Painting at therapy, internet withdrawal symptoms and the usual.

Today is Friday and I should be doing homework. That's how you know I'll never change. This week was long and hard; it was the first week of being sixteen, I guess, but not really. That's odd to me; I mentioned my age in a conversation and I had to think about saying 'I'm sixteen'. Because I am and it's weird.

I painted at therapy. That was fun: I painted things irrelevant to each other and irrelevant to how I was feeling so I felt maybe I was wasting her time because it meant I then had nothing back to report about what I think they mean. I mean, she's the psychiatrist, not me; I don't know what pictures mean, yo. But it was productive, as always; I somehow always have shit to talk about and that's weird. It surprises me but I'm always relieved.

Why this week was good:

- I painted at therapy.

- I got predicted an A* in English, German and French. Only one B in Maths but Maths is one of my better subjects so I can definitely get that up to an A.

- I found the third Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants in the library after months of wanting it.

- I wrote some more.

I'm sure there was more, but that's what I can think about. I suppose it's good that Brittana is happening in Glee (Brittany/Santana). And there's the Tangled fanfiction titled What You Don't Know which is astronomically good; Airplane (the author) portrays sexy scenes in a believable and mature way that makes them seem meaningful too. Maybe I'm biased because I find Flynn Rider mindblowingly awesome in every single way, but still. He writes a good Flynn. Plus it's updated every three days or so, so: AWESOME.

One week til Tangled! Cannot fucking wait. Eurrghhh this film will be my life. I just want it out of my system really, but even if it's bad, I know I'll find it adorable.

I've got about eight pages of story to post now, so that'll be it about my shite life for now:

Benjamin smirked as she closed the door behind her, “What a lovely, radiant glow you are wearing. May I inquire as to what—”

“Stop it,” she warned, but her face still couldn’t refrain from splitting into a grin. “Don’t. It’s nothing and absolutely none of your business.”

“You’re in my room,” he defended. “I’m your friend and you want to tell me.”

Helena disregarded his comment and climbed into her hammock, the one that he set up for her personally; he could have used that too as an excuse but as she curled up with the cushion that he’d given up to give to her and with the blanket that even though was Benjamin’s now smelled ever so slightly of Vincent, she realised she did. She did want to tell him. She had no-one else but them right now and it’s not like she could tell the Captain about how she was feeling and what a kiss as chaste as that did to her. So she spoke up.

“He kissed me.”

“I knew he would,” Benjamin replied. “Do you have any idea how much trouble I’m in because of you? He was fuming. And I’ve never seen him that angry before; he’s always had a devil-may-care attitude about everything but when you took too long to get back...” He shook his head. “You should have seen him; I was questioning all the locals and he would bark at them if they hadn’t seen you. And then he gets annoyed with me for being nice to you; because apparently I am a “bad influence” and he doesn’t want you “tainted”. The amount of times I had to explain I’m not interested in you like that and that I just offered the room out of courtesy.”

“He wanted to know if I had feelings for you. I said no.”

“I mean, you’re a pretty girl, but I—”

“I know,” she said matter-of-factly. “I’ve seen you with Jim. I take no offence.”

“I see,” Benjamin said curtly. “I would have told you, but it’s a secret. Vincent doesn’t know and he’s my best friend and I would like it to stay that way.”

“Why?”

“Because Jim has a fiancée waiting for him and he thinks that the only reason he’s attracted to me is because he hasn’t seen a woman in a while and so his body is acting up. He’s very innocent like that. In short, nothing will come out of it and it’s just unnecessary for him to know.”

Helena turned and sat up; Benjamin had a sad smile on his face as he lay with his arms folded against his chest. Her heart tightened.

“I could be your other best friend if you like,” said Helena. “And then you could tell me about it and maybe that’ll make you feel better, because it’s not going to do any good for you to keep it all bottled up. I’ll tell you about the Captain in return and then we’ll be even.”

