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When she was younger, maybe four years old, Kelly fell off a seesaw. She didn't cry. She just walked all the way from a park, not shedding a tear. She came home, took a stool from the kitchen to help herself reach a cupboard in the bathroom, where she knew her mom kept first aid kid.
When her parents came home, frightened by losing their daughter at the park, they found Kelly watching Loony Tunes. Her knee was two times its size by how many bandages she used on it. Her mom cried with relief and she had just patted her on the head, tired yet a little proud smile on his face.
"Aren't you a little fixer upper?" He said.
Back then she didn't know what that meant, but in the years that came, she had to admit that he may have been a bit right about her.
She patched her clothes instead of just throwing them away and buying new ones. She knew how to fix most of her home electronics. She enjoyed buying old furniture and making it look new again just for the joy of it. She was good at fixing things.
She fixed her parents' marriage. She patched her relationship with Harry so many times. She put her stupid (now ex) boyfriend together so many times and somehow, she ended up doing the same now.
"You need to get out of the house." Kelly says, sitting on the furthest corner of Harry's bed as he occupies the other, half-filled can of beans she brought him sitting in his lap. He doesn't react. Off course.
"I'm serious. Allie already took your food. You shouldn't provoke her too much."
To be fair Allie cut off his food only after more than a week of Harry skipping the work. And only because she thought it would help make him come back. It didn't. He just spent three days not eating and it didn't seem to bother him at all.
"What can she do? Kill me?" The way he says it makes her blood run cold. The right answer is "yes she can." but Kelly doesn't want to start that conversation.
Why the hell is she here? Why is she trying? It's none of her business, they broke up months ago and it's no longer her responsibility to keep him intact.
It never was, inner Kelly reminds her, you only chose to do it.
"Just eat it." Kelly says, ignoring his earlier statement.
"It's your food."
"I'm filled."
"I don't need your pity."
"But you clearly want it – just shut up and eat it."
Harry stares at her furiously and she kind of wants to smack him across the face with a lamp. But then he actually starts eating, slowly, taking his time on every mouthful, looking like he might throw it all up if she made a wrong move. That's in fact how he looks generally these days. Pale, shabby, his whole face swollen, making him look so incredibly tired though he was in his bed for days. Through the years when they have been together and before when they were friends, Kelly had seen him on his bad days. But those were never this bad.
…
"And you want me to do something about it?"
Allie looks most skeptical, leaning back in the sofa in the living room she was using as her office. Her unbrushed blond hair is tied in a messy bun, but everything else about her looks professional enough, an image she most be working hard to keep.
"I'm sorry to bother you with it, but he will starve before he leaves that house." Kelly answers determinately.
"Not like it's any of my business." Allie scowls. "If he can't get his shit together, that's on him." And it's not like he would care if the roles were reversed.
"Nobody else got excused from the rules and neither will he."
Allie is good at keeping the appearance of stoic composed leader, making everyone think she is just above everyone's problems. As if none of it bothers her. They may never have been friends, but Kelly still can see right through her. It is all just a mask and the real Allison Spellman is a way too invested in anything and everything that is happening to the people in New Ham. One day the mask would break, and Kelly is almost certain that she would again end up being the one who tried to put Allie back together.
…
"I already ate." Harry mumbles when Kelly comes in his room the next day, another can in her hands (This time they had peas! Yay!).
"Bullshit." She scoffs.
"I'm serious. The nerd that's always with Allie-"
"Will?"
"No, the small one."
"Gordie?"
"Yeah. Well, he brought me something earlier. Said that he will give it to me if I get back to work soon."
…
Kelly knew Harry and Gordie talked. Well sometimes. Not too much. The nerd was one of few people who tolerated Harry's presence, being a bit of outsider himself. He may have lived with Allie and her friends, but ever since Cassandra died, he has been distancing himself from them. Everyone must have felt it, but nobody commented on it.
Even at high school (that felt like years ago) neither of two won too many popularity points.
In Gordie's case, it was for obvious reasons. Kelly didn't pay much attention to him, but even she knew him as "that creepy kid who stalks Cassandra". Back then, she wouldn't disagree with the statement. Gordie indeed came off as really weird.
In Harry's case, it was more complicated. People seemed to like him and to an outsider, he may have even seemed as being popular. However, most of those people only hung out around Harry for his parents' money. And he must have known it too.
And then Cassandra died, and Harry ended up being the second most hated person in the whole town, placing right after Campbell. Kelly then noticed a funny pattern of all his past friends abandoning him. Only she stayed, again. And somehow Gordie came along.
