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BOOK YOUR TRAVELS NOW! white text on a red banner spread across the page proclaims. See the beautiful sights and wonders of the world! Five-star experience guaranteed! Unbeatable prices!
The Helper turns the page, feeling a bit ill without even really knowing why. He’s not even really interested in this stuff, he just picked up a magazine from the Nurse’s bookshelf because he’s been slowly making his way through her collection of things to read. There isn’t a lot to do, it turns out, when you’re living in a world everyone’s agreed you aren’t ready to go out into alone. It involves a lot of sitting around at home.
Or, well, at the Nurse’s home, but it’s not like their own homes exist anymore. The Collector’s does, he had his grandfather, and at least he still has family; but for the Helper and the Gatekeeper, the Nurse’s place was the only place they could go, because everything they’ve ever called home is…
The Helper looks back down at the magazine on the kitchen table, staring unseeingly at some photo of a mass of blue water the Nurse said is called an ocean, and promised to take them to see one day.
Santo Berço didn’t have oceans. Santo Berço was small, and simple, and it was safe and wonderful and home.
…Emphasis on was. The images of the burning buildings, the burning people, the face of the Nurse as she grabbed his hand and told him to run, still feel fresh as ever in the Helper’s mind. Santo Berço is gone, and so is any sense of stability he feels like he ever had in his life.
Except for the Gatekeeper. The Gatekeeper is still here. The Gatekeeper is somewhere in the living room, drawing. The Helper’s watched him do that probably hundreds of times, and even here has seen him sketching away, has seen the balled-up pieces of paper with spiral shapes etched into them so harshly they almost tore. He knows the Gatekeeper is struggling, that clearly the… death? banishment? disappearance? – of the Saint has not made it leave the eternally-a-Wellspring part of his mind. That the Gatekeeper has lost people just as much as he has, and that he did everything for a reason – a twisted and awful one, yes, but one that makes sense. As much as it makes the Helper still fear, somewhere, being alone in a room with him these days.
The Gatekeeper seems scared too, in fairness. He keeps sending the Helper fearful glances when he thinks he isn’t looking. It makes something in the Helper ache, having his best friend feel like he has to tiptoe around him like this, and yet in turn feeling like there’s a chance the Gatekeeper might have another knife in his pocket, another handful of crystals ready to shove down his throat and hold the Helper until he stops struggling. Kill him for real, this time.
The Helper pushes the magazine away and buries his face in his hands. He doesn’t want to feel like this. He misses the time before all this happened, misses having the Gatekeeper to talk to, idle chats and silly conversations and discussing whatever came to mind. He misses his biggest worry being his nervous wonders about whether to tell the Nurse how he feels, instead of the lingering fear in the back of his mind that his best friend wants to hurt him, that he’ll never feel at home, that his life is in ruins and he’ll never be okay again.
He takes a deep breath, and slowly exhales.
Then there’s the click of the front door unlocking. He perks up, eyes flicking over to the digital clock display on the oven; yep, it’s that time. The Nurse is home.
He gets to his feet, stands in the doorway of the kitchen adjacent to the hallway where she stands, taking off her coat and hanging it on one of the hooks by the door. “Nurse!” he greets her, trying his best to smile. (It’s only half forced – seeing her does make him happy, and despite everything, still sets off little butterflies in his stomach.) “Hey.”
“Hi, Helper.” The Nurse’s smile is tired, but seems genuine, at least. She bends to take off her shoes, and sets her bag on the ground.
He squints. There’s something colourful peeking out of the top, something he doesn’t think he’s seen before. “What’s that?”
“What?” The Nurse straightens up from untying her shoes, follows his gaze. “Oh, it was one of my coworkers’ birthdays today, so we had a little party in the break room for her.” She plucks the object from the bag, revealing it to be… a cone of some kind, striped in various colours, and with a piece of string of some kind attached to the bottom at two ends. This… does not help.
“Um.” The Helper reaches out towards it, and she hands it to him, watching curiously as he turns it over in his hands, peering inside to see nothing but plain cardboard. “What… is it, though?”
“Oh.” She seems to catch up with what he means, and something inside the Helper stings a little. (Yet another thing he doesn’t know about this world.) “It’s a party hat!” She reaches to take it back, and he lets her have it, watching her stretch the piece of string, which seems to be… elastic of some kind?, on her splayed fingers. “Look, hold still.”
He does, and she brings the hat(?) closer to him, placing the cone on top of his head and gently letting the elastic snap around the bottom of his jaw, keeping the hat on. She musters him, then lets out a small snort of laughter. (He melts a little at the sound.) “Where’s—go to the bathroom,” she says, amused. “Look in the mirror, it suits you.”
He does, and she follows him. The bathroom is small, shelves cluttered with bottles and creams and shampoos the Nurse has been saying for weeks she needs to sort out but never does, but otherwise relatively bare, with plain white walls and tiles that the Nurse says she never gets around to decorating.
The Helper musters his reflection in the round mirror that hangs above the sink. The colourful striped cone sits on top of his head, a stark contrast to the grey of his skin and hair. (He doesn’t like being in his Ignaro form when he doesn’t have to be – having his body, at least, look the way he’s used to, is also a form of comfort.) It looks… silly. The Nurse crowds inside next to him