She watched as his eyes closed but his smile remained; she meant what she said. She may have found him annoying if a bit disturbing at first, but he mattered now. Benjamin mattered and so did the Captain and there was no going back, not for now anyway. And they could have kicked her off the boat or thrown her overboard but they took her in; so now she wanted to help in any way that she could. Besides, she’d been giving people comfort for a significant part of her life; granted she doubted Benjamin would require the kind of comfort she usually gave, but she knew she could prove to be an adequate shoulder to cry on.

“A word of advice about the Captain,” he said. “Call him ‘Vincent’. He’ll be very pleased and it’ll cheer me up to see his reaction.”

*

Even though they predicted a storm because of the lingering clouds, when Helena mustered up the energy to get up, the day was bright outside and the sky was clear. She slipped into the trousers and one of the shirts that she borrowed from Jim, because he was rather small as well as the youngest member of the crew, and stepped out onto the deck. Noticing the sun beaming down intently, she rolled up her sleeves before making her way to the quarter deck, where the Captain was reading a map.

“Good morning,” she said and he looked up. Immediately, she regretted not kissing him; he looked so handsome with his hair mussed up and sticking out, his shirt more unbuttoned than usual with, like her, the sleeves rolled up, revealing his strong forearms.

“Good morning,” answered the Captain. “Did you sleep well?”

“Yes,” she said timidly. She used to stay in an inn whenever she could, but that only depended if the customer wanted to go somewhere more private or if business was that bad that night that she had to just go to sleep without making any money; sometimes they wanted to in case they were seen with her and thus the news would eventually get back to their wives. Some of them evidently did not care less; these were the ones who married for money and both parties were financially dependent on each other. Sometimes they were just nice and felt sorry for her: the poor, helpless little rich girl who lost her way. Even so, there were nights when she had to curl up against the door of a shop and fall asleep; but they were few and far between. “I did.”

“Excellent,” he said idly, having apparently lost interest, and turned his attention back towards the map. Helena would be lying if she wasn’t feeling a bit bitter about the fact that she wasn’t the centre of his attention; after she had seen the look in his eyes, the one that begged for her kiss. But at the same time she felt guilty; maybe he thought that she had rejected him entirely, maybe she hadn’t been clear. So she leaned in and rested her head in her hands; to her dismay, he stood up straighter as she did so.

“What are you doing?” she asked casually, but hurt. Maybe this is how he felt.

“I’m trying to decide where we should go next; maybe the South of France? I’m not sure.”

“That sounds nice,” she mused, imagining a sun hotter than this, lying on the beach and swimming in the sea. And it was still France: so there would be the smell of freshly baked bread and old buildings. It was hard to imagine anywhere else that she’d like to go to.

“And then maybe we’ll course through to America; but we’ll have to stock up on supplies first. Just in case. I don’t want to run out of food or anything, not with you on board.” She wondered if they had ever run out of food before.

And America! The New World! Helena’s breath caught in her throat; never did she imagine she was going to visit America, never in her wildest dreams. She couldn’t even begin to conjure up an image in her mind of what it could look like, of what she’d be able to do. “America sounds nice too.”

He raised his head and with it a single eyebrow; when he gauged her expression, he shook his head, “Definitely not America. It’s too big and I’d lose you far too easily.”

Torn between being flattered and annoyed, she glowered at him but blushed at the same time. At this, he dropped the serious persona and bit his lip to stop from laughing, “I’m only joking, Helena; but in all honesty, we’ll only go to America if you swear you’ll be careful.”

“You said that I wasn’t allowed to leave your sight?”

“Of course you aren’t; but that won’t guarantee your complete safety. I need you to promise you’ll try.”

Now she was just annoyed; as if she deliberately got kidnapped by two imbeciles. She remembered Benjamin’s words: Call him ‘Vincent’. “Honestly Vincent,” she said with false nonchalance, “it’s not like I got kidnapped on purpose.”

