who: helena and others! what: variety catchall for the month. when: end of july/ all of august. where: across the boat. warnings: likely discussions of death.
He draws himself back with some difficulty, wiping at his face again and muttering quiet apologies for making a scene, the whole thing feeling a lot louder to him than it really was. He feels kind of gross and raw, and he doesn't necessarily realize that yeah, this is the normal "I just cried my eyes out" experience. He's just licking wounds that have been ignored for the most part and hoping that nobody takes any real splash damage.
He sits back with his hands resting loose against her sides, staring blearily into the space between them.
She doesn't move much away, won't let him escape from her still shielding his face from anyone else. Thankfully, she can't hear anyone coming, so no one's coming to intrude on this moment. He's safe like this - safe to open his heart, and she only wishes she knew earlier.
"All of it. Just...just, all of it. I want to rip my stupid heart out and chuck it into the ocean. Leave it to whatever is going to evolve down there with the hot dogs. I just want to rest. I thought I'd be okay, I could go back to just focusing on myself and you guys. But that doesn't work. That never works." He feels so selfish and petulant saying it, especially when Helena is being so patient with him.
"It's not just feeling that's bothering you, is it."
He might feel that way, but her capacity to wait for him is strong - the same way he wouldn't let her up if she was trying to run away from her own feelings, she'll stay there for him. Persistent, but steady. That's how their friendship is. They can't deny that they are hurt.
"Something in particular has you in its grip."
It's not like she hasn't noticed the absence of a certain Changeling.
His head tips back against the wall again as a fresh wave of that stupid, godawful feeling crawls its way up his throat, eyes up as more of those stupid, godawful tears slide down to his jaw to drip into the collar of his jacket.
"It's just stupid," he repeats. "I can't even claim that it's complicated because it's not. It's just another part of this cycle that I've been trapped in since the day I left home." He stops, swallows, takes a steadying breath. "Waynes as a people are really bad at forming strong attachments to other people. We're beholden to the planet itself. We're not taught how things are supposed to feel either so when it started happening to me, it- I was blindsided. I barely learned how to be a functioning person before I stepped into the shit, and then had to deal with everything all at the same time." He's never learned emotional regulation or a proper coping mechanism in his life.
"Have you ever been so certain of something that it scared you?"
Oh, Wayne. Her heart aches for him, so much that it's physical, pressing against her ribcage. It's hard enough to be something with feelings when you were born to it, when it was in every breath you took and beat of your blood. How much harder it would be, to feel it all at once. No wonder he nearly melted in that room. It's frankly a testament to his will that he didn't.
"...Yes."
She tucks herself a little more firmly next to him, so he won't have to speak loudly, but she'll hear every change in his tone.
He doesn't cling to her the way he had at first, but his hand moves to find hers, holding onto it the way he had in that room as they tried to keep themselves and each other stable through the onslaught of misery.
"What do you do with it? Talking about it isn't going to make it better and confronting it head-on isn't an option, and trying to hash it out into its simplest form is what brought me here. There's no moving forward."
Why isn't there, she wants to ask, and then thinks better of it. To press too quickly is to risk his wounds deepening.. She's never, never heard him cry before today, and Helena holds his hand back, keeping it as a lifeline.
"You keep it. You live with it. You let yourself grow around it. Until it comes that perhaps, one day, things have changed. A day when you find you can confront it. Perhaps not head on, though. Maybe from the side."
Her other hand comes up, fingertips light to find his face, rest her hand on his cheek. Thumb to try and wipe away at least a few of the tears she knows are there, while her words are a murmur.
"...You are doing the best you can, with what you have, in the most extraordinary of circumstances. What you hold onto...give yourself that much allowance, that you are trying so, so hard."
He's cried before, but not in a way that anyone else recognizes. The closest that they've seen has been when his flesh is on the verge of giving way. Only a couple of people have been able to recognize it for what it is beforehand they've had to ask an it.
His lower lip trembles, his hand curling around the back of hers on his face. The tears come sluggishly even as she wipes them away.
"I'm so tired, 'lena... I was too tired to go with you, I'm too tired to be anything but selfish."
But he's trying. It's all that he can do when the only other options are running headlong into certain destruction, or retreating so far into himself that he becomes that same apathetic, monosyllabic little drone that he'd been when he first left home.
Wayne's thumb rubs across the knob of a knuckle as his free hand rubs at his cheeks to rid them of the wetness that still feels like he's leaking without being wounded.
"I don't really think coming at it sideways will work, as much as I wish it would. I'm not exactly the covert op type and everyone involved is way smarter than me." For all that it's only one, possibly two people that he really needs to worry about.
