Work Text:
Helen comes to a halt at the building’s massive front doors. She stares up past the tower and into the sky, overcome by a heavy and all-consuming thought:
I shouldn’t be here.
Indeed, the Helen she was even a few months prior wouldn’t be here, and it’s likely that’s what’s driving her to be here now. Helen doesn’t know where along the way she decided that because she’d grown up, because she’d married and had children and made sacrifices for the good of her family, that meant she was never allowed to do anything even slightly ill-advised ever again, but boy, did she ever.
And sure, she knew there were parts of her past, parts of herself she’d given up that she missed, but there was so much more she hadn’t even realized she’d lost until Elastigirl had been practically forced to fly solo. She loves her family. They’re a team, and they work best that way. But—
Helen steps forward.
But there’s more.
Winn was almost comically distressed to be missing her visit, but in truth Helen is a little relieved not to have to see him, or more precisely, not to have to explain herself to him. She feels a little silly for being so secretive with Bob about the whole thing for the same reason, but she tells herself she just doesn’t want the hassle.
Neither of them would understand. Not really.
The butler lets her in. Evelyn sits with arms splayed across a large sofa looking out the window, like something out of a painting. She doesn’t move when she hears the door open, doesn’t respond to Helen’s footsteps, and Helen is sure it’s for show.
“Evelyn?”
Evelyn startles, just slightly, a little twitch of the shoulders. She looks up, and for a moment her unguarded expression betrays a wealth of emotion so clear and so piercing that Helen feels she is looking into a mirror. There’s bitterness, certainly, and a touch of haughty disdain, clear in the set of her lips, but there’s also surprise, a little guilt, and even just the slightest sliver of hopefulness, all very clear in the eyes, and Helen is reminded rather forcefully why supers manage to hide so well behind such small masks.
All of this occurs in the span of an instant, however, and Evelyn’s features settle into the lazy confidence Helen remembers best. “Winn said you were coming,” she says, with a mirthless smile. “I confess I didn’t believe him.”
“Why would he lie?” Helen wonders without thinking.
Evelyn quirks a brow at her. “Not so much that,” she says. “It’s more like…everything feels a little--“ she waves her hand vaguely, “—hazy these days. Nothing is very immediate anymore, you know?”
“I—“
She means to say that she doesn’t. Sometimes she feels like she’s barely blinked since Violet was born, let alone Dash and Jack-Jack. Everything has always been very immediate with them, almost catastrophically so—Bob won’t admit it, but Helen knows he learned that the hard way when he decided he could suddenly fill her role all at once.
And of course once the whole thing was settled, Helen was thrown right back into it, this time with the added pressure of the superhero gig, so there was never any time to rest or recuperate or feel ‘hazy’ about anything—
But at the same time, it’s not like she’s been fully present. After all, why else would she be here?
“I guess I sort of do,” she says at last.
Evelyn raises her eyebrows, and her mirthless smile takes on an edge of mockery. “So you’re here for, what? Closure? A little heart to heart with your fake bestie?”
Helen averts her eyes. “I don’t know,” she says, truthfully, and without hesitation. No use pretending.
“Well,” Evelyn shifts, and the strangely heavy sound of her feet against the floor draws Helen’s attention to the shackle on Evelyn’s ankle, “lucky for you, I have literally nothing better to do.”
Helen stands motionless for a minute, mouth just slightly agape, at a loss for what to say to that.
Evelyn pats the sofa next to her. Helen sits.
“So,” Evelyn begins coolly, after another long silence, “how’s your happily ever after going? Is it…incredible?”
Helen frowns and scoffs, and focuses her attention on the cityscape beneath them. “It’s great, thanks for asking,” she responds drily.
And it is. Was. For awhile. It’s not anyone’s fault that Helen had forgotten what being Elastigirl felt like. It’s not anyone’s fault that after years of marriage and raising a family in a certain way they were bound to fall back into some of the same patterns.
“Personally I never understood the appeal of the whole nuclear family thing,” says Evelyn, unfazed.
“I guess you wouldn’t,” says Helen, a little sharply. “You’re not big on compromise.”
“Compromise,” Evelyn echoes derisively. “That’s what it’s all about, right? Compromise this, compromise that, and for what? Security?”