She was afraid that he’d miss it from how easy it felt for her to say it; it slipped so effortlessly off the tip of her tongue. But after she’d said it, she saw his eyes widen and his head snapped down back to the map. It was a shame that she did so when Benjamin wasn’t there, but she made sure to recall this to him later to see if it got rid of that forlorn smile she had witnessed the night before.

“But I promise I’ll be good,” she said, tilting her head to look at his face. “So, how long would it take to get to the South of France?”

“Weeks, maybe a month,” he said, calculating it. “But I don’t even know what we could do there. I miss the old days where Benjamin and I would steal treasure and whatnot. But now, there’s nothing else to steal; nothing really I want.”

“You’re just the typical little rich boy aren’t you?” she sneered.

His head cocked up then, “I beg your pardon?”

“You’re so used to getting new toys you get bored of everything so easily,” she commented, enjoying teasing him in this way. “I bet your parents even bought you this ship.”

“Well they didn’t buy it for me; my father was in the Royal Navy and sleeps like the dead. And, surprisingly, doesn’t guard his possessions properly; I took a lot of than just one of his ships.”

“I doubt he was very pleased about that.”

“Well, he never was that fond of me anyway so there was no loss there.”

“Well, stealing his ship probably wasn’t the best way to go about repairing your relationship.”

“I suppose,” he agreed, going back to eyeing the map. There was a twitch of annoyance inside Helena; like someone plucked a string inside her that made her jump. “But after a while you realise there’s no point wasting your time trying to appease someone when they’re hated you for most of your life.”

“What about your mother?” Keeping him talking seemed to be distracting enough because he couldn’t focus on the map and on the conversation, so she carefully walked around the table to his side. She now stood adjacent to him, the familiar flutter of anxiety in her stomach at being near him as present as ever; it was an odd mix of excitement and fear that kept her there, only adjacent to him. Close enough for her to stay calm. “Did she always hate you?”

“No; I think I just disappointed her. The last time I heard she had left my father for one his sailors and they retired in a house in the Caribbean. She’s written letters telling me to visit but I think it’s only done out of courtesy. She is my mother after all.”

He continued and taking a deep breath, Helena stepped cautiously towards him, “Benjamin writes to his sister and I get my news from there; but he can only write when we stop at a place for a long enough time, which we rarely do.” He sighed sadly. “Sometimes I wonder if I dragged him into this mess; he’s lost a lot by staying with me. His family, with the exception of Eleanor, severed relations with him because associates with me. He had whole his future laid out in front of him and I messed it all up.”

Helena thought of Benjamin with the sad smile he wore when talking about Jim and the time when he told her that he ‘didn’t understand it’; how even with his reassuring smile there was a undeniable bitterness to his voice, one that could almost be interpreted as jealousy. She saw the Captain with an endearing, concerned look on his face and it just made sense. “I think there’s more to it than that.” Yes, she could see it now: both of them young and foolish, Benjamin vowing secretly to never leave the Captain for as long as he could; just as Helena was pretty much doing at that moment.

“How so?” he asked, still not noticing her increasing proximity. Helena saw something peculiar in his eyes at that moment; she saw the Captain as a young boy, desperately trying to impress his father and she saw the transformation a slightly older Captain, but young nevertheless, sneaking around a dark house and grabbing what he could. There stood the resentful, older Captain in front of her but in those eyes was a worried, anxious young boy who wanted to be supported, shown kindness and told that he hadn’t made a vastly wrong decision. She saw in the charming, handsome man a doubting boy; one that blamed himself for things that weren’t his fault. Scared that sudden movements might scare him, she moved closer to him with a slow, graceful pace until she was on the same side of the table as he was.

Folding her arms and leaning into them, she looked up at the Captain, “Because Benjamin’s old enough to make his own decisions and if he didn’t want to stay here he could have easily left by now.”

The Captain’s eyes showed he wanted to believe her but though the doubt in his eyes wavered, it remained.

