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"This is a bad idea."
It's the first thing Harmony says after opening the door - not the warmest of greetings - but she steps aside to let Helena in all the same.
"I don't need you to tell me that." Helena brushes past her, carrying the winter cold on her skin.
Harmony has made herself distant already. She’s halfway to the kitchen before she calls, "Coffee? Tea?"
"Water is fine." Helena folds her hands in front of her and fixes her eyes on the far wall.
Harmony returns with a glass.
They sit in the small living room. Apart.
There’s that familiar tug of gravity, the nostalgia of her perfume.
The same after all these years.
Of course. Why would it change?
Harmony is efficient like that. She finds what works and sticks to it; takes what doesn't and cuts it out.
"She's going to throw quite a fit if she wakes up here."
Here being: a new, rather drab apartment. No Lumon logo on the key, which is what Helena suspects is the main draw.
"There's not much she'll like about what I do with my body." She shifts after a moment and sighs. "Our body."
Harmony leans forward, interest piqued. "Is she…here?"
"No,” Helena says on an exasperated exhale. “I just feel it's wise to get in the habit of correcting myself before she does."
Unsurprisingly, between Helly and Helena, neither is eager to give up control.
They're still working out the arrangement, though it's proving out of their hands after a certain point.
Reintegration gives and takes away, following no discernible rhyme or reason. It will claw through this divide at the pace and bearing of its choosing.
Each consciousness previously spatially dictated, now set on a freewheeling collision course, full speed ahead. What could go wrong?
Helena has nothing better to do. Wading through apathy can only last her so long. Why not.
By contrast, Helly is driven by a wanting so total that sometimes Helena can feel the shape of it taking up space in her skull.
Even when Helena is supposed to be the one in control.
"A strange reality you find yourself in now."
Helena counters: “Hasn't it always been strange?"
Harmony just sits, wearing an unreadable expression - her default.
Here, letting Helena into her apartment, for reasons unknown. To gloat?
Irrelevant. It's necessary.
Unfortunate, but necessary.
Helena's been treated to flickers of bleed-over from Helly's memories this week. Small sensory blips, all ultimately leaving her firmly behind the wheel. Distracting and at times inconvenient, but manageable.
But then, just yesterday, Helena had made a respectable effort to unwind. Sat in the studio (phone turned face down, endless news notifications muted for once), opened a new container of paint - and promptly blacked out.
She woke to a very messy kitchen and her canvas covered with the words: BUY SWEATPANTS. The new container of paint had long dried and peeled.
Shortly after that, Helena texted Harmony to ask to meet.
With a firebrand like Helly, she needs help. Preferably from someone who knows both the dutiful daughter and the feral animal pried screaming from the depths of her brain.
Harmony has seen her in every form. Has talked both versions off the ledge, so to speak - if only to varying degrees of success.
So now - though it was probably unwise, and certainly unwelcome - she's here, with Harmony.
There's no one else.
Just like it used to be.
Anyone who looks at her now sees someone else - Helly, or the Eagan heiress, her father's twin failed experiments.
Not helpful to think of him now. Not him, not Natalie…not any of them.
Most of her former inner circle now find themselves sporting ankle bracelets that also certainly do not bear the Lumon logo.
And MDR - well, the innies and outies have taken a unanimous stance: they are not interested in seeing her.
She can do without their looks of wounded accusation, anyways.
Sometimes Helena wonders if she should simply let the favored sibling walk the earth. Flip a switch and enter oblivion. Let her own iteration of consciousness be forgotten altogether.
But the idea of ceding power in such a passive way as her final act…after everything, it would be too much. Too pathetic.
So she holds on, though it’s difficult to say what for.
Focus. Helena folds her hands in her lap. Delaying the conversation will make it no less unpleasant. She can already feel the headwinds of a migraine whipping up tension behind her eyes.
"As I mentioned on the phone, it's very likely she is going to start…remembering things. I think it may be messy when she does."
She thinks of her words to Seth, just prior to the chip implantation. Sorry if I freak out on you a little.
It had turned out to be a monumental understatement.
"You are the most suited to ground her - us - when that happens."
"Lucky me," Harmony deadpans.
Helena pinches the bridge of her nose with her fingers, trying fruitlessly to get to the ache radiating from temple to temple. "Harmony, if I could strap myself to a hospital bed and spend the transition sedated, I'd already be there. Seeing how little we know of this process and its…unpredictable trajectory, I could use. Advice."
