72. Helena
Helena
When Helena stormed away from Bertram, she forgot she didn’t actually have a tent to return to, hers having never been fixed.
It was a fun flirtation at the time to put off mending it day after day, but it would have ruined her dramatic storm-off to double back and acknowledge that she needed a place to sleep.
Instead, she found some spare blankets in the lab and cuddled up on the floor.
She kept waiting for Lovey to come in and comfort her, but Lovey never did.
Apparently, the work the two of them had done to get Lovey comfortable with Bertram had worked a little too well, and Lovey was perfectly happy to snuggle up with Bertram in his tent rather than come look for Helena.
“TRAITOR!” Helena yelled into the night.
But there was no response.
Both of them, traitors, she thought.
Then she sobbed into her pillow.
Of course, her heart broke for Bertram first and foremost. What an absolutely horrible, unthinkable experience he must have gone through, believing his best friend to have been harboring such hateful thoughts about him for so many years.
But wasn’t it his own kind of hateful not to at least give her a chance to explain?!
He would have let Gerard slide with being a serial killer, but he couldn’t give Helena the grace of saying, “Sorry, when you said you’re becoming a medical doctor, did you say your patients would be human or humanoid?”
A one syllable fucking difference, and she had spent five years without her mother figure in her life.
A one syllable difference, and she hadn’t spent quality time with her surrogate uncle for the last five years before he died.
A one syllable-difference, and she went five years without Bertram.
Five years without her best friend, her favorite lover, the man she thought would be the love of her life.
Five years where he was off, hurting, wounded, broken, shattered . . . because he believed that she had shattered him. She had broken him. She had wounded him. She had hurt him.
And she had, in a way.
She had, and she hadn’t.
Because she hadn’t said what he thought she said, but it didn’t make her anguish and guilt any less real.
Their whole relationship, Helena had done everything in her power to build Bertram up. She had tried to make him believe that he was as sexy, as smart, as wonderful as Helena knew him to be.
It must have been an unbearable rug pull to feel like all of that was based on nothing, that Helena had been lying to him the whole time.
But how could he assume that Helena was lying to him the whole time when she had done nothing but cherish him?
If it were just their breakup that had haunted her for five years, perhaps Helena could have forgiven him instantly. After all, he had been willing to move on from the pain he believed her to have caused, so perhaps she could return the favor for him.
Except it wasn’t just his own presence Bertram had robbed her of.
To take five years with Dr. J and Urghk from her, years she could never, ever get back with Urghk now that he was gone . . .
Helena wasn’t sure how she was going to forgive Bertram for that.
She cried through most of the night, cried for half a decade of lost love and comfort all because of a one fucking syllable misunderstanding because she had been crying then too.
She woke up to the sound of nails on glass.
“Mraw! PRAGHPK!” Lovey squeaked from outside her window.
Helena put the pillow over her head, with every intention of returning to sleep.
“GRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWPMK!” Lovey shrieked.
“Oh, please,” Helena snapped. “You didn’t need me last night. You were perfectly happy to go be with Bertram, who apparently fucking hated me and thought I was absolutely evil. So why don’t you let me be evil and go be with your actual favorite Person?”
“Mreep!” Lovey chirped and angled her beak in such a way that Helena could tell she was about to burst through the window.
Helena scrambled to her feet and opened the window before Lovey could break the glass.
Lovey tumbled through the window and landed happily at Helena’s feet.
“Mraw!” Lovey chirped, and rubbed against Helena’s legs, purring happily.
“I’m not actually mad at you,” Helena grumbled. “I’m just generally mad.”
Helena bent down and scratched Lovey behind the ear.
“We could have all had so much time together,” Helena whispered. “We could have had time.”
Helena paused. Her nose twitched as she sniffed the air.
There was cinnamon sugar toast cooking over the fire outside, she was sure of it. There was another smell, too—potatoes with rosemary and peas.
“ABSOLUTELY THE FUCK NOT!” Helena screamed out the open window.
