A Fish, A Moving Light

A Devon/Helly, Devon/Helena fic

Look for me another day - I feel that I could change, I feel that I could change. There’s a sudden joy that’s like a fish, a moving light - I thought I saw it.

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Set a few years after S2 canon events, a divorced Devon and reintegrating Helena have a chance encounter that leads to Devon taking Helena in.

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Fifth and final chapter now up

There are a few points in the show where I see this this subtle disconnect between assumptions about family and the reality, and it's really circulating my brain.

Surnames - aside from serving the linguistic joke, Manousos continues to use Carol's full name often said run together like a continuous word. I wonder about that sense of enmeshment in family, the inability to fully shake off the thing that you came from. And then it feels relevant that the translator app (placid, benevolent female voice) can't identify her name all run together. It likely would recognise her first name as a noun without the surname attached - she can't be understood in the context of her family?

I also wonder a lot about Carol and Helen being married but not changing their names. Maybe they felt they couldn't? That it would be too exposing? Maybe they (Carol?) didn't want the enmeshment of it?

Rejection of mothers (and family) - Manousos' notable reveal that his Hive-selected chaperone is his mother but that he clearly hates her. That seems like an unusual mistake for the all-knowing Hive to make. Surely they would know at least a little how Manousos feels about her? Does that not matter to them as much as the idea that he came from her?

See also, Carol never forgiving her mother for taking her to Camp Freedom Falls. Zosia expresses sympathy to Carol but she doesn't condemn it. Then later, she is the one to draw upon a memory of Carol with cousins and offers a visit from her cousin which Carol isn't interested in. Zosia would know how long since they'd seen each other. Again, it's another assumption that connection with biological family would be desirable - but it's not.

Betrayal of biology - it's Carol's frozen eggs, presumably the intention she and Helen once had of their own future motherhood, that betrays her. The Hive is obviously aware that it is not okay to be doing that, but I wonder if they are uncomfortable revealing it simply because they know Carol expressly doesn't want to join and if they miss the added layer of pain for Carol having taken this route. (They were from 2011, why have they not been used? Carol and Helen would have been continuing to pay for them to remain in frozen storage every year.) Zosia reacts with discomfort around the secrecy of this mission but not with the magnitude of understanding what these eggs once were for Carol and Helen.