“Family!” Helen snaps. “Connection! Community! Working together toward a shared goal!”
“Uh huh,” Evelyn shifts to her side to look at Helen. “And how often have they compromised for your benefit?”
There’s a lot she could say, about how raising kids isn’t like that, about how love and family aren’t about keeping score, about how Bob worked hard at a job he loathed and really, Helen was happy to take care of—well, everything else.
But she knows how Evelyn would react. Evelyn wouldn’t understand. And Helen has gone to great lengths to avoid having to explain herself or make excuses today. Evelyn doesn’t even care, Helen tells herself, this is just her sweet way of making idle chatter.
And Helen liked that about Evelyn, when they were working together. There’d been a time when she’d had friends who asked hard questions, who poked and prodded at every belief she held, and she had reveled in the stimulation.
But after supers became illegal, Helen lost a lot of her friends. They all disappeared, just like she had to. She knows now that many of them are dead. And she found that her new life was much easier to bear if no one asked any questions at all.
“I can tell from your silence that you know I have a point,” says Evelyn.
“Maybe I just don’t think it’s worth arguing about,” Helen replies thinly.
Evelyn shakes her head smugly. “Response time too long, expression too conflicted. Try again, Mrs. Incredible.”
Helen heaves a sigh of frustration. “Would you stop calling me that?” But as soon as she’s spoken, she knows she’s made a mistake. She can practically feel the change in Evelyn’s energy.
“What, just when I’ve learned it bothers you?” she needles.
Helen wants to glare at her, wants to feel affronted and stiff and wrong and awkward, wants to leave wondering why she bothered to come at all, what she so stupidly thought she could get out of such an impossible person.
Instead, and very much in spite of herself, she feels herself smiling. She shoots Evelyn a sidelong look that’s far less offended and far more a strange and weary kind of fondness, and Evelyn’s cocksure smirk falls just slightly in response. She looks away, subdued, and they sit together in silence for awhile after that.
“House arrest isn’t so bad,” says Evelyn quietly, after a time. “At least it has a hell of a view.”
Time passes. A sweet and temperate spring turns into a miserable and sticky summer. The kids are impossible and Bob is sometimes twice as childish. They argue for the first time in months, tired and too hot and needlessly vicious, and then Jack-Jack starts crying and Dash starts yelling and Violet starts whining and Helen feels the world closing in around her. She storms out of the house.
She should go back, she tells herself, or at least send a text telling Bob where she’s going. Or, at the very least, fifteen minutes later, when Bob starts calling and texting her, she should respond.
It’s selfish, and immature, and maybe even downright wrong, but Helen can’t help but to think of what Evelyn said to her. When was the last time anyone compromised for her benefit?
After almost an hour, Helen has mostly calmed down from the initial rush of blinding rage, mostly combed over all the little slights and annoyances that led to the argument, and probably taken more than her fair share of the responsibility. She starts to look into shop windows she passes.
A thought occurs to her, strange, impulsive, and definitely ill-advised. She definitely shouldn’t follow through with it, and indeed, if she were she same person she’d been a few months ago, she wouldn’t even dream of it.
Helen doesn’t call ahead this time. She always carries a spare mask on her, though, and Elastigirl is allowed in without question, even dressed otherwise in civilian clothes.
It’s like Evelyn hasn’t moved since she was here the last time. This time she’s lying back on the sofa, gazing listlessly out the window at the sunset, and she does sit up when she hears the door.
“You’re back,” she says, needlessly, and without much emotion.
“Do you like Chess?” Helen proffers the box she’s carrying.
Helen can tell Evelyn is trying very hard to look disparaging, but she can’t hide the genuineness of her growing smile.
Unsurprisingly, Evelyn plays quickly and ruthlessly. Helen is tired and out of practice, but after she stupidly loses her third pawn, her competitive nature kicks in, and she begins to give Evelyn an actual run for her money.
“I used to bully Winn into playing with me all the time when we were kids,” says Evelyn, almost cheerfully, as she moves a knight. “He was terrible.”
Helen laughs. “Really? Or were you just that good?”
“Hmm,” Evelyn taps a finger against her chin as she contemplates the board. She captures another pawn. “Maybe both.”