Did he really think he could win her back over with food?
Urghk used to cook for them all the time.
He took away five years of meals with Urghk from her.
How many of Urghk’s family dinners could Helena have attended?
How many conferences could she have gone to with Dr. J?
What all could she have eaten? What all could she have learned?
What jokes could she have laughed at? What moments could they have held each other through when they cried?
Millie.
Helena didn’t get to be there to fucking say goodbye to Millie, the best girl, the most beloved shroo.
If Bertram hadn’t blocked her on everything instead of giving her the benefit of the doubt, she could have spent time with Millie in her old age.
She could have brought her soft chew toys and taken her on walks even when she couldn’t fly anymore.
She could have been there when the family said goodbye to Millie, when they gave her that last gift a shroo guardian could bestow—a peaceful and loving passing from this world.
Instead, Helena heard the news from a friend of a friend.
So, she sent flowers.
Anonymously.
Helena sent anonymous flowers when Millie died, when she should have been there to celebrate Millie’s life, and Bertram thought fucking cinnamon toast could make up for that?!
She pulled the covers over her head and flopped back onto her pillow.
She had a few minutes of blissful silence, and then she heard Lovey whimpering and scratching at the door.
She also heard footsteps, and it wasn’t hard to guess why Lovey was whimpering.
“No, Lovey. We’re not letting him in. We’re mad at him.”
But Helena realized there was a chance Lovey genuinely needed to go back out, so she sighed and opened the lab door, prepared to yell at Bertram along the way.
But Bertram wasn’t there.
And a tray of food was.
It was—as she suspected—cinnamon sugar toast with a side of roasted potatoes with rosemary and peas, along with blueberries and strawberries on top of the toast, along with coconut whipped cream.
A small container of maple syrup sat on the side.
There was also coffee, and just by looking at it she knew it had the exact amount of oat milk (just a splash) and sugar (none) that she always took in her coffee.
“I DID ‘MAKING FAVORITE brEAKFAST’ AS MY NICE THING!” Helena shouted. “YOU CAN’T STEAL MY NICE THING!”
There was no response.
It seemed that when she told Bertram to stay the fuck away from her, he was willing to take it seriously.
To a degree.
Taking it one hundred percent seriously probably would have entailed not cooking her breakfast and leaving it outside the lab for her. But at least he was making himself scarce, staying out of her sight, not attempting to speak to her directly.
She thought she would have lost her mind if he did.
Given that her pain was largely in reaction to his pain, it would have seemed unfair to release the full force of the grief and anguish and anger and frustration she was experiencing onto Bertram. So, it was good that he was only speaking to her through the language of food.
And fuck the food was good.
She ate every bite, because it was delicious, and because Bertram had no way of knowing whether she ate it or not. No reason to deny herself a delicious meal just on the principle of the thing.
When she finished eating, she headed out to feed Lovey, hoping for both her sake and Bertram’s that he was nowhere to be seen.
Bertram was, indeed, nowhere to be seen. But Lovey’s food was already neatly portioned out and waiting on the table.
“IT WON’T WORK!” Helena yelled.
Didn’t he understand what he took from her? What he took from all of them?
For half a second she considered re-portioning Lovey’s food out, just to spite Bertram. But again, to what end? He wouldn’t know, and to do so would just be a waste of food. So, she fed Lovey her breakfast, via throwing as per usual.
Except that Helena’s aim was horrible, so rather than throwing to Lovey, exactly, she was more throwing the strips of substitute meat ineffectually into the air, causing Lovey to almost trip over herself in an effort to estimate where Helena’s tosses would land.
For a moment Helena wondered if she could call Bertram over, to give Lovey a proper breakfast-catching setup.
But no, she decided. It was good for Lovey to have to work to get her food, actually. In fact, Helena’s terrible aim was the best thing possible for Lovey’s reflexes. It should have been Helena throwing Lovey her food all along.
She didn’t need Bertram.
The “she” in this case being “Lovey” or “Helena.”
Neither of them needed Bertram.