"Why don't you think you're smart? Feels like you're so quick to think lowly of yourself, to compare yourself unfavorably. "
Her words are still soft, but her expression is sorrow - how she wishes she could impress upon him how she percieves him, exceptional among others. Wonderful, brave, intelligent, kind, cool, everything you'd wish to know in someone.
"Wayne...please, please be selfish." Because I can't be, she adds in her head. "Put yourself first, for once. The world won't end because you do."
"It's not that I'm not, it's just that I know I'm not on the same level as basically anyone that I ever...start having feelings for..." It's a pattern. He has a type. How unfortunate. With her hand on his face, she would be able to feel the way that his expression changes to mild bewilderment.
He takes her hands in both of his and rests with his fingers around the backs of them, his thumbs against her palms to rub in gentle circles.
"I can't be selfish when it comes to this," he admits quietly. He doesn't look straight at her, instead just staring at the opposite wall. "Not when I know that it's never going to be returned. That's not selfishness, that's cruelty."
"Why do you know it's never. Things change. And you're someone anyone would be so, so lucky to have feel for them."
She'll hope for him, if he can't. She'll carry it quietly in her own heart, that someone sees how brightly he shines, and knows how fortunate they are that it'd fall on them. And maybe she's being so stubborn it's childish, but he deserves so much more than misery and unrequited feelings. He deserves the good half of the world.
She's so sure, and it hurts more than his own resignation does. His brow furrows, the crease deep enough to linger on his forehead above his nose where she'll never see it, but others might if they looked at him long enough to notice.
"Can I explain, and be able to trust that you won't tell anyone else?" he asks quietly. Nobody else could know. Not Max, not Security, not Darcy, nobody that she might need to unburden herself to. This was private, between only them.
It won't be hers to share - it won't come out. Different people keep different secrets - there are things she's told others that someone else, even her dearest ones, can't know. What Wayne says, she'll respect.
It takes a moment for Wayne to put his thoughts into words. His thumbs knead gently against Helena's palms, sweeping along those curious little wrinkles.
"When I met Dedusmuln, they were just...this weird nerd that I met holed up in a ruin, trying their best to stay alive and find the last artifact that they'd dedicated their life to searching for. I saved them, and we kept each other alive, and I don't really know for sure when it happened, but I realized I loved them. But they were dedicated to their work, and couldn't promise themself to me and I accepted that because hey, that was one of my closest friends, and they deserve to be happy, and I didn't wanna get in the way of them chasing their bliss.
"I spent cycles after that thinking that someone else would come along, or I'd just wear out and die alone and that would be that. And then, like...two weeks after I finally killed Gibby again, I ended up here, and I met Klaus, and I fell for them way fast. And I realized, it was because I was lonely. And I got over it, especially when I learned they were taken, and their mate was a cool friend too. I think it was mostly just a crush and it'd pass.
"And then...then Gil came along, and we were friends. He talked to me on the level and supported me when there was literally nothing to get out of it, and he just. He listened. And I didn't feel as bad anymore. And then I realized I loved him and that we needed to talk and he was just gone.
"And the whole time- the whole time, Crichton was there, dealing with his own shit, but being one of the best friends I've ever had, and..." Fuck, the tears are back. They don't strangle him the way they do most people, but it takes longer for him to push out the last thought. "And he cares about me, I know he does. The same way you do. And that's the most important fucking thing in the world and-" A sniff, wet and quiet. "And I should be content with that. He's never gonna feel the same way about me anyway. This is stupid.
"Maybe I'm also kind of afraid if I did say something that he'd disappear too."
She only nods, quiet, because that's not something she can contradict. It's not as though such a fear can be said to be irrational, in this place. It's not as though she doesn't nurture it behind her own heart, the fact that the Nothing might claim each and every one of them before they have the chance to be free. That the love might not be enough. And yet, she wants to hope for Wayne. Fiercely, strongly, with all of herself. Even if she never says anything about it again - even though Helena would never breathe a word to Crichton, because she promised.
How do you know it's never? Why give up before trying? But then again, without the most extraordinary circumstances, would she have had the bravery she has had? Would she even be able to push back the doubts that still ask her are you sure they don't deserve better than you? Without an answer, she can't ask that of Wayne.
So she doesn't say that. Doesn't push too hard, to leave unkind impressions in his flesh. Instead, she keeps her head close to him, keeps her words so quiet, to only be for them.
"It's not stupid, Wayne. Your heart isn't a stupid thing."
