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When someone’s used to living in one time period, suddenly moving to another is difficult. It’s a sudden change, and not one she’d had any experience with - new things are never easy to adjust to.
It’s the future. It’s different. It’s strange.
Perhaps the strangest thing of all is hearing the difference in the way people speak - in how freely they use words that she had always been too scared of using herself.
Helen’s brother had been abandoned by everyone in his life because he was gay. Now people throw the word around like it’s the most normal thing in the world, and while she’s glad that people don’t struggle in quite the same way that they used to, it’s difficult to cope with.
It’s difficult to look at Liv and Tania and know they’re living a life that her brother was punished for even thinking about. Sometimes seeing them makes her envious for the life he never got to live.
Sometimes thinking about it all makes her envious for the life she never got to live, too.
It could’ve been her who’d ended up with his fate; she’d told Liv as much. Perhaps she’d been too subtle with the way the words had left her lips, because while it sounded like she meant she could’ve been born gay , she’d actually been afraid of getting caught for it.
In some ways, she knows it had been easier as a woman. She’d trained herself not to outwardly show her interest, yes, but in the smaller ways it had been easier - she’d flown just a little further under the radar. A few years before she’d left her native time, she’d heard about the Germans making gay sex illegal - but they hadn’t managed to do so for women, because their male minds just couldn’t figure out how two women would go about having sex.
It’s not as if Helen would’ve been keen to act on anything she had felt, anyway. Even if nothing had been illegal or even frowned upon, she doesn’t think she’d have had the courage for ‘making a move’ on someone else. That’s more Liv ’s thing, or Tania’s, or… anyone who’s not her .
Women are often too intimidating, and there’s the constant fear that any attempts at something more than friendship would only ruin whatever relationship they’d already built up. And yet she would, of course, only consider being with someone she already considered to be a friend.
“Thanks.” Helen says, handing Liv a freshly made mug of hot chocolate and trying not to look too shaky. “For earlier. For listening to what I had to say.”
Liv takes it, moving out of the doorway and shooting her a slightly awkward smile. “That’s what friends are for, right?” Peering down at the hot chocolate like she thinks there might be a hidden bomb in it, Liv hesitates a moment, then cautiously takes a sip.
Knowing this is coming from someone who frequently burns her tongue, Helen doesn’t take offense at her less than subtle inspection.
Still, it doesn’t seem to have done her much good.
It’s too hot. She can tell it’s too hot from the way she winces and sets the mug down, but Liv’s kind enough not to mention it. If it were any other day she probably would - but Helen imagines she pities her today, after hearing her open up just a little about her brother.
“Still, I mean it. Thanks. It’s not something I’ve told anyone before - my father told me not to talk about it, and I… Well, you’re the person I’ve been closest to since leaving home.” When she thinks about it, Liv’s probably the only friend she’s had - aside from the Doctor, though sometimes it seems like she’s looking after him more than there being any sort of friendship.
The people in the flat are all lovely, too, but when it comes down to it they’re not really her friends . They’re people she’d like to know, and perhaps people she will be friends with, but… Well, Tania’s always going to be closer to Liv than to her, and everyone else is content to stay in their little pairs, too. The sisters have shown her some form of hostility from the start, and though Ron and Tony had been having problems aligning their memories of their past with reality… Well, she’s not entirely sure that the hostility she’d received from one of them was just because of that. She’s happy enough with the Doctor, anyway, though he doesn’t complete her pair in the same way Tania completes Liv, or that Ron completes Tony.
It’s something she’ll always admire from afar, even if those sorts of relationships aren’t intended to be a part of her own future.
They can’t be intended for her, not really. Not when she could only ever consider being in that sort of relationship with someone who was first a friend.
Perhaps her solution should just be to find more friends - though she doesn’t exactly know how to go about doing that in 2020. She imagines there’s probably an app for it, but she’s not yet managed to develop a fluency with that sort of thing.
But that’s alright, she’s happy alone. She’s happy with the Doctor.
She’s happy with Liv.
And if she can’t have the sort of intimacy a partner would bring, she’ll make do by giving it in other ways - bringing her friends their favourite drinks, or opening up in little ways that she never has before.
Perhaps she’ll ponder a little further on why she’s so jealous of people who can so easily throw around a word, but in the meantime she’ll continue to tell Tania she’s not stepping on any toes; continue to tell Liv that she just wants to see her happy. She’ll make her drinks, and tell her secrets, and that’ll be her own little form of love that only she can see.
Each and every person around her deserves happiness, and there’s anything she can do to help them have it then she will.
Even if that means giving up her own.