"So you need my help." Mildly. Bored.
It makes Helena itch.
"You'd like me to say that?" She spreads her hands in mocking supplication, offering a bitter smile as the cherry on top. "Harmony, I need your help. Just like old times." She pauses. "Satisfied?"
Harmony doesn't reply.
Briefly, not for the first time, Helena wonders if this will be more trouble than it's worth.
Right now, the headache has her leaning heavily towards Definitely not worth it.
She means to say something else, but the pressure swells all at once.
Unrelenting.
Total.
She doubles over, gasping wordlessly.
"Helena!”
Harmony's hand is on her shoulder and she can smell her perfume, again, but more, and the scent is too much in this state - hurts - she can feel deep into her nasal cavity screaming with the offense of it -
The floor flickers white, then back, then -
◐
Helly wakes up utterly disoriented.
The first thing she thinks is: Jesus Christ, fucking ow.
The second: She knows this perfume.
Which leads to the third thing: Cobel.
"Wh-" Helly springs up from the couch, violently creating space between herself and her former boss. She spins to take in her surroundings, ignoring the other woman's sputtering protests.
Not a single familiar feature. This isn't Helena's house; this isn't anywhere Helly has had her brief moments of consciousness.
The only thing she knows here is Cobel.
Fantastic.
For a brief, terrible moment, she wonders if Lumon has trapped her again - if the whole nightmare has started over on some new, incomprehensible experimental terms.
"Where am I? And why are you here?" She jabs a finger at Cobel. "Did you-"
"Your other half visited me at my home. Of her own volition, I might add." Cobel sounds faintly exasperated with her; the familiarity of it is almost comforting. "In this instance, I happen to be blameless."
Helly throws her a look that lets her know exactly what she thinks of that. "Okay, whatever - I'm sure you guys can catch up another time."
"Helly-"
"I'm leaving," she says emphatically. "You're the last person I want to see, and I'm going to freeze to death in here."
Cobel pauses. "You're…cold?"
Helly lifts an arm, displaying a host of goosebumps. "Guess I should have known you'd be an ice queen."
As they both look at her arm, she notices a tremor in her fingers.
They watch it working its way up her wrist, inching towards her shoulder.
Something's wrong.
The pressure in Helly's head grows urgent. Crushing.
She needs to leave. Now.
She whirls around to do just that.
Halfway into the swing of the motion, something else takes over, a momentum she can't halt, a sensation she doesn't understand -
(like waking underwater, frigid and breathless)
(no air to breathe, anyways)
ceiling and walls
miles away,
everything
(falling)
dark.
⊹
Her heart pounds. Every shadow infinitely dense and deep, harboring untold horrors.
She stumbles, throwing out a hand to steady herself, but there's nothing within reach.
Her arms windmill, a desperate attempt at counterbalance, until she finds a halting kind of equilibrium.
She feels a draft curl around the bare skin of her calf. Her nightgown is getting to be too small for her, pulling taut at the arms and lifting above her knees to a length Father would call unbecoming.
But all the same he doesn't seem to see fit to replace her nightclothes.
The world itself is huge, so much empty space between her and the next solid thing. She's a speck of dust.
The echoes of a nightmare are still whipping her heart to pace when she hears a voice.
"Curfew was 45 minutes ago."
His voice is airy, deceptively soft. She can feel a prickling as it settles on her skin like fallout. Just as deadly, in its gradual, fatal fashion.
Jame Eagan. Looming, little more than silhouette against the cloud-muted moonlight filtering through the manor windows. An impression of angles coming together to make something almost human.
(For a flash -
the wax statue from the Perpetuity wing,
and Helly is searching his face, Eagan bingo in hand,
still blissfully ignorant to the awful and fundamental things they share.)
Then - the statue is
engulfed
in shadow, they're in the hall, and there isn't enough light to see which version of him she faces.
"It's unfortunate how much you resist your lessons."
He reaches to seize her wrist.
Cool and waxy to the touch, only a slight moisture betraying blood beneath skin. That, and the intensity of his fingers, pushing indents into her skin.
She looks at where his hand has wrapped around her wrist.
The bruises up and down her arms are all different colors. She'll be wearing long-sleeved dresses for at least another week, now.