Determinedly, she pressed on, “Me as well.” She had to stop briefly when she saw his eyes cloud over. “I could have easily have just left, but I want to be here. With you. I trust you.” She made a point of not clarifying that by ‘you’, she meant Benjamin as well.

His smile was small but roguish. “I never would have let you leave.”

Helena shuddered; there was the Captain she knew. Her hope was restored; it would all be so easy from here. It took too little difficulty to imagine how it would feel to have his hand in her hair, his smile on her mouth, his nose brushing against hers; she closed her eyes as she saw his hand rise, waiting for a kiss that wouldn’t come. Opening her eyes, she saw that hand of his on the godforsaken map, as if he hadn’t analysed it enough. She didn’t let herself be too upset because it was her fault, really; she was the one who told him to give her space. Still, she didn’t realise until now that whatever amount of space there was between them, it would be too much.

“What does that say?” she said with forced enthusiasm, pointing to a random part of the map.

“That’s Italy,” he answered.

“And here?”

“That’s France, where we are.” His voice was growing more curious.

“And here?”

Seeming suspicious, he said, “...That’s England.”

Helena looked at the two countries, wondering how much distance there was between them. It didn’t seem like a lot, compared to that of other countries; it was certainly one of the closest to England. She measured the distance with her thumb and index finger and held it so that it hovered over the picture ever so slightly; she thought about how the space, as small as it was, made it seem like she hadn’t come that far after all. In reality, she felt farther from home than home; more than that, she actually felt like she was in a place that could qualify as ‘home’.

“Helena.” She turned around, breathless and expectant.

“Are you illiterate?” His eyes showed confusion and concern.

Flushing, she replied, “Well, sort of, yeah.”

“‘Sort of’?”

“Well, I can write my name and some other words but I didn’t really learn much at the orphanage. And eventually they gave up trying to teach me. I wasn’t always the most behaved of students see and—”

His hand firmly gripped her shoulder and his brow furrowed deeper. For a moment, she was certain he was going to kiss her, but that thought was erased when he began to guide her away from the foredeck and back to Benjamin’s cabin. He rapped on the door and Benjamin appeared misty-eyed and shirtless; Helena was completely unmoved by it and was oblivious to the Captain’s glare towards him as he barked out, “Our Helena can’t read.”

Benjamin yawned, “And you want me to teach her?”

“Yes.”

“Why? What makes you incapable?”

“I’m busy. And I’m not as intelligent as you, and you know that.”

“Flattery isn’t going to convince me, Vincent.”

“Please.”

Benjamin rolled his eyes, “Fine. But you’re lucky I fancy our Helena here because otherwise—”

“That’s not even remotely funny,” said the Captain and he let go of her; her shoulder missed his touch but mostly she was secretly pleased that they kept calling her ‘our Helena’; it made her feel like she belonged and let her know that they cared about her. “And clothe yourself, Stevenson for goodness’ sake.”

It was almost as if she wasn’t there; this was the famous Hawkins-Stevenson banter and it had no room for third parties. Benjamin pulled her close to him, his bare chest warm as it was pressed against her. He smirked defiantly at the Captain who scowled, made a disgruntled noise and flounced away unwillingly.

“Ah he’s so adorable, is he not?” Benjamin sighed, sounding like a parent whose child was devious and hard to deal with, but they loved them to bits all the same.

“Am I allowed a say in my education?” Helena asked wearily, rubbing the shoulder that the Captain had grabbed with such force.

“Not really,” replied Benjamin. “I had decided to teach you already when he first came to me because as book-lover that is simply atrocious. I just wanted to toy with him a little.”

“Mature. Now he’s going to think there’s something between us.”

“Maybe there is.” He smiled suggestively at her, playing with a loose strand of her hair. She rolled her eyes.

“You forget that I’ve seen you with Jim.” His hand stopped and moved to pat her on the head as he chuckled.

“Ah yes,” he said, walking away to pull a shirt out of his wardrobe. “Now, I’m going to get dressed so I don’t distract you and you can go over there and pick a book for us to start with.”