A little while after the whole Dewey affair. Her and Gordie were trying to self-learn how to control most of hospital tech, in case they needed it sometime in the future. They never really talked other than discussing strictly professional medical stuff. But that day Gordie chose to interrupt their silence, asking if Harry was alright. And that seemed so incredibly out of character for him, it left Kelly speechless for a bit. She stuttered some vague and unhelpful answer. And that's how it started.
Instead of Allie's house, Kelly witnessed Gordie hanging out anywhere else. Mostly at the hospital, at the library, at the city hall or in the church. In lots of those times, Harry was there too.
It wasn't like they were friends or something that scandalous. They probably just didn't want to be alone.
…
"You gave Harry your food?"
Kelly and Gordie once again occupy one of the stuff rooms in the hospital, the floor filled with books to study. They used to do this regularly when their effort to learn medicine started, but these days, they only meet sporadically, mostly by an accident.
Gordie looks up at her from behind yet another medicine book. He is on the floor, books in a mess of piles all around him. Kelly sits on one of the armchairs.
"Eh… not really. I mean I gave him food but not my food."
Kelly put aside ‘The Advanced Anatomy'.
"What do you mean not your food."
"I mean…"
Gordie had two stages. He either talked so quickly that he slurred his words and almost nobody understood him. Or he took ridiculously long pauses after literally every word. Lately, he seemed to prefer the other. "…I gave him food because Allie told me to."
"Allie told you to give him food?"
"She said she can't do it herself, because that would undermine her authority. So, she let me do it like… behind her back."
"Wow, that's, awfully kind of her."
"Yea… but not like it actually fixes anything right?" Gordie shifts, pushing his palms against his eyes for few seconds before looking at her again. Another of his weird tics.
"What do you mean?" Kelly asks.
"I've - I've been thinking about it lately." Gordie rummages through the mess of books around him "I read this - this book, about mental health and stuff..."
Kelly knows too well where this is going.
Gordie finds what he was looking for, making a pile of books fall with a loud thud as he pulls the book out from under them.
It was the Diagnostic manual, of course, it had to be the bloody Diagnostic manual.
"Did Harry have a… history of… you- you know?"
Kelly sighs.
"From his mom's side of the family. Gordie, I know all this, I looked over it so many times before."
He only stares at her for a few moments.
"You did?"
"Of course I did, we dated for two years, Gordie. I'm not blind."
"Oh." He looks so crestfallen Kelly almost feels bad for him. She rolls her eyes and explains.
"His mom has clinical depression. She has been institutionalized more times than I can count in those years I have known Harry. But Harry was not. Like I KNEW there was something wrong with him, but he always refused to get help, because ‘he could do it'."
This has been driving Kelly insane. They have dated for two years, have been friends for even longer (she must have been his only friend for so long). And yet Harry never told her anything. She had to deduce, and snoop and on rare occasions, interview him when he was drunk or stoned (that was a bit too often). She never knew if it was some defense mechanism if he meant for it to be chivalrous or if his internalized macho-site couldn't allow him to look weak. Whatever his reasons were, the fact that he refused to tell her what was wrong, made everything even harder for Kelly. It was always the same process: he held and held and then one day he broke down and wouldn't get out of the bed for days. And Kelly was left to pick up the pieces.
"We can't help him, because he doesn't want to be helped. We can only keep him alive until he gets his shit together. He always does, eventually."
She knows it's a bad decision, selfish decision. But every time she tried to help him in the past, she ended up being the one who got hurt. And she was so tired of it
This time they aren't together. They aren't even friends. She owes him nothing.
Gordie doesn't seem so happy with that but doesn't try to change her mind.
He probably couldn't even if he tried.
…
Allie is be getting a bit annoyed by how often Kelly comes to talk to her. It's visible. With a way she taps pen against her knee, she looks tired. Everyone looks that way lately. Kelly feels like she must be the only person in this whole town who sleeps decent hours and washes their hair (she can't say much about brushing).
"You sent Harry food."
"Yeah. So?" Kelly is taken aback a bit. She already had a strategy prepared because she expected Allie to lie.
"Why?" Kelly asks. Allie chuckles. It sounds a little desperate.
"You asked me to Kelly, remember? I talked to Gordie and he offered to do it."
"He offered to do it?"
"Well, he is already eating away from the house so it couldn't hurt him to take food to Harry too. And I couldn't very well do it myself. Lexie would have a field trip if I did."
…
Kelly is doesn't visit Harry. She thinks, that her presence would do more harm than good. Harry's obsession with her can't be healthy. And honestly, she doesn't want to see him anyway.
She is getting enough information from Gordie anyway. He says that Harry is getting better. It has only been a week since they (Allie included) started giving him food in secret and he is getting gradually better. Kelly is suspicious that Gordie is sugarcoating it, like a lot.