If she could just talk, apologize, maybe she could make it better - but the words won't work their way out.
Mouth opening and closing uselessly, she waits.
Movement, or an impression of it - a woman rounds the corner - braided hair and a nightdress.
Safest not to move, not to act unless acted upon. She stares at the floor until she feels softer hands, pulling her away.
"I'll take her back to bed, Jame." Voices, passing back and forth over her heard, clipped. They may as well be miles away.
There's an intangible pull, then a tangible one, and she lets herself drift along, guided by the softer hands.
They round a corner and she's finally in the safety of her room.
She makes a tiny despairing noise from deep in her chest.
"It's alright." The woman closes the door. A sleep dress
a knit sweater -
the image flickers
(someone switching outfits on a doll?)
"Come here," says Harmony. "Let me look at you."
She lets her.
The walls take paler form, narrower
shorter
(cheaper materials, cookie-cutter features)
the flickers years
light & carve
delicate lines
into the woman's face.
(but the look in her eyes never changes.)
⊹
All at once, the room slams violently back into place. Seems to settle back on itself, returning to original dimensions.
It feels Helly's lungs have undergone the same rapid decompression; she wheezes, head reeling.
"Is it you?" Cobel whispers.
"What do you-" Helly winces, pressing her head into her hands. "Fuck."
(Curfew was 45 minutes ago.)
But she's in the apartment again. She's here. Now. This is real.
"It's you, isn't it?" Cobel stares at her. "It's happening."
Helly groans, presses her hand against her eyelids until the pressure creates patterns of color.
When she drops her hands, she sees…today's Cobel, not…whoever that was.
Today's Cobel speaks slowly, clearly: "What did you see?"
"You were there," she says, dazed. The full strangeness of it hasn't quite hit her. "You-" She can still feel where his fingers dug into her arms. Her arms were small. She was small. "You're still…"
"Yes."
"Do you know what I saw?"
"I have a few ideas."
"She was a kid. She - I -" Helly's stomach lurches with an unfamiliar violence.
(In the same abstract way she knows about many outside concepts, she knows about vomiting. Knows vaguely that if Helena didn't leave her so empty, she'd probably be doing so right onto Cobel's shoes. She's mildly disappointed at the missed opportunity.)
"You don't have to talk about it," Cobel tells her. How kind.
Helly ignores her. "I was really short - I must have been so little. And - and -" she can't bring herself to say it - Father. No, fuck, Jame Eagan. Jame Eagan.
"She used to have nightmares. He was never sympathetic, as you might imagine."
Helly tries to process each scrap of information to the best of her present ability, but every half-answer raises ten entirely new questions. "You saw her like that and you still acted like…" - she gestures broadly - "to me?"
Cobel scoffs. "Helly, I'd like you to ponder this for a moment - how do you think any hint of favoritism would be received, should anyone have witnessed it?" She frowns at the audacity of the question. "It would not have been a kindness, to you or to her."
What you did was not kindness.
Helly's briefly torn, unsure of who she feels more disdain for - her outie, or her former manager. "So you just pretended it never happened. Very healthy."
"Her ego wouldn't tolerate any whiff of my 'going easy' on you for her sake, regardless."
Still getting digs in, even now, when Helena isn't here to defend herself.
Helly's about to say as much, maybe pepper in another insult or two, but there's that pain again. Ringing, a vibration she can see in how it blurs her field of view.
She crumples in its grasp. Tastes something metallic.
Cobel makes a concerned noise beside her.
“May I-"
"No." Helly groans, grasping at the arm of the couch. She finds a solid grip on the material, manages to rise to her feet. "I can't believe she dumped me here to deal with this, with you."
She's pleased at the spite she can pack into the words, even now.
"Helly. It would be ill-advised for you to operate heavy machinery in this state."
She steadies herself with a hand braced on the furniture. "I can call a cab if it's too much. Or walk, if I have to. Not opposed to crawling -"
"You've made your point," Cobel interrupts coolly.
That infuriating disdain. As if Helly's overreacting here, throwing a fit over a petty disagreement.
God, all she wants to stomp to the door. Storming out of rooms was kind of her thing in MDR; maybe it has its place up here, too.
But her legs tremble beneath her. Stupid.
Helly tries again. "I am not going to be trapped with you for another second of the time I have control of this body. You don't get to do this."