She holds onto hope for him, and he'd lost all of his the moment that he'd realized what was happening to him just days before when he and Crichton had hidden out in the dark in his ship and just talked about the music that he made that kept him going, and thinking about his life as more than just a string of tragedies. He'd bared his soul the way an artist does when he doesn't have the words to put to his rocky emotional state.
Crichton had said that his music was amazing, that he was a badass, that he was all of these things that he just doesn't feel about himself. They joked, and just quietly existed together for a while, and Wayne tried to put together a cover of the song over the myriad screens that ended up just not being necessary, now only a thing that he wanted to do to be able to show Crichton when he nailed it down.
It hurt when he finally let himself acknowledge what it was. It hurt because he knew it was doomed. It hurt because Gil was a beautiful, warm distraction that was long gone now.
His tone is maybe just a touch petulant when he speaks up again. "He's already so devoted to someone else anyway that it'd just be insulting to say anything to him to try and put it to rest so why bother, you know? It's irrational, and senseless, and it sucks."
Ah. She didn't know that part. Like a spike in the middle of one's chest, shattered within. And her, unknowing, encouraging him to live with it. Like a tree with a knife sunk into the bark, never to rust and lose its cutting edge. To be preserved. Her unseeing eyes close, and a tear of her own makes its clumsy way down. Oh, she's sorry, and her hands grip his, and she doesn't know what to do except to be there and be present. This can't be fixed, except to make sure he doesn't wither away like those people in the stories that go mad.
Slowly, her head comes forward, to rest against his. A silent and bitter connection, allowing him the grief that this is. It hurts. It will keep hurting, even if it scars. It can't be fixed, only endured.
"Your heart isn't stupid." A weak echo of before, the only consolation she has, a scrap of linen trying to cover someone's limb taken off. "It's many things, but not that."
Her throat feels tight, but she can't cry. Not here. It would be too selfish. But she grieves for and with him.
She grieves for the knife in his chest that won't ever truly fade away or dull down, and he just accepts that it will live there and he would have to pretend through gritted teeth that it doesn't exist at all in those moments that he was still trying to be a good friend.
He hates that he's made her cry over him, but Wayne knows that trying to tell anyone what they should feel is the very last thing he should be doing. So he just gingerly wraps his arms back around her, and lets his cheek lay against her head, self-soothing as much as trying to be a comfort.
"Whatever it is, it needs to stop," he mutters, trying and failing not to sound bitter. His hands briefly move against her back, as if to start to gesture, before thinking better of it. With as much trouble as he's been having with his illusions, he doubts that he's going to be able to curl up as a cat-shape. Knowing his luck, he'd become Old Wayne again and squash her.
She won't cry. Not now. She won't. She tells herself it won't happen, and she holds onto him to make sure she won't. Two hearts, beating in time in their pain, blood and tears feeling like the same thing when they fall. They can just exist like this - holding on, because alone it was too, too much. Impossibly so.
Time passes, but she doesn't think much of it. Slowly, Helena's chest feels less tight, the sorrow finding its niche to rest in and exist without taking her out at the knees. They're breathing, surviving, and that's what they need to do.
Wayne imagines that he could fall asleep here, resting in the sun with the weight of his friend against him, simply absorbing one another's presences and taking comfort in the fact that they're not alone. His fingers trace fidgeting paths across the wrinkles of her clothes. He feels awful, coming to her and only speaking on his own troubles, when he knows that she's coming back from something awful. So he speaks up quietly after a while, eyes half focused as he stares out.
"I saw you trying to talk yourself into swimming, earlier. Is there anything I can do to help?"
It's easier, to talk about his problems. To not talk about where grief and resignation had led her, even if it had been what was needed. Turns out, it's never going to be that easy. Wayne doesn't let her squirm out of it any more than she does him.
"...Honestly, I'm not sure. It turns out, even though I tell myself it's fine, I can't help but be tense in the water. And I don't want to be. I don't want to give up swimming over some fear the ship will sink again."
He was never taught that you should never express your feelings, never conditioned to feel like they were frowned upon. His experience was more that his feelings were just the same as those of the rest of the world, that he should just keep going, keep going, keep going until whatever needed to be done, was done. Stopping to talk about it is novel for him, in a totally different way than it is for her.
Wayne rests his hands rest loose against her sides, keeping her stable and aware that he's still right there, in that same little bit of space.
"That's probably down to instinct. If it hurt you really bad before, your body wants to avoid it. I didn't see it, I hid out where the screens couldn't get to me, but I know that a lot of people ended up in the water. So it kinda makes sense that water'd make you nervous. Next time, do you want someone there? I got something recently that you'd probably get a kick out of..."
Whether she was mastering an aversion to deep water or not.
