Fantasy So Night Follows Day by TMaskedWriter

[Ramesh_Rocky]

Susan's log, Stardate: The same one, I guess. We're somewhere within the nebula of my Subconscious, which just showed us the memory of my first meeting with Helen. The image that appeared next was from my perspective again. It was dark, but in that darkness, and from the way I was moving, I knew what I was doing: Attempting to disentangle myself from Troy & Julie and crawl out of their bed without waking them up. (Their bed was bought with the intention of having multiple occupants, however, we still tend to end up in a bit of a pile.)

"If these are all going to be about Helen," Sue remarked. "I remember what happens next."

In the memory, I picked my way through the darkened room to Julie's bathroom. I grabbed a robe in the dark, and slipped out into the living room. Julie's laptop was on the living room table. I opened it up and brought up Skype.

As I typed, the memory slowed again. It didn't pause, but it had done this before. From what we'd inferred, it was my subconscious' way of getting my attention about something.

"The sleeves." I noticed, watching my hand slowly mousing over Helen's number and clicking the phone icon. "Julie doesn't own any red velvet..."

Suzy-Q voiced the thought as I had it.

"You put it on in the dark. All of Julie's robes are fancy ones that she stole from hotels; mostly Helen's. There's only one red velvet garment in this house that ties around the waist like that, and it's not a Santa suit."

In my reflection on the screen before Maria appeared, I saw it: I'd been wearing Propappou's red velvet smoking jacket the night I called Helen to bitch her out about the gift bag.

"Wow," Sue uttered. "She is fucking amazing."

"I wouldn't expect you to say that about Helen, Sue. Based on... well, most of what you've historically said about her. I'd really like to hear more on this."

She swiveled in Chekov's seat to face me.

"You obviously didn't mean to pick it in the dark, but we all know that is no ordinary garment. That is THE fucking sacred holy relic of Byroni Medina that you 'chose' to wear for this 3 AM bitch-out call. You don't know that, of course; but that could only make it come off even harder as 'Yeah, fuck you, I'm wearing Your True Father's jacket! What do you think of that?' And she's never even brought it up. I'm admiring her restraint! Like, yeah, she's literally a diplomat and everything, but FUCK!"

We watched as Helen laughed off my threat to kick her ass by telling me what they call her in Africa. Now, though, I was seeing it with the perspective Sue had given me. Seeing, now, how much I had been pushing her before she got to those words that colored everything to me.

"Well, you don't have to worry about it happening again, Susan, dear. I AM sorry, and I promised Troy it wouldn't happen again."

"I didn't know then." I said to the other Mes. "That a promise to Troy carried more weight than a promise to anyone else for her. I should have guessed that, though."

"In that context," Suzy-Q added. "And having talked more with her since, the comment coming up about 'laying our tragedy cards out' sounds like the kind of thing she says when she's uncomfortable with where the conversation is going and trying to get it back on track. A bit more nicely than we've heard her do with Whyte, but the same idea."

I gave that one some thought. I've wondered before what might've happened if the call HAD gone that way; if Helen and I had been the kind of people who needed to turn things into a "trauma-off," and when Troy and Julie woke up hours later, they found us both in tears, still trying to one-up each other with "Who's had it worse" stories.

"But it's like she told you." Sue commented. "You were protecting your family, and she saw that. That's why she didn't take any of your bait. She handled it without taking any shit, like she does, but she didn't really give any, either. I mean, you weren't telling her to fuck off; you were just telling her that buying your friendship ain't the way to go. Probably, if we'd dialed it back a bit, she would have been willing to talk everything out right there."

I sat and thought as the rest of the conversation played out and ended.

"Julie told me that the point of the gift bag was that she was sorry and wanted to be my friend. I thought she was trying to hand-wave my feelings, but she was as deeply sorry as she was the moment she saw the marks. What I'm getting from these so far is that Helen has always, one way or another, been reaching out to me. Troy would point out that Helen doesn't make a lot of emotional connections with people, so of course, she'd go about it 'The Helen Way.'"