there we sat in the snow.
Where: Joe West. Later outside!
When: After this thread.
Who: Milo, Helga, and two mugs of hot cocoa! With marshmallows!
What: Helga doesn't want to talk to Milo. Clearly, this means he should try to talk to her anyways.
Warnings: ...Depressing. ;;
( all that time, she was silent still. )
When: After this thread.
Who: Milo, Helga, and two mugs of hot cocoa! With marshmallows!
What: Helga doesn't want to talk to Milo. Clearly, this means he should try to talk to her anyways.
Warnings: ...Depressing. ;;
( all that time, she was silent still. )
"Helga!"
Quick, Thatch, quick--hurriedly, he ducked down and picked up the two mugs of hot cocoa. With a small smile, he offered one to her.
"I, uh, I brought you some hot cocoa," he said. "I made some for the students, and I don't know if you saw it on the comm, so..."
Milo trailed off.
He swallowed a lump in his throat, grinning the whole way. Was it already this awkward?
Reply
But she didn't hand him the cup back or close the door. Getting rid of him wouldn't be that easy, and she knew it. Instead, she took another sip of the cocoa.
What did he want? To agitate her? To try and talk her out of her class? To...
Hell if she knew. So, instead, she just looked at him.
"Can I help you with something?"
Reply
She'd only complained about the cocoa, not his presence. Then again, she was always making little jabs at him, wasn't she? Taking that as a sign that he was welcome, Milo stepped inside the room, tentatively sipping from his own mug.
"Not really," he lied. "Just a visit."
Reply
"Somehow I doubt that."
Reply
Well. He was never an excellent liar, after all.
"What? Can't I visit?" Milo retorted, closing the door behind him. "I wouldn't want to be all alone on a day as miserable as today."
...Unless he was caught up in a book or some new research. Which was, admittedly, often...
Reply
She raised an eyebrow again and tilted her head as she watched him. "Especially after I have been ignoring you."
Reply
"Well. You got me, Helga."
He turned from the cup to his friend. If she even thought of him as a friend, really.
"...I...I know I brought up some. Uncomfortable things." Thatch cringed at his own understatement, but how else was he supposed to word it? "R-really uncomfortable. Erm...and I thought you could use some cheering up."
Reply
She smirked at the word. However, she had no better way to put it. Not without going into details Thatch would never hear.
"I was trained better than to need to be coddled," she said. However, there was relatively little bite to the words, and Helga sipped the drink again. She thought for a moment before saying, "Everyone has their shortcomings."
Another smirk.
"I've just never been fond of facing up to mine."
Reply
Had it always been this way? Wow, women were tough to figure out.
...Wow, HELGA was tough to figure out.
Deciding to take a shot in the dark, Milo asked what he assumed would be a pretty general question. Not too much harm in it.
"Like what?"
Not too much. M-maybe.
Reply
"Like that, well trained as I was, I forgot most of my lessons.
I acted on sentiment against someone acting with a clear head. I rushed when I should have waited, attacked when I should have drawn my opponent in, fought up when I should have forced him down. I fought unarmed despite being armed."
She stared out the window, the scene replaying in her mind. She could understand every flaw, see every wrong move. She'd thought of a hundred different ways she could have fought that battle. Hell, she'd even gotten to try a few.
Helga frowned and took another, longer drink of her cocoa.
Reply
As she explained he looked on and wondered whether the scars were bad; whether they were healing and chipping away or if those not quite old wounds were still as sore as ever.
And he wondered if her back was doing all right, too.
"...do you remember my grandfather, Helga? There was something he told me a long time ago that--well, that'd probably do you some good right now."
Milo's hands wrapped more tightly around the cooling mug. "I don't think I can give you his exact words, it's been quite a while, but he basically told me that we all have times when we--when we screw up or forget things or anything like that. And having those little flaws isn't always a bad thing--it makes you who you are, that you were too stubborn to let up or too upset to act in the right way."
He paused. Was this even making any sense? Thaddeus Thatch could've said this so much better.
"Sometimes it'll lead you to something you didn't know you'd find. And...and that's what makes proletariat special, he said: even with all our shortcomings, we can still make the most out of what we've got. Or what we've been given, because that's who we are.
So we should embrace our faults."
Reply
"Your grandfather was a sentimental old fool." Dismissive, cool. But then... just a moment after, she spoke again, and her tone changed. Her shoulders slumped, but in a kind of relaxation rather than resignation. "He was also one of the only men who, when introduced to me, looked me in the eye, shook my hand, and said he was glad to have me along." She smirked, never turning around yet.
"He never asked me to prove myself, never looked at me like I was a child. I was vouched for, and that was good enough for him."
She set her mug down on the window sill and glanced at the glass, looking at the reflection of the linguist in it. He looked like his grandfather sometimes, sounded like him too. The same sentimental fawning, the same appealing to a "higher cause." Neither of them understood the love of money, not as a base. Not the way she did. But, then, she didn't understand the love of others, that selflessness.
"I think--" he "--that fight hurt my pride more than anything else. I was trained to kill, but I was beaten without making--" Rourke "--my opponent even break a sweat."
At least, she could tell herself that. She wanted to believe that was all it was. A wounded pride and a battered body. There was nothing else in her to hurt.
Reply
pulled his soul back to earth. It was like he was still here sometimes, ready to round the corner and talk and laugh like he'd never left.
Milo polished off his hot cocoa the moment the faint clatter signaled Helga had set hers down.
Traces of that smile remained, though her next words began to slowly dissolve them. Did he ever sympathize with wounded pride. Thatch grasped for something, anything to say once more...
"You've picked up and kept on going, though. Even if--he got the better of you that time, that doesn't mean it'll always happen, right?"
"And then...things were a little--a little different then," Milo amended quietly.
Reply
She... looked tired. There was no better way to put it. She could rarely stand to sit, to rest, and it took its toll on her at times and in ways. But she did her best to shrug it off. Now wasn't the time to indulge whatever sentiment was trying to weigh her down, trying to make her look at old wounds she wanted to let turn to scars, not keep fresh. They ached enough on their own without further agitating them.
"They were different."
It didn't matter, and she knew it didn't. What Thatch knew and what he didn't... It changed nothing. Still.
"I've beaten him before, but that's just under sparring conditions. When it really came down to it-- my tactics against his, my skills against his." She turned back toward the window, and every muscle tensed.
"I wasn't even a challenge."
Reply
Leave a comment