"But...thank you, for not looking. I know, I don't really have a right to complain when I wouldn't have even seen it myself, but...that makes it feel weirder. That other people could see, and I can't."
"But it makes sense, doesn't it? When it comes to some particular ways that you can die like, you don't want people gawking." He doesn't think her not wanting to be seen in such a state is particularly odd.
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He sits back with his hands resting loose against her sides, staring blearily into the space between them.
"I'm tired, 'lena. How do you deal with this?"
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She doesn't move much away, won't let him escape from her still shielding his face from anyone else. Thankfully, she can't hear anyone coming, so no one's coming to intrude on this moment. He's safe like this - safe to open his heart, and she only wishes she knew earlier.
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He might feel that way, but her capacity to wait for him is strong - the same way he wouldn't let her up if she was trying to run away from her own feelings, she'll stay there for him. Persistent, but steady. That's how their friendship is. They can't deny that they are hurt.
"Something in particular has you in its grip."
It's not like she hasn't noticed the absence of a certain Changeling.
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"It's just stupid," he repeats. "I can't even claim that it's complicated because it's not. It's just another part of this cycle that I've been trapped in since the day I left home." He stops, swallows, takes a steadying breath. "Waynes as a people are really bad at forming strong attachments to other people. We're beholden to the planet itself. We're not taught how things are supposed to feel either so when it started happening to me, it- I was blindsided. I barely learned how to be a functioning person before I stepped into the shit, and then had to deal with everything all at the same time." He's never learned emotional regulation or a proper coping mechanism in his life.
"Have you ever been so certain of something that it scared you?"
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"...Yes."
She tucks herself a little more firmly next to him, so he won't have to speak loudly, but she'll hear every change in his tone.
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"What do you do with it? Talking about it isn't going to make it better and confronting it head-on isn't an option, and trying to hash it out into its simplest form is what brought me here. There's no moving forward."
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"You keep it. You live with it. You let yourself grow around it. Until it comes that perhaps, one day, things have changed. A day when you find you can confront it. Perhaps not head on, though. Maybe from the side."
Her other hand comes up, fingertips light to find his face, rest her hand on his cheek. Thumb to try and wipe away at least a few of the tears she knows are there, while her words are a murmur.
"...You are doing the best you can, with what you have, in the most extraordinary of circumstances. What you hold onto...give yourself that much allowance, that you are trying so, so hard."
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His lower lip trembles, his hand curling around the back of hers on his face. The tears come sluggishly even as she wipes them away.
"I'm so tired, 'lena... I was too tired to go with you, I'm too tired to be anything but selfish."
But he's trying. It's all that he can do when the only other options are running headlong into certain destruction, or retreating so far into himself that he becomes that same apathetic, monosyllabic little drone that he'd been when he first left home.
Wayne's thumb rubs across the knob of a knuckle as his free hand rubs at his cheeks to rid them of the wetness that still feels like he's leaking without being wounded.
"I don't really think coming at it sideways will work, as much as I wish it would. I'm not exactly the covert op type and everyone involved is way smarter than me." For all that it's only one, possibly two people that he really needs to worry about.
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Her words are still soft, but her expression is sorrow - how she wishes she could impress upon him how she percieves him, exceptional among others. Wonderful, brave, intelligent, kind, cool, everything you'd wish to know in someone.
"Wayne...please, please be selfish." Because I can't be, she adds in her head. "Put yourself first, for once. The world won't end because you do."
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He takes her hands in both of his and rests with his fingers around the backs of them, his thumbs against her palms to rub in gentle circles.
"I can't be selfish when it comes to this," he admits quietly. He doesn't look straight at her, instead just staring at the opposite wall. "Not when I know that it's never going to be returned. That's not selfishness, that's cruelty."
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She'll hope for him, if he can't. She'll carry it quietly in her own heart, that someone sees how brightly he shines, and knows how fortunate they are that it'd fall on them. And maybe she's being so stubborn it's childish, but he deserves so much more than misery and unrequited feelings. He deserves the good half of the world.
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"Can I explain, and be able to trust that you won't tell anyone else?" he asks quietly. Nobody else could know. Not Max, not Security, not Darcy, nobody that she might need to unburden herself to. This was private, between only them.
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It won't be hers to share - it won't come out. Different people keep different secrets - there are things she's told others that someone else, even her dearest ones, can't know. What Wayne says, she'll respect.
It may not change her mind, though.
