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Sarah figures it out after the third body. Clever Sarah.
Helena has her rifle strapped on her back, and she is crouched in the tree across the street – Sarah is standing over the body, watching it, going uh uh uh in the pit of her throat in a way that sounds like fear and not like sex. Her hand is over her mouth. Uh uh uh. That man tried to touch her and now he isn’t touching anybody anymore. Usually Sarah runs from the bodies, but this time she isn’t running. Once she runs Helena can climb down from the tree. If Sarah doesn’t run Helena can sit here forever, waiting, dreaming.
Sarah doesn’t run. She keeps her hand over her mouth and she looks around, eyes open-wide-panicked. She looks at the tree. Her hand goes to her belt for Beth’s gun, but she doesn’t have Beth’s gun anymore – it went missing a few days ago, around the time Helena learned Sarah’s name.
(Sarah didn’t tell her.)
(They haven’t talked to each other since Helena touched Sarah, in Maggie’s apartment, since she reached out her hand and curled it over Sarah’s knee. Since she reached out her hand and curled it over Sarah’s hand that was curled over Sarah’s gun.)
Sarah’s hand fumbles in empty space and comes up just as empty. She opens her mouth. She closes her mouth. She says: “Who’s there.” Somewhere, a streetlight flickers. Helena’s feet don’t slip on the bark of the tree.
Sarah’s mouth opens and closes a few more times, like a fish. Helena smiles at it from the tree. “Helena?” Sarah says, and Helena stops smiling, and she slips on the tree. Leaves go tumbling down. Helena sighs, and follows them.
Sarah’s eyes go wide across the street. She looks around. The body keeps on being a body. No one else is around, this time of night – silly of Sarah to go walking here alone, but from what Helena has seen of her she is an idiot. So.
“Hello, Sarah,” she says, and Sarah goes stiff. She’s obviously not going to cross over to Helena; Helena has to do it herself, so she does. The gun is heavy on her back, that’s fine, she’s carried heavier. She walks across the street to Sarah. Fzzt-plp goes the streetlight and sparks scatter.
“How do you know my name,” Sarah says.
“You aren’t being very careful,” Helena says. “There are many dangerous people around, this time of night.” She kicks the body with her boot, in the ribs. It doesn’t make any noise but thump.
“Why are you following me,” Sarah says.
Helena sighs. Disappointing. She loves Sarah, she thinks, maybe, but when Sarah had stabbed her she’d thought that Sarah was – well, not so much of an idiot. Helena loves her (probably) (she thinks), and it’s fine that she’s so stupid – Helena can look after her – but she is very much an idiot.
“You already know,” she says. She tilts her head to the side. “What are you going to do to stop me, dropped cop? Shoot me with your invisible gun?”
“Leave me alone,” Sarah says.
“No.”
They stand there on the sidewalk. The body continues to be a body. The streetlight continues to flicker; it doesn’t go out. Sarah is still beautiful. Helena is still Helena, like she’s always been.
Sarah breaks it: she takes a step back. Helena takes a step forward. They keep walking like this until Sarah turns around, goes faster forwards away from the body. Helena keeps pace – it’s easy, their legs are the same length.
“Why me,” Sarah says.
“Because,” Helena says. “You’re special.”
“No I’m not,” Sarah says tightly.
“Yes you are.”
“Helena—” Sarah says, voice like skin stretched over a drum.
“Yes you are,” Helena says again, already bored. She steps in front of Sarah, so Sarah has to stop walking fast in order to not bang-crash into Helena. Helena reaches out her fingertips and touches Sarah’s hair and every piece of her goes absolutely quiet and still. Sarah’s hair is so soft under the scratching of Helena’s fingerprints. Is Helena breathing? Probably. But then again: maybe she isn’t.
Sarah slaps her hand away, and the world sucks in a huge breath and comes back to life. Helena frowns at it. Helena frowns at Sarah. This is a fun game to play, but it’s going to get boring eventually, and it would be more fun if Sarah would at least pretend to play along. Imagine if: she stayed still, and Helena’s fingertips moved down an entire strand of Sarah’s hair. The imagining is warm and good-smelling in the back of Helena’s brain, like bread she can eat, and she folds it in a cloth and saves it for later. Sarah is still standing staring. Her throat bobs as she swallows. Helena knows four different places she could jab her hand into on that throat, right now, that would keep Sarah from breathing.
“I don’t want you following me,” Sarah says, voice slow and loud. “Do you get that? I don’t want you around. We’re not gonna become friends if you—” (her voice stumbles, shakes) “—shoot—” (then it finds its footing again) “everybody I talk to—”
“He was trying to touch you,” Helena says, and her voice comes out too loud. “He was going to hurt you, and I stopped him from hurting you. Did you want me to not be there? Did you want him to break you in his hands? Is that what you want, Sarah?”
“That’s my bloody choice to make, isn’t it!” Sarah says – no, yells. Her voice is even louder than Helena’s. They’re both yelling here in the street, and Helena would be worried except her gun is on her back and it still has so many bullets in it.
“No,” Helena growls back.
“Stay away from me,” Sarah says. “You think I can’t stab you again? You think I won’t?”
Helena’s hands – fumbling, angry – pull open the zipper on her big green coat and pull open the zipper on her jacket underneath it and pull up her tanktop and bare the scarred skin of her belly to Sarah. “Stab me,” she says. “Go, do it, put in a knife. Right now.”
Sarah doesn’t, obviously, because she doesn’t have a knife. Helena keeps talking, louder and faster: “Hurt me,” she says. “Do it, if you want it, if you can do it, put a knife in me.”
“Stop,” Sarah says. Her eyes have landed on the knot of scar tissue on Helena’s belly. They stay there. Helena could kill her so many different ways right now, Sarah, Helena’s most beautiful and perfect fool. Helena could snap her neck and she wouldn’t even have time to look at Helena and go oh.
Helena pulls the tanktop down. Helena zips up her jacket, and her other jacket, and then she stands there and looks at Sarah. Sarah’s face is white and pale as a fish’s belly. Sarah is so much like a fish, in that she doesn’t have wings. Helena is also like a fish, in that she does.
“Someday,” Helena tells her, “soon, you will be used to it. You will walk through a place that should frighten you and you won’t be frightened and you won’t know why – and then you will know that you aren’t frightened because I am there. Because I will be there, Sarah, and I will be patient, and when you realize you feel safer with me there I will come stand next to you again.” She tilts her head to the side. “You’ll see,” she says. “You will be happy, I think, that I am around.”
She does one more selfish thing: she leans in close, bounces up on to the tips of her toes, and kisses Sarah’s forehead. Mwah. Sarah shudders; her breath is a fast quiet pant, shivering with fear. Helena rocks back down and smiles at her, crooked, before she puts her hands in the pockets of her coat and walks away.
Not far. She ducks down an alleyway and watches Sarah stand there, dazed and terrified; she lifts the gun around her back and puts Sarah in the scope, pins her at the center of the cross. Sarah drags a hand through her hair, Sarah puts a hand over her mouth, Sarah calms herself in ways Helena doesn’t understand. Then she puts her hands in her pockets and walks away again, fast.
Helena twists the gun back around her back, and follows her.