Helen huffs her frustration and leans into the board, like looking more closely will reveal the right moves to her. “Who taught you?”
Evelyn goes a little too still for a minute, and Helen feels compelled to look up.
“My mother,” she says quietly.
“What was she like?” Helen dares.
Evelyn frowns subtly. “Oh, I don’t know,” she lifts a shoulder. “Smart. Quiet.” Her voice darkens. “Easily led.”
“Led?”
“My father was a believer,” says Evelyn. “In…everything. Anything. I think maybe my mother…wanted to be, too. So she ignored a lot of hard truths.” Evelyn looks up sharply. “Made a lot of compromises.”
Helen wants to look away. She doesn’t. “I’m sorry for your loss,” she says.
“Don’t be,” says Evelyn. “It’s not your fault.”
“It’s not your father’s fault, either,” says Helen, before she can talk herself out of it.
Evelyn huffs quietly and looks away. “Isn’t it?”
“No,” Helen leans forward and touches Evelyn’s hand. “It’s not. It was the fault of the robber who pulled the trigger. Nobody else.”
Evelyn meets her gaze, somehow harder than before. “But he could have prevented it. If he’d chosen to listen to reason instead of relying on—“
“They were dead!” Helen exclaims, without entirely meaning to. “They were…” she feels the loudness of her voice, echoing in the cavernous apartment. “They were already dead by then, Evelyn. Gazerbeam and Dynaguy.”
Evelyn squints at her. “And?”
“And,” Helen falters. “And they’d have come. Otherwise.”
Evelyn shakes her head derisively. “So what? What kind of a bullshit jerkoff power move is that, calling your direct line to Mister So-and-so when Mister So-and-so has just been made illegal? When you have a perfectly good safe room? When you have a family who needs you? Who practically—practically worships the ground you walk on? All so, what? So you can prove how important you are?”
Helen falters again, almost withdraws her hand or averts her eyes, but she tries to hold steady. “Maybe he just…really believed. Maybe supers were really that important to him, and he wanted his family to have that same feeling of safety.”
“Huh,” Evelyn scoffs, but she doesn’t withdraw her own hand. “Well. What a feeling.”
“I’m…” Helen begins, clumsily. “I’m not saying you don’t have a point, Evelyn.”
“Aren’t you?” Evelyn sneers, but her posture relaxes subtly.
“But you can’t just spend the rest of your life wishing things had been different,” Helen continues. “Or blaming people for…for following their instincts in a scary situation. We all do stupid things when we’re scared. It doesn’t mean we don’t care.”
Evelyn is still for a moment. Finally, she meets Helen’s gaze, pale blue eyes glassy with unshed tears. “Your move,” she says quietly—then, a little brighter, “Mrs. Incredible.”
Helen shoves her lightly and returns her attention to the game. In truth, though, the dig has brought her attention very uncomfortably back to the fight she left at home. She moves what she thinks is an inconspicuous knight.
“I’ll let you try that again if you want,” says Evelyn coolly.
“What?” Helen looks up, frowning.
Evelyn is leaning back in her seat, arms crossed, her usual lazy smugness restored. “You’re distracted.”
‘I am not!”
“Body language, Elastigirl,” Evelyn points at her own eyes. “Your eye movements did not even remotely match looking for a place to move a knight. And,” she inclines her head, somewhere between fond and mocking, “you usually take way longer to decide on a move.”
Helen squints at her. “Eye movements?”
“Highly underrated tool of observation,” says Evelyn. She points her finger at Helen and clicks her tongue.
Helen tries very hard not to smile. “I stand by my move,” she says, leaning into the challenge.
Evelyn leans in, too, and for a moment she’s unnervingly close. Something in the air between them shifts, and Helen is reminded of those giddy nights spent drinking and scheming, and, more chillingly, of being giddy from lack of air, somehow unable to catch her breath.
Evelyn sweeps her bishop dramatically across the board and knocks Helen’s knight onto its side. “Check,” she says, with a little smirk that’s somehow different than the ones Helen recognizes.
“Damn,” says Helen, for what feels like the first time since she’s had kids. She shakes her head at the board, searching for something that might save her. “I feel sympathy for Winn.”
Evelyn snorts. “You would.”