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"When I met Dedusmuln, they were just...this weird nerd that I met holed up in a ruin, trying their best to stay alive and find the last artifact that they'd dedicated their life to searching for. I saved them, and we kept each other alive, and I don't really know for sure when it happened, but I realized I loved them. But they were dedicated to their work, and couldn't promise themself to me and I accepted that because hey, that was one of my closest friends, and they deserve to be happy, and I didn't wanna get in the way of them chasing their bliss.
"I spent cycles after that thinking that someone else would come along, or I'd just wear out and die alone and that would be that. And then, like...two weeks after I finally killed Gibby again, I ended up here, and I met Klaus, and I fell for them way fast. And I realized, it was because I was lonely. And I got over it, especially when I learned they were taken, and their mate was a cool friend too. I think it was mostly just a crush and it'd pass.
"And then...then Gil came along, and we were friends. He talked to me on the level and supported me when there was literally nothing to get out of it, and he just. He listened. And I didn't feel as bad anymore. And then I realized I loved him and that we needed to talk and he was just gone.
"And the whole time- the whole time, Crichton was there, dealing with his own shit, but being one of the best friends I've ever had, and..." Fuck, the tears are back. They don't strangle him the way they do most people, but it takes longer for him to push out the last thought. "And he cares about me, I know he does. The same way you do. And that's the most important fucking thing in the world and-" A sniff, wet and quiet. "And I should be content with that. He's never gonna feel the same way about me anyway. This is stupid.
"Maybe I'm also kind of afraid if I did say something that he'd disappear too."
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How do you know it's never? Why give up before trying? But then again, without the most extraordinary circumstances, would she have had the bravery she has had? Would she even be able to push back the doubts that still ask her are you sure they don't deserve better than you? Without an answer, she can't ask that of Wayne.
So she doesn't say that. Doesn't push too hard, to leave unkind impressions in his flesh. Instead, she keeps her head close to him, keeps her words so quiet, to only be for them.
"It's not stupid, Wayne. Your heart isn't a stupid thing."
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Crichton had said that his music was amazing, that he was a badass, that he was all of these things that he just doesn't feel about himself. They joked, and just quietly existed together for a while, and Wayne tried to put together a cover of the song over the myriad screens that ended up just not being necessary, now only a thing that he wanted to do to be able to show Crichton when he nailed it down.
It hurt when he finally let himself acknowledge what it was. It hurt because he knew it was doomed. It hurt because Gil was a beautiful, warm distraction that was long gone now.
His tone is maybe just a touch petulant when he speaks up again. "He's already so devoted to someone else anyway that it'd just be insulting to say anything to him to try and put it to rest so why bother, you know? It's irrational, and senseless, and it sucks."
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Slowly, her head comes forward, to rest against his. A silent and bitter connection, allowing him the grief that this is. It hurts. It will keep hurting, even if it scars. It can't be fixed, only endured.
"Your heart isn't stupid." A weak echo of before, the only consolation she has, a scrap of linen trying to cover someone's limb taken off. "It's many things, but not that."
Her throat feels tight, but she can't cry. Not here. It would be too selfish. But she grieves for and with him.
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He hates that he's made her cry over him, but Wayne knows that trying to tell anyone what they should feel is the very last thing he should be doing. So he just gingerly wraps his arms back around her, and lets his cheek lay against her head, self-soothing as much as trying to be a comfort.
"Whatever it is, it needs to stop," he mutters, trying and failing not to sound bitter. His hands briefly move against her back, as if to start to gesture, before thinking better of it. With as much trouble as he's been having with his illusions, he doubts that he's going to be able to curl up as a cat-shape. Knowing his luck, he'd become Old Wayne again and squash her.
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Time passes, but she doesn't think much of it. Slowly, Helena's chest feels less tight, the sorrow finding its niche to rest in and exist without taking her out at the knees. They're breathing, surviving, and that's what they need to do.
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"I saw you trying to talk yourself into swimming, earlier. Is there anything I can do to help?"
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"...Honestly, I'm not sure. It turns out, even though I tell myself it's fine, I can't help but be tense in the water. And I don't want to be. I don't want to give up swimming over some fear the ship will sink again."
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Wayne rests his hands rest loose against her sides, keeping her stable and aware that he's still right there, in that same little bit of space.
"That's probably down to instinct. If it hurt you really bad before, your body wants to avoid it. I didn't see it, I hid out where the screens couldn't get to me, but I know that a lot of people ended up in the water. So it kinda makes sense that water'd make you nervous. Next time, do you want someone there? I got something recently that you'd probably get a kick out of..."
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Whether she was mastering an aversion to deep water or not.
"But...thank you, for not looking. I know, I don't really have a right to complain when I wouldn't have even seen it myself, but...that makes it feel weirder. That other people could see, and I can't."
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