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She has dreamboat eyes.
Tracy’s kind of horrified to realize this. The two of them are hiding behind some of the asylum’s walls, and Helena’s in Tracy’s arms, covered in dirt and scrapes. Helena’s glasses have been knocked off her face.
And her eyes swirl a hypnotic, murky kind of blue. Silvery moonlight ripples in them to make them look alive. They’re framed by thick lashes on eyelids that fall half-shut from exhaustion. They remind Tracy, somehow, of the mechanical dolls she made some time ago—with constellations in empty eye sockets, except with Helena, the emptiness is replaced by the fog of blindness.
So why is Tracy horrified? Because this is the absolutely wrong time to be thinking of stuff like this. And panicking about it.
She’s always thought that Helena looked like some unassuming girl, especially with those clunky glasses on her face. Tracy had never really seen Helena up close like this.
Now she knows.
Now she’s fucked.
Because Tracy becomes so easily enamored with the lovely things in life.
Helena’s eyebrows furrow. “Tracy?” she murmurs.
“Y-yeah?”
“What’s happening? Ah, my cane…” Helena weakly gropes her hand through the ground.
“Y-you were forced to drop it, remember?”
“Do you mean my cane’s gone?”
They hear something slam against the wall behind them. Rapid footsteps. Tracy freezes and draws Helena closer to her. She tries to fight back the pleased feeling when Helena returns the favor, arms winding around Tracy’s waist. Helena burrows her head closer to Tracy’s chest, and if she can hear Tracy’s heartbeat, Tracy hopes she’ll just think it’s thumping so loudly out of fear and not….well, whatever Tracy’s feeling right now.
At the open doorway, they see Naib dashing down the hallway, followed shortly by Jack. Thankfully, the Hunter doesn’t notice the two girls curled up in the corner of the room. He must be too focused on Naib.
Tracy breathes out a sigh of relief when her pulse starts to slow.
Then it picks up again suddenly. Tracy doesn’t know why until she feels a breath over her throat and a hand tugging down Tracy’s sleeve.
Helena breathes out, “Sorry, I just want to stand—ah!”
In her effort to pull herself up (and Tracy’s effort to not stutter her tongue off), they accidentally fall back into a tangle of limbs.
More importantly, Helena’s right on top of Tracy.
“U-um—ah—H-Helena!” Tracy exclaims, flames fanning across her face—which is just inches away from Helena’s, dear God.
Helena’s eyes are blown wide open above Tracy. She can’t see but she somehow manages to lock her gaze straight into Tracy’s, mouth formed in a kitten-like pout of confusion.
“Did I make you fall down?” Helena asks. “I really don’t know what’s happening. What did we fall on?”
“N-nothing. More like you just, ah, fell on me?” Tracy squeaks.
“Oh, I’m sorry!”
Helena rolls off Tracy. Tracy feels like she can breathe again.
She sits up and sees that Helena’s cheeks are blooming a bit red. “So it seems I’ve lost my cane,” Helena says. “I’m afraid I can’t sense things as easily without it….if it doesn’t bother you, will you escort me for the rest of the game, Tracy?”
“Escort—escort you??”
“Only if you’re fine with it. Perhaps your robot can do it instead, if you don’t want to—”
“I definitely can!” Tracy says quickly.
A lovely smile graces Helena’s mouth. “Ah, thank you.” Her smile fades a bit when she touches her face. “Oh, I’ve lost my glasses as well. How troublesome.”
“Y-you look better without the glasses,” Tracy blurts out.
Helena blinks. “Really?”
“I mean…” Tracy looks away in embarrassment. “It’s nothing, nevermind.”
Helena examines the wall next to Tracy (because she can’t actually see where Tracy is). “I’m glad you think that, though,” she says with a small upturn of her lips, perfectly dollish and modest. Her face looks so soft and Tracy’s never noticed. “I’ve….never been told anything like...well, what you just said.”
Tracy stares in shock. “Really? I-I don’t believe that!”
“….You don’t?”
“Yes! Because you’re—you’re r-really…..” Tracy swallows hard. “You’ve…got the prettiest eyes I’ve ever seen, Helena.”
Helena looks like she’s forgotten how to exhale properly.
A gap of silence stretches between them, letting Tracy realize how badly she wants to bury into the ground and scream.
Instead she gets up and grabs Helena’s hand, helping her up. “C-come on! We’ve gotta get the rest of those ciphers, don’t we? Don’t think Naib will be distracting Jack for very long, ha-hah.”
She starts pulling Helena over to the doorway, steps slow and patient so Helena can catch up. It’s very hard for Tracy not to notice as Helena goes from merely holding on to her hand, to using both hands to hold Tracy’s, then finally snaking their way up around Tracy’s arm so that they can be closer.
They’re friends, which is what Tracy constantly tries to tell herself as they go down the hallway. Tracy just happens to find Helena’s features extremely pleasant to look at now, that’s all. She doesn’t know why it took Helena losing her glasses, her cane, and that awkward boundary of personal space towards Tracy to make her realize that.
Helena’s presence is warm next to her in the cold asylum, clutching Tracy’s arm the whole way. Later on, after the game’s over and Helena, Martha, Tracy, and Naib all make it out alive, Helena seems almost disappointed when Tracy mentions fixing her a new cane. The whole time, Helena seemed pretty content with just following Tracy all over the manor with her fingers laced through hers.
The glasses, on the other hand—Tracy’s not sure if she wants to make a new pair. Tracy likes the no-glasses look. However, she knows that Helena probably likes having the familiar weight of the frames on her face.
So eventually Tracy walks up to her and presents some crafted, wire-thin glasses with silver frames that match the accents in Helena’s eyes. Helena smiles in thanks, puts it on, and Tracy’s stunned for a moment because the gleam off the lenses makes Helena’s irises shine like gemstones.
“I-I, um, think they make you look really nice,” Tracy stammers, looking everywhere except Helena. “I’d like to see more of your face every now and then, so I made the frame a lot thinner and lighter. Um, do you like it?”
“I do,” Helena says. She’s looking straight at Tracy’s face. “But there’s something not right with it.”
Dismay makes a withering feeling in Tracy. “W-what’s wrong?”
“My newest pair of glasses, unfortunately, can’t let me see what I know is a beauty standing in front of me.”
Tracy barely suppresses a scream. It’s a big effort to do so. It’s an even bigger effort when Helena steps forward and wraps Tracy in an embrace. They’ve hugged before, certainly, as friends. This time feels more intimate for some reason, Helena wrapping her arms around Tracy’s waist and burying her nose in her hair. Tracy’s overwhelmed by the smell of old libraries and faint, strawberry-like perfume.
Tracy thinks she’s going to burst.
“Thank you, Tracy,” Helena says, lips brushing against Tracy’s ear in a way that sends Tracy’s heart into buzzing overdrive.
Helena pulls away and gives a serene smile. Then she walks off, humming slightly. The customized cane taps against the ground. Tap, tap, tap.
Tracy’s left there in the hallway.
She can't help but think that, if Helena’s got dreamboat eyes, then Tracy fears she can’t get out of the sea.