She gets a chance to see for herself, when she gets a call from Allie, asking her to take Gordie's place for a day since he couldn't make it.
Gordie wasn't sugarcoating it. Harry is much better. Way too much.
Room is still a mess, but it doesn't smell as bad as it used to. Harry is on his bed as always, but he's not sleeping or just staring in the space. He's reading (which is something Kelly haven't seen him do in probably years). His hair is still a mess, his face covered by bristle, but he looks like me may have even taken a shower.
When she comes in, he actually notices her presence, instantly switching to that "Oh look my ex-girlfriend who broke up with me for totally legit reasons and under no circumstances wants to get back together is here! Let's annoy her with my so-called charm until she takes me back." mode. Kelly hates when he does that.
"What do you think of my-"
"What did you take?" Kelly asks, dropping a vacuum bottle of soup on a table, looking Harry over with cold eyes.
She knew this way too well. Harry was one hypocritical bastard. He wouldn't go to the doctor or buy legal drugs he needs, but then he would get himself some illegal stimulants and act like he was oh-so-alright.
"I don't know what you-"
"Cut the crap, Harry. I know you too well to fall for it. What. Did. You. Take.?"
He just looks at her. Not in shock, or anger. He just looks at her. And she has had enough.
"Fuck you."
Kelly is about to storm out, just reaching for the door handle when Harry finally speaks.
"Is this really what you say to that?"
"What?" she turns around.
"Fuck you? That's what you say when I'm finally getting better? No good job or I'm happy for you, or any bullshit people say in a situation like this? But fuck you? Kelly, you just can't handle that people can live without you."
"What?" Kelly repeats because she is simply dumbfounded.
"You heard me. You play Miss Nice girl, always here to help everyone all the time, but you don't really care. You only want people to be dependent on you." Harry's voice steadily rises.
Kelly doesn't say anything. She opens a mouth to do so, but no words come out.
"You are just scared people will leave you, that you make them need you. Like your parents. You couldn't deal with one of them leaving, so you put them back together. Maybe they would be happier without you, but you didn't CARE! You pretend to do everything for everyone, but in the end, you're the one who matters."
"I helped you." Kelly chokes out. It's weak and it's pathetic, but she isn't capable of anything more.
"You helped yourself." Harry says. He isn't screaming anymore. Now his voice is low and filled with poison. Kelly might have preferred it when he was screaming.
"I was like your sad little experiment. You could have had anyone you wanted, but you picked me. You let everyone believe that you are this kind selfless angel who throws her life away with me, the crazy rich asshole nobody likes. You used me to make yourself feel better."
"I never- "
"And you never told them that you needed me as much as I needed you."
…
Kelly sits on a park bench.
Ironically, it's the same stupid park where she fell off the seesaw as a child. She looks at those two pieces of wood, broken by some drunk teens, who messed with it a long time ago (she might have been one of them).
It's warm, beautiful day. Far too beautiful for the mood she is in.
She just sits there, sniffling and blinking furiously to make the tears go away (doesn't work).
The worst thing about it all? Her brain can't stop going over Harry's words and finding bits of truth in them.
Her spiraling gets interrupted by something small and soft falling into her lap. It's a pack of tissues. Hello Kitty themed ones.
Kelly looks up to see Elle Tomkins, standing by the bench.
"You looked like you needed them." Elle speaks, her voice gentle and quiet, as she sits down next to Kelly.
"Thanks."
Kelly takes out one of the tissues and blows her nose loudly. The tissue is lavender scented, Kelly never liked scented tissues. But she is certainly not going to tell that to Elle. Instead, she just smiles at the other blonde. Elle reciprocates.
Kelly doesn't think she ever talked to Elle before. She was just so unreachable. A star ballet from a renowned family, always out there, traveling the world and winning an insane amount of medals. Not to mention so incredibly gorgeous.
Elle generally gave out a vibe of someone who was just on whole another level, better than the most.
But not now. She just seemed lonely. Lonely and sad.
"Are you alright?" Kelly breaks the silence.
Elle chuckles nervously "I should be the one asking this. You're the one who was crying."
"But I'm also the one who is asking." Kelly notes.
Only silence follows. Elle is twiddling her fingers, looking downwards as she does.
"I… I'm… I'm really alright… nothing…" Elle murmurs, movements of her fingers intensifying.
"It's Campbell, isn't it?" Kelly tries. Hearing the name, Elle freezes. Kelly knows she guessed right.
Elle's breaths get quick and erratic, her eyes wide, she's terrified.
"We're alright Kelly. Me and Campbell, we're fine. It's none of your business really." Elle gets up abruptly, her voice too high and loud. It feels so fake it's almost funny (if it wasn't so goddamn tragic). Like one of those very shitty plays Kelly, Cassandra and Harry did in the middle school.