"I'll leave you to your own devices." Cobel lifts her hands in surrender. "You won't even know I'm here. Just stay until your stomach settles, yes?"
The nausea roils in Helly with a vengeance, offended at the very mention of it.
Helly is forced to fall back to the couch. She curls onto her side, hands pressed to her abdomen.
She experienced pain and discomfort on the Severed floor, sure, but nothing quite like this.
"Is there medicine I can take?" she mumbles, head spinning. She remembers the answer from her conversations with Reghabi, but at the moment she's deliriously praying the answer has magically changed.
"Just water and rest, I'm afraid."
"Great."
It's too much to fight.
In reintegration, these biological imperatives insist on themselves with a vicious determination, hunger and exhaustion being most prevalent.
And now, this steady throbbing. The body she never fully owned rejecting a reunion neither occupant fully wants.
Kind of a shitty welcome to the world, in Helly's opinion.
And now she is so, so tired.
"If you need anything-"
"I need to sleep," she groans.
"There's a quilt over the back of the couch. It should be within reach if you'd like to tug it down and use as a blanket." Cobel pauses. "I'd offer to help, but something tells me you'd refuse the olive branch."
"Wood chipper," confirms Helly.
She waits for Cobel's footsteps to recede. Reaches over and tugs the quilt from the back of the couch - she is cold, after all.
Right now, her number one wish is to fall into the exhaustion completely. To step out of it, into some world where it doesn't hurt so much to remember.
She rolls over and presses her face hard against the couch, animal instinct, trying to burrow into the space where cushions meet. Somewhere safe and dark.
The texture is rough against her cheek, but she likes it. It grounds her. She focuses on it with her last waking thought
but the pain
hooks somewhere soft, vulnerable
and she lifts her head, seized with it, possessed
falls back to hit a silk pillow instead.
⊹
The hole in her chest hurts. She doesn't know what's missing.
She can hardly breathe around it.
Helena tugs at the neckline of her nightdress - finally exchanged for a different style, a slightly improved fit, now that she's "becoming a woman," as Father noted at a recent breakfast.
The skin around her nose and mouth has rubbed raw from where she's wiped at it over and over.
It's going to leave a mark. A temporary disfigurement; testament to more permanent shortcomings.
The door creaks.
She freezes.
Stays statue-still as she listens to it click shut again, facing the wrong direction - she can't even peek to see who it could be.
So she waits, often her only option.
The footsteps that follow are quieter than Father's.
"Sweetheart," Harmony says from behind her. "Another nightmare?"
She's right - she's always right - but Helena can't recall any concrete images, not even the vaguest plot. Just the fear, thick and viscous in her veins where blood should have been.
"Helena." She feels Harmony sit on the edge of the bed. "Look at me."
She can't. The tears are running down her face in earnest now, beyond her control.
The moment a warm hand settles on her back, something snaps clean apart inside her.
Harmony guides her to roll over and face her. Pulls her against her chest.
"You have to be quiet," she says against the crown of her head.
Helena is obedient, even now.
So she buries her face against Harmony and muffles her cries there, too delirious with the relief of touch to be ashamed of what a mess she must be making.
"I'm sorry," she whispers.
"Nothing to apologize for." Harmony taps her shoulder lightly. "Roll over."
"Hm?"
"The way you were when I came in. You need to sleep." Harmony gestures and Helena obeys.
Stay. Please.
(She knows it isn't possible.)
Waits for the lift of weight leaving the bed, footsteps and closed door and cold for company.
But Harmony surprises her and scoots closer instead, the bed dipping between them. Helena senses her, so warm and close.
"There's a game my mother would play with me when I was very young and couldn't sleep," says Harmony, and her palm smooths over Helena's back through the thin silk nightgown. All the air empties out of Helena's lungs at once, and when she breathes again, the hurt has lessened.
"I'm going to trace something. A doodle. And you have to guess what it is, solely based on feel." Another flat pass of her palm, setting a blank canvas.
Helena sniffles. "Okay."
She focuses, and feels Harmony start at the center of her back, then swell out to the left, into a rounded curve at the bottom. Then her finger drags back to a tapered finish at the starting point. Not a heart, not -
"Oh - the logo. Lumon's logo." And she blushes at how eager she is to answer, even in this children's game.
