that girl is a goddamn problem.

“How come it is you’re allowed to scare off my girls, but I’m not allowed to run into your room and blow an air-horn when you’re getting it on? Do we need to talk about double-standards?”

“Because, A) I haven’t slept with anyone for the last two months, and, B) I’ve been sleeping with the same person before that. You can’t scare off repeat offenders.”

“Oh you’d be surprised. She’s much more concerned about other people’s feelings then you’d think a five year old would be”. 

Even Izzy, as bad as he was at reading emotion, could watch Helena’s face change from uninterested to enraged. The slap wasn’t a surprise, even if the of memories of his parents doing the same thing with a similar look was. A hundred instances of being slapped this hard came flooding back unbidden along with all the fear and anxiety that had gone with them. The panic that had been welling up in Izzy threatened to spill over, but he forced it into the back of his mind. Freaking out would only make things worse. “I-I’m sorry…” He murmured, dropping his gaze to the floor. It was a safe (and honest) reply. 

Helena looked at him with fury in her eyes for a moment before softening, shaking her head and pulling him into a tight hug. “You fucking asshole. I needed you and you fucked off,” she said. “I had no idea if you were okay, if you were fucking dead in a ditch somewhere, and I needed you. I needed you.” Suddenly hyper-aware of the way her body had changed since he had left, she pulled back, unable to decide what to tell him first and half-tempted to slap him again. “I should smack you again. Where the fuck have you been?”

“Oh Lele, you give yourself too much credit. I actually kind of enjoy you scaring them off.”

“Scaring them off is the only entertainment I’ve been getting lately, I have to do it well.”

“Fair point.” He rolled onto his back again, stretching out across the bed. “That’s why I tend to stay away from long-term romantic relationships.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s why. It’s not that your room scares them all away.”

“Scott? You mean that guy that had a thing with Julia a while back?” Vinny asked.”That does sound like a mess. Wait, what does Scott have to say about all this?”

“Yeah, it is a goddamn clusterfuck.” She shrugged. “He wants the kid.”

“She’s fine, least as far as she’ll tell me”. 

helenamarx

Izzy hesitated for several seconds before knocking on the door to his old apartment. He had planned on stopping in to see Finn before heading back down to see Helena, but he couldn’t. He still had no idea what to say. The longer he stood outside of Helena’s apartment though, the more he wanted to leave, or throw up, or both. He literally hadn’t spoken to her in months. There was no way this was going to be easy. He had to do it though. Izzy took a deep breath and knocked, praying St. Jude that this would go well.

Helena groaned as she got up from her spot on the sofa, feeling tired and sick and wanting nothing more than to lie down for the entirety of her day off. Moving towards the door, however, she just assumed that Axl had forgotten his keys again, and opened it without thinking. When she saw who was standing there, however, she raised an eyebrow, wondering if her 2 month baby bump was visible through the shirt she was wearing. Feeling a sense of rage well up inside of her, she drew her hand back and slapped him across the face. Hard. “Took you long enough, didn’t it?”

“Honestly, Lele? No, you shouldn’t. I know love’s impossible to turn off and all that, but… He really doesn’t deserve your love. I saw him the other day– he’s not remorseful at all. And if he was, and if he really wanted to marry you or even just be with you, he wouldn’t be texting you that crap, he would be here saying it himself and apologizing for how he’s acting. He’s playing with you, Helena, because he’s mad and he wants you to suffer. That isn’t love.”

“As always, you’re right.” Helena put a hand behind her head. “That doesn’t stop it from being absolutely shitty.”

His expression changed when she mentioned Johann; he tried not to show the sudden anger he was feeling, but it was obvious in the way his jowls twitched slightly. “Yeah? Well… He says a lot of things, doesn’t he?”

“He...” she closed her eyes, exhaling slowly. “I shouldn’t still love him. Not after what he said.”

He looked up at the ceiling with a squint. “The past is already gone, the future is not yet here. There’s only one moment for you to live, and that is the present moment.” He withdrew from her to look down at her. “What happened happened, and it’s already gone. We can’t change it, and wishing it was different only takes away from what we are here and now. I can’t imagine the suffering you went through, and I can’t tell you to just forget it or let it go because those choices are for you to decide. But what I’m going to tell you that you should do is, focus on what you have here and now. You’ve got Alice, you’ve got me, and you’ve got a life growing inside you that is going to love you unconditionally. Focus on the happiness you have now, not on the happiness that was taken away.” 

Helena nodded. God, why did he always sound so smart and zen and rational about things? She was a mess of emotions all the time, and she didn’t know how to hold it in most days, and that was why she had so much trouble just holding on to the people she loved. “You want to hear something really ridiculous?” she asked, her voice quiet. “Finn and Scarlett got married today, and when Johann was at their wedding, he texted me, saying that he wished it was us.”

“I don’t know,” he murmured truthfully. He’d asked himself the same thing for far too many nights. “But you’ll drive yourself crazy if you keep asking yourself that.” He rested his chin atop her head, thinking for a moment. “You’ve heard of the chaos theory, right? Or, the butterfly effect. I like to think of that when I think about my birth mom. If she hadn’t left, I never would have met my mom or my brothers. I may not have taken up swimming, or been so engrossed in video games. I wouldn’t have moved to Northpoint in all likelihood, you and I would never have been roommates… I would be an entirely different entity. But I like what I have. I like you, and this apartment, and my job, and who I am. So whenever I start to ask myself why my birth mother left, I tell myself that her leaving was necessary in my design. I wouldn’t exist in this form without her actions putting me on that path.”

“If my parents had never have left, I wouldn’t have had foster fathers who thought I was an object and foster mothers who resented me for that. I wouldn’t have gone to the high school I went to, so I wouldn’t have met Traivs, and wouldn’t have spent two years being his...his...possession.” Helena was bitter, that much was for sure. She paused, however, forcing herself to calm down. “I might not have met Alice,” she added. “Probably would have never left New York. Never met you or Johann or Finn or anyone here.”

He couldn’t give her much of a response, knowing how she felt. He had days where he missed his birth mother, and no words could be of comfort in those moments. Instead, he scooted closer to her and put his arms around her.

“Sometimes I wonder where they went. Why they didn’t take me. Did they want to leave? Did they have to leave?” She paused. “And why didn’t they ever come back?”

“Can I just have it? I have so little in life.” He brushed a few strands of hair from her face. “I’ll let you in on a secret, Helena. Nobody really ever knows what they’re doing. Every time people think they’ve planned it all out, the universe comes in and changes it up. That’s the beauty and curse of fate– you can’t prepare for what happens. How you’re coping with everything, though? I think it’s amazing.”

Helena paused. “I miss my parents,” she admitted, quietly. “I haven’t missed them for a long time, but now, I miss my parents.”

“I never said you’re dumb. I just implied that I’m smarter. I think my explanation proves my point.” He poked her on the nose this time, snickering, before his expression softened. “You’re not useless, Helena. Don’t even say that.”

“Is this how geniuses throw shade or something?” She crinkled her nose when he poked. She rolled over. “It’s not just this, AJ, it’s everything. Just so much going on and I don’t know what I’m doing with half of it.”