"Leave us alone." Elle shouts. She jumps to her feet and walks away. Judged by the way her shoulders hunch Elle she is trying to hold herself together and not look back.
Kelly looks at the soft violet pack of tissues, still sitting in her lap.
…
The next day, Kelly sleeps late. She just lies on her bed and stares at her phone as it rings. Kelly is pretty sure it's Allie or someone else, urgently needing something from her.
Well, they can all go to hell. She doesn't want to annoy anyone by her selfish need to help people.
(Yes, she is just mostly just salty about whatever bullshit Harry told her. Better be salty than sad. Sad means that he pushed the right buttons. Sad means that he might have been right.)
Anyway, Kelly is done helping people.
At least for today.
Tomorrow she is starting "Mission 1: saving Elle", which is closely affiliated with "Mission 2: the complete destruction of Campbell (preferably by an aluminum baseball bat, in the balls)".
But that's tomorrow, today is her day off. She doesn't even have the kitchen duty for once.
She sleeps, read for a while and sleeps again. She doesn't even go to the cafeteria, not willing to take a risk of meeting someone. But that is alright. Lack of food never killed anyone (Harry could talk).
It's calm, nice, normal day.
Until she is woken up by urgent shouting and banging. Kelly sits up instantly. Half asleep she walks to the door just to realize that banging is not coming from there, but from the window. Her first-floor window.
"Let me in Kelly! I know you're there!" shouts the last person she wants to hear. Kelly seriously considers ignoring him, he can sit on a roof and scream so long that he loses his voice for all she cares. But the insistence in his voice makes her hesitate. He doesn't sound like an annoying ex-boyfriend who just won't leave her alone, he sounds genuinely scared and worried.
So, she tears apart the drapes and opens the window agape.
Without a word of greeting, not waiting for an invitation, Harry climbs inside.
"What were you doing out there?" Kelly asks even though it's not the thing bothering her the most.
"I didn't want to wake your housemates."
"Your screaming woke up the whole street, so-"
"Do you know where the nerd is?"
That was not a question she expected. Kelly goes silent and just stares at him in shock. Harry misunderstands her hesitation for a lack of understanding and rephrases:
"Gordie. Do you know where he is?"
"You don't know where he is?" Kelly repeats dumbly.
…
There are too many places to search all over the city. They can't do this alone. So, despite Harry's protest, Kelly calls Allie to ask for help.
The leader sounds tired, it's 3 am after all. Yet she says she will be there in a bit (sometimes Kelly forgets that Gordie was Allie's friend long before he was hers). It takes only a few minutes for a pickup to arrive. There is the Guard, Will, Sam, Bean, and Allie. Everyone looks tired and grumpy on several levels.
Later, Bean takes Kelly aside and tells her that it has been exactly 3 months since Cassandra died. She doesn't add anything else, but Kelly can guess. The bags under Allie's eyes are a lot redder than before, her hair unkempt and voice raspy. She obviously didn't need another crisis on a day like this. Grizz seems to be looming over her even more than usual.
They split into groups, Kelly ends up being paired up with Harry, mostly because nobody wanted to go with him. Neither does she but Kelly really can't complain since she was the one who brought him along here.
Two of them search the school. It's mostly by an accident that they find Gordie, in the backstage of the school theatre, under a messy pile of costumes nobody bothered to sort in months.
When she takes a few steps in his direction, she realizes he is fast asleep.
It's a relief of sorts.
Since Harry doesn't seem too keen on doing anything to help, Kelly crouches in front of her friend, gently pushing him in the shoulder.
"Hey Gord-" she doesn't even finish it when the nerd jerks awake, flinching away from her touch.
Kelly falls backward in surprise and she hears Harry curse half-heartedly.
Kelly mumbles something nonsensical about safe space and friends, it doesn't make much sense even to her, she is a way too tired and shocked.
Gordie sits unmoving, only staring at them with wide unblinking scared eyes.
Moments pass. None of them moves.
"I'm so sorry," Gordie whispers finally.
"What the fuck?" Harry chokes out, followed by an uncomfortable chuckle.
"I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to. I should have been there. I was supposed to be there. We need her. We need her and she is not here. And it's all going to hell without her." Gordie mutters, almost inaudibly.
Kelly crouches in front of him. Gordie is making no sense yet she knows what it's about. Everyone would know.
"Gordie. Hey." Kelly says, trying to stop her voice from shaking "It's me, Kelly."
Give her all the awards for sounding like an absolute dumbass.
He just looks at her this time.
"I'm here to help you." Kelly states, making her voice sound a lot more confident and collected than she actually feels.
Day off, sure.
Kelly Aldrich, fixer-upper extraordinaire never took a day off in her life.