She can hear the smile in Harmony's voice: "Correct."
The next pass of Harmony's hand wiggles as it goes, shimmying it side to side slightly as if erasing a blackboard. Helena almost smiles despite herself.
Half her mind has gone hazy and golden, pure sensation, and she doesn't realize until too late that she's missed most of a series of traced lines.
Oh. Helena tries to recall the shapes she felt. "I…"
"Should I repeat that one?"
Helena nods, the fabric of her pillow rustling against her cheek.
"Alright." Harmony erases the doodle with her palm and redoes it.
A circle with a series of ovals radiating from a central point.
"Flower?" Helena yawns.
"Good."
They continue this way through the dots and curve of a smiley face, a sun, then stars - all over her back.
With each answer, Helena's voice comes softer, slower.
She really does try to focus - but it's becoming quite difficult. This latest doodle is stumping her completely.
"I don't…" Helena sighs. "…mm, not a shape."
"No." The loops continue over her nightgown, slow and sure.
"Writing?"
"Smart girl."
Even most of the way under sleep's spell, the words flood her with warmth.
"…can't…I dunno."
"That's alright. Just feel it."
She feels the threshold of sleep approaching steadily. Warm and easy, drawn closer by the simple movements on her back.
She could be happy, like this.
Even as she thinks it,
the touch is gone,
(this was never a place she'd get to stay)
centerpiece
at her table of absences,
⊹
this warmth and weight against her back
until it isn't.
⊹
Helly is alone, tangled in the quilt. Curled on the couch.
She sits up with some effort. Cobel seems to have made herself scarce, as promised.
She weighs the option of simply sneaking out. Tempting, but even the thought of it makes her feel woozy.
It's like she's a foreign object being rejected by a host body's immune system.
This discomfort, unease on a cellular level - she's half convinced that stepping beyond Lumon's walls has set off some slow-working poison in her.
Poison or no poison, she can at least address the scratchy throat. (And the headache is swelling again,
(and she knows what this means now)
doesn't want to be alone for it - she swallows her pride, drawing breath to
ask (her) for help
when she should be able to do this
(alone)
⊹
but she doesn't want to do this alone.
She still can't decide whether or not to call.
It's cold and dark, the way these nights always are, and every time she closes her eyes, her heart begins to race. Like nightmares, before she even sleeps.
She looks around. Maybe she can bore herself to sleep.
The room has a Lumon-typical neutrality to it, but pieces of it are set apart - visible aging, wooden accents, signs of life.
Still impeccably clean, though. She glances over to her uniform hanging neatly pressed on a hook beside her bed, the stack of books atop her desk perfectly aligned.
The clock on her desk reads 1:30AM. Everyone at Myrtle's will be long asleep. Even if they weren't - she shouldn't trouble them.
She's old enough to know she's next in line at Lumon, whenever Father finishes shaping her to his preferences. So it follows that she's old enough to weather a bad dream or two.
Still, there's this restless, buzzing energy, and she paces the length of her room, whispering to herself to settle, to sleep -
Rain lashes against the window with a gust of wind and she nearly jumps out of her skin.
Idiot.
It's stupid, but it's enough to push her into action.
She takes the phone off its receiver and dials a familiar number.
(She's only meant to use the phone in a handful of very specific circumstances. This is not one of them by any stretch of the imagination.)
"Helena." Even distorted by distance and thin metallic phone-line interference, it's Harmony's voice.
For a moment, Helena can imagine she's about to say something kind - to ask how she is, what she's reading, all the ways it used to be.
She wishes the illusion could last a little longer. But it passes before she's ready to let go.
Harmony continues flatly: "It's late."
"I'm sorry if I woke you, I -" she twists the cord of the phone around her finger frantically, unsure of what she means to say. Then, working carefully around the lump in her throat: "You said you would visit." Aims for playful, ends up plaintive.
"That's what you're calling about?"
A horrible pause.
Helena watches the rain and waits for the next knife. She doesn't have to wait long.
Harmony sighs in a wave of static. "Helena, what precisely I can do for you at this hour?"
She swallows. Then, summons her grownup voice and tries - genuinely - to speak her thoughts in Lumon language. It proves to be a near-impossible translation. "It was unnecessary and - and distracting to introduce your counsel, if you only meant to withdraw it. I can't understand why you'd…" She closes her eyes, painfully aware her voice has gone thin, high, and worst of all: childish. "…What changed?"