Summer surrenders at last to a crisp and rainy autumn. Bob and Helen reconcile, as they always have, and the kids go back to school. Jack-Jack is at a wonderful age, and Helen’s heart is full of her child’s wonder at uncovering the mysteries of the world around him. Now that he’s not a walking fire hazard, Helen feels far more comfortable taking him around with her, and she starts to make friends with her neighbours. They make playdates for the kids and go out for drinks on weekends. Helen delights her new friends by telling them she used to have a mohawk and ride a motorcycle—could they imagine?
Things are good. Helen is happy. Really, she is. Sometimes she even gets a few moments completely to herself. Silence, stillness, just her and her thoughts.
It’s crazy that she’s kept this whole thing a secret. There’s nothing to tell. What, that she visited Evelyn a couple of times? Weird, sure, but not unheard of. People would see it as some kind of kindness, or need for closure. People would romanticize it as the move of a selfless hero, bestowing her almighty forgiveness even upon the most undeserving of foes.
Maybe that’s why she doesn’t tell anyone. The thought turns her stomach.
There’s something else, too. It’s just a thought, hazier than any other and completely moot, no matter the circumstances, for a thousand different reasons. Sure, Helen had thought about it back in her wild youth, but she’d never even really tried it, never even met anyone she felt very strongly about before Bob, and now it’s much too late, even if—
And even if--! Even if, even if, Evelyn tried to kill her! She tried to kill a lot of people! She did kill a lot of people! Evelyn is not a good person! She doesn’t have—she doesn’t even have a comparable moral compass, if she has one at all, and Helen would never--!
Well. The old Helen would never. Maybe not even the old, old Helen, from before Bob.
The rain against the roof is almost deafening. It pours down in sheets that cover the windows and blur even the shapes of the nearest trees outside. Bob is out with Lucius, and all of the kids, even Jack-Jack are staying with friends. This is meant to be Helen’s much-needed alone time, but she can’t sit still, can’t even enjoy the beauty of the storm.
She pours a glass of wine to calm her nerves. It doesn’t help.
She puts on her coat and takes it off again at least three times. She paces the house trying to talk herself out of leaving. What is she going to do, exactly? Go over there and just say, hi, Evelyn, I’m having some confusing feelings that wouldn’t even matter in an alternate universe where I wasn’t married, how is your house arrest treating you?
It’s not anyone’s fault that Helen hasn’t had such stimulating conversation in years. She lost her friends, she lost her calling, and life in hiding took a toll on her marriage that…maybe isn’t entirely repaired yet. Or maybe she and Bob never had those kinds of conversations. Bob is a believer. Bob asks questions with set and simple answers.
Bob is a believer, and maybe Helen wants to be, too.
Helen zips up her raincoat. She bites her tongue a moment, thoughtfully, then corks the wine bottle and tucks it under her arm.
Evelyn isn’t on the sofa this time. She’s sitting cross-legged on the floor right in front of the window, watching the storm raptly.
Helen sits next to her and places the bottle of wine between them. The sound is heavy and deliberate, like the way Evelyn moves her shackled foot. Evelyn doesn’t seem surprised to see her.
“I love storms like this,” says Evelyn.
Helen watches the rain against the enormous windows for awhile, nodding slowly. “So do I,” she says, even though she can’t really access that enjoyment just now. Hesitantly, so softly the rain almost drowns her out, she adds, “Bob hates the rain.”
Evelyn turns sharply. She holds Helen’s gaze a moment, disbelieving, then turns her attention back to the window just as dramatically. “Oh, we’re talking about that now?” she wonders flatly. “Is that why you’re here? Married life getting to you so soon?”
“No, it’s not—I didn’t mean—“
“Did you think you all grew the same from the experience? Left the husband alone with the kids for a few days and suddenly he gets it?”
Helen clenches her fists and scrambles to her feet. “You don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“Don’t I?” Evelyn begins to stand lazily, and really makes a show of clunking her shackled foot against the floor. The result is more jarring than Helen expected--Helen is used to being in her supersuit, and used to Evelyn slouching. When Evelyn draws herself up to her full height, she’s eye to eye with Helen. “I don’t have to know your exact situation to know what’s going on, Mrs. Incredible. It’s pretty damn typical.”
“Stop calling me that!” Helen advances on her, attempts to tower over her even when there’s no height difference between them.
Evelyn doesn’t bend. “Then why are you here? Don’t you have other girl friends you can go to to complain about your mediocre husband who thinks he’s hot shit? Why me?”
“Because you--! Because I can’t--!”
Evelyn grabs her by the arms and kisses her, and Helen feels all the giddiness and the terror of gasping for air.
She pushes Evelyn away and staggers backward. She tries to speak, tries to protest, to say what is wrong with you? Why would you think--? Why did you do that? We can’t, and we could never! And even if--!
And even if I did, it would be your fault! Your fault for reminding me of who I was, of who I could be, for reminding me what it was like to feel more!
Evelyn watches her, breath ragged, not smiling, but somehow still radiating her lazy certainty. She knows, maybe knew before Helen did, and the sound of the pouring rain makes reality seem distant and hazy, not immediate. All that seems to matter is here, and now.
Helen tries to speak again, but words fall woefully short. Her gaze darts from Evelyn’s bright, shining eyes to her lips and back, once, twice, and she should not be here—indeed, no other version of herself that exists outside of this moment would be.
And perhaps this is why she feels she must close the distance between them. Because there is no other time but now, no explanation but that the merciless flow of time has stopped for them, just this once, and will never bend to their whims again.
It’s nothing like any other kiss Helen has ever known. It’s not sweet or loving, nor is it purely rough or sexual. It’s a kiss of longing, of all that can never be between them, of the believer and the cynic in each of them, trying desperately to reach out to one another, just this once.
Helen pulls Evelyn flush against her, and relishes the newness of the contact. Evelyn inhales sharply against her lips and Helen feels warmth course through her body like an electric shock. She wants more, needs to be closer, but she’s already crossed a line she, herself, would deem unforgivable.
She feels Evelyn’s hands beneath the hem of her shirt, just barely grazing the bare skin of her midriff, and it physically pains her to pull away, but Evelyn doesn’t object. Indeed, all the energy seems to leave her at once, and she is just as listless and lethargic as she was on the first day Helen came to see her.
“I can’t,” she says simply.
“Of course not,” Evelyn breathes, feigning lightness. “Those damn core beliefs, am I right?”
“Yeah,” says Helen softly. She hasn’t quite let go of Evelyn’s sleeves. She hasn’t quite stopped staring at Evelyn’s lips.
Evelyn’s house arrest ends. Helen knows because Bob sees it on the news and won’t stop ranting about it. Not even a year, he says, and people have already forgotten what she did!
What did you expect, Dad? Violet drones. She’s rich. We knew it’d go down like this.
That doesn’t make it right! Bob cries passionately. That doesn’t make it okay!
The next day, conspicuously right after Bob has left the house, Helen receives a small package. She knows very well she shouldn’t open it.
It’s a pocket watch, of all things, silver and very pretty, a strange mixture of modern and old-fashioned in its design. There’s a little slip of paper attached to the chain that reads, “What’s the secret password?”
Helen opens the pocket watch and stares at the roman numerals thoughtfully. “Checkmate,” she tries.
The watch face comes to life with a little hologram that reads like grainy footage from a second-rate security camera. Helen squints at the two figures and recognizes her own unmistakable shape, rising from the floor with purpose. Evelyn’s leaner, more willowy shape follows. She watches as Evelyn kisses her, as she withdraws, as she initiates the second kiss. The hologram ends, and a clearer, brighter picture follows. It’s just Evelyn, looking the way she always does, or maybe a little softer, or maybe a little sadder.
“House arrest, remember?” she says smugly. “Don’t worry, I doctored up the security footage. Even if someone were watching me the whole time, who’d believe him?” Her tone turns serious then, far more so than Helen has ever heard it. “The moment is yours now, to keep with you…or to throw away. It’s a shame, isn’t it? In another life, another time…”
The hologram of Evelyn shrugs amiably. “Well, maybe not. I guess we’ll never know.”
Subconsciously, Helen’s fingers curl a little tighter around the pocket watch.
“It was a pleasure working with you, Elastigirl.”
The hologram fades, and the world feels unbearably dim without it.
Helen tucks the watch into her shirt pocket, next to her heart.