains juts as satisfying, just as utterly delightful as it was the first time I read it. I can’t recommend it enough.
Excerpt from Reset by scotchplaid
She heard voices coming from around the corner, a man’s and a woman’s. He was thanking her for her time, but he sounded less appreciative than vaguely peevish, as if he were asking himself why he should be thanking her. Helena caught a glimpse of a blue suit, carefully groomed salt and pepper hair. The congressman. Then her voice, Myka’s voice, and it wasn’t so much its timbre that caught at Helena as its edge, so blunted by politeness and patience and studied good humor that someone who didn’t know her, like the congressman, might mistake it for a bit of overearnestness.
Helena had heard it too many times when someone was attempting to dodge their questions about an artefact; while she had gone in for sarcasm, Myka had simply continued probing, never letting her temper get the best of her, but at the same time signaling to her partner in her very deliberateness that she recognized what a pain in the ass they were dealing with. The congressman, responding to what he thought was sincere gratitude for having monopolized her time, reassured Myka that there was no aspect of the Warehouse’s operations that he wouldn’t want to thoroughly investigate. Another voice, another man’s, cut in, reminding the congressman that he had a meeting in Rapid City to attend, and then the congressman was moving, feet crunching on gravel, Myka already forgotten. A flash of black, and Helena wanted to turn her head away, a reflex as stupid as it was self-protective since it would only draw attention to her not wanting to draw attention.
“Helena?” Myka was there, in front of her.
She was wearing a cocktail dress and her hair up, a double rarity as far as Helena could recall. In combination with the lines around her mouth and at her eyes that Helena didn’t remember, couldn’t remember, because they hadn’t been there ten years ago, the formality of her appearance made Myka seem not older so much as at a remove, as if Helena were seeing her through glass. Or, Helena ruefully acknowledged, given how lovely Myka still was, as if she were relegated, like the star-struck at a premiere, to staring at her from the cordoned-off margins of the red carpet. But without realizing that she was moving, Helena was standing, the distance receding, as the both of them leaned into an awkward embrace. Their hands fluttered briefly at each other’s waist and then they were leaning away, their smiles hesitant, peeping, as though newly hatched, at the corners of their lips.
Helena struggled to say something, anything, that would attempt to disguise how nakedly she was cataloging every part of Myka, comparing her to the image she had carried in her mind. The hair, the deep, rich brown she remembered, smoothed but not tamed into a twist, curls in active rebellion against the restraint, suggesting that the twist was only a firm tug from being undone. The eyes, more green than hazel, always seeming to be on the verge of widening with surprise or delight. The skeptical angle of her mouth at war with the open curiosity of her eyes. “I met Drew,” Helena finally said. A necessary clearing of her throat, then stronger, “He looks like you.”
“No, he doesn’t,” Myka said chidingly, the way she used to when she caught Helena in a lie or one of her more theatrical exaggerations.
“He reminds me of you, then,” Helena said, slipping without thought into the mock exasperated tone she would adopt to parry Myka’s chiding.
Myka’s smile became a grin. “That I’ll accept.” Her grin didn’t fade, but she uneasily lifted a shoulder. “I don’t know what to say to you that wouldn’t be trite or clichéd.”
Helena became aware that she had fixed on Myka’s shoulders, their breadth, the sweep of muscle from neck to bone. Myka was taller than average, but not tall, her shoulders broad, but not exceptionally so, yet Helena’s memory of Myka pinning her to the wall with casual force was one of her strongest. All the subsequent memories she had formed of her, no matter that they were memories of Myka’s more impressive or endearing qualities, had never lessened the power of that early one.
When it struck her as funny and not pitiable, Helena would ask herself how the great H.G. Wells could have enshrined a memory that might as well have been a scene from a bodice-ripper, in which the hapless heroine (not really hapless just momentarily at a disadvantage) is manhandled by her antagonist-and-future-lover. The antagonist part had been true to life, if temporary, the future lover had remained imaginary.
Bits And Bobs
- Fandom: Warehouse 13 – Bering Wells
- Length: 215,989
- Author: scotchpaid
- Rating: Mature
Rating Guide: G= General, T = Teen and up, M=Mature, E = explicit
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