Adult words win her no sympathy. "You've reached an age when you no longer require extra assistance. I've been busy with the Severed floor. How many reasons do you need?"
Harmony has always been direct. But not callous.
Or is Helena being too sensitive? Maybe it's not personal. Maybe it's just life.
Maybe Father is right, and she's been coddled too long. Left reeling at any brush with life's harsher realities.
'There is no true solace to be found, outside of what I find in Kier.' How many times has she written it? In punishment, in celebration?
"It's better this way," Harmony is saying.
"Better? For who?"
Because, really - how could it be better?
Harmony gave her so much. Discipline and structure, yes, but when it mattered - presence and warmth. Something that existed nowhere else.
"For you," says Harmony, but it remains unconvincing. "You need to be able to do this on your own."
"It's not - I'm not asking you to do anything for me." I just want you to stop treating me like I'm a stranger.
"You're much too old for this, Helena." Chastising, soft. "Don't call again."
Her eyes sting with tears about to spill over, chest bursting with things she can't express. Full and empty all at once.
Even after the call ends
she holds the receiver to her ear.
something close, against her cheek
(a lifeline to nowhere -)
talking to dead air,
calling
⊹
"Harmony -"
(please)
and she's here.
"I'm here."
"You were somewhere else again," Cobel says. "I'll leave."
"Don't," says Helly weakly.
(And perhaps it's a little of Helena too - for her, from her? It's becoming harder to tell.)
She feels tears drying on her face, swipes at them clumsily with the back of her hand during the uncomfortable silence that follows.
Then, with the memory in her throat, Helly looks directly at the other woman. "She never had a choice."
She thinks of the tape she received following the paper-cutter incident: I understand you may be unhappy with the life you've been given.
It makes much more sense now.
Cobel is silent just as long, then longer. "I'm aware."
"Then…how could you…" God, it's asking so much to make her put it to words. Doesn't she see it? Doesn't she remember?
There's just this…loose, displaced sense of longing, rattling around behind Helly's ribs. Her own and not. And it hurts with how much she wants. Even as Helly looks at someone she herself despises.
For a moment, she can feel the impulses simultaneously - to reach out, to retreat.
They put her in this situation, this impossible contradiction.
These are the people who couldn't manage to deal with their own fucked-up lives, who made her as some kind of sacrifice-solution instead of communication or therapy. They put her under a microscope and laughed when she tried to make something of her own.
She wants to peel off their skin right back. They can see what it's like. See what's underneath.
With a sudden urgency, she needs to make it happen.
"You were cruel to her," Helly says. Her voice rings clear, the steadiest it's been this whole time. "She trusted you."
Cobel's mouth is a thin line of tension. "Trust is a weakness children are often prone to."
"Jesus, listen to yourself!" Helly throws up her hands. "You know the evil corporate cult fired you, right? It's over. You can have a heart now. It's allowed."
Cobel hardly blinks. "You've experienced something very disorienting. A little emotional transference is to be expected, but the events you're experiencing are long irrelevant. Years in the past, now."
"Are they?" Helly presses. "Are you sure about that?"
Cobel just looks at her.
"Why is she here, then?" Helly continues, undeterred. "At your house?"
"There are very few people who have perspective on the inner workings of Lumon." Cobel talks over her now, faster, irritated. There's an edge coming into her voice, one that Helly recognizes from all the times she managed to piss her off on the Severed floor. "She was seeking my counsel. A strategic move."
Like arguing with a brick wall.
"I know you don't give a shit what I think of you," Helly says, "and it's certainly mutual, but - but she…"
She searches for the words. Finds the truth, devastating and ready, pressing against her skin, right under the surface. Tears it free. "She loved you."
Do with that what you will, assholes.
Cobel's expression doesn't change, not really, but the stillness of it takes on a forced nature.
More. They have to feel it. "And I don't think she's had that with anyone else, her whole life. Your company made sure of it."
"- Your company," Cobel says under her breath, but she finally has the decency to look pained.
Good.
Helly's used up most of her energy on this half-minute tirade. She takes a deep breath. "Look, I don't know everything. But with you...she definitely thought it was her fault. So. If you ever actually cared, maybe you want to fix that, seeing as you were the adult in the situation. In case you'd forgotten. "
Harder and harder to tell if anything sticks. Another wave of pain-pressure starts to crest behind her eyes.
And to make things worse, the blouse she's wearing is so stiff. Scratchy, everywhere it touches her skin. Why does Helena do this to herself?
Then - through the insanity of it all - Helly half-laughs, remembering an earlier complaint. Looks at Cobel. "And tell her to buy some fucking sweatpants."
A flare of everything, nothing
she folds over, seeing all of it -
comfort in contact
she can deny she ever chose
these long-dead branches
and their miracles of new growth
(finally held)
a hopeful gesture.
◑
Helena blinks into awareness.
She finds herself folded forward, half-collapsed against Harmony at the tail end of a dizzying whiplash.
“Helly?”
Helena sits up, brushing off her slacks.
"Harmony."
"I'm here."
She rubs at her temple. "What did she do?"
"She was just informing me that you are in need of a shopping trip."
Helena rolls her eyes, wiping a sheen of sweat off her forehead. God, she's a mess. "Were sweatpants involved?"
"I see she's mentioned this before."
"Did she…remember anything?"
"Nightmares." A pause, long enough that it seems she's done. Then: "The drawing game that helped you sleep."
"Oh." Helena hadn't allowed herself to think of that in years. She searches Harmony's face for signs of how the conversation went. Finds nothing. "Did she have anything to say about it?"
"Plenty, as I'm sure you can imagine." She shakes her head. "You should get your rest first - discussion later. There's quite a strain on your system at present."
"Mm." Helena leans back into the cushion, scratchy as it is. Every sense dulled gray with exhaustion. She'd probably find a concrete slab comfortable at the moment.
"Warm enough? I can make up the bed." Harmony's voice is dangerously soft, much different than when Helena first arrived.
Perhaps it's this that drags the question from the depth of her memory.
"What did you write?"
It's most acceptable to do this, now, while she has the excuse of reintegration sickness and exhaustion and stress.
While she is small, curled close to Harmony, like she used to be.
The hum of distant traffic becomes unbearably loud in the ensuing silence.
Helena opens her eyes, twists until she's facing her. "…Harmony?"
She hedges: "As I recall, the game was that you were meant to guess."
Helena frowns at her. "Tell me."
Meant as command, leaving her mouth as a plea.
Harmony looks past her. "Oftentimes, I wrote your name."
Helena's breath catches.
Oh. It's simple, but it still hurts.
She's already regretting the question, really, but Harmony continues, apparently spurred on by momentum of confession. “Occasionally I wrote that I was sorry."
That isn't at all what Helena expected.
"Why?" she whispers. She can't imagine what Harmony would have to be sorry for back then, back when she was the only good thing.
Harmony seems to register the expansiveness of the question, how it reaches its fingers into the past and seizes all the moments of hurt, of closeness, then distance in contrast. Why?
"A mistake," she says flatly. "Foolish, to extend any kindnesses. Knowing from the start he would never allow it to continue."
Helena doesn't have to ask which he she's referring to.
In the stillness, Harmony reaches to rest a hand on her shoulder. Cautious. Familiar. “There were…strong insinuations made."
She sees Helena's confusion and goes on: "It was suggested I might be relocated if I did not allow you to continue independently of guidance."
It's better this way. Better for you.
“Relocated,” Helena echoes.
They both know the vast range of meanings this designation can take on.
”So it wasn’t…” She searches for the words.
”Best for you to believe it came from me. I don’t think you’d have listened if you knew it was Jame.” Harmony smiles bitterly. “Stubborn thing.”
Helena reaches and shifts Harmony's hand to her cheek.
"She's going to need help," she says.
Harmony's thumb moves back and forth in slow arcs over her skin. "I know." She sighs thoughtfully. "It won't be easy…but it's better to bend than to break, hm?"
It's the sort of thing she said when Helena was little. The nostalgia burns.
A pang of recognition, the vast distance branched between them; a person looking at another person.
This, instead of the machine they've both come to expect. Industry, moving ever forward; never mind the collateral damage.
No one gets by untouched. We must be cut to heal, after all.
But hasn't she been cut enough? Isn't it her turn to heal?
"Don't do this," she says hoarsely, "unless you really mean it."
Harmony nods, and stays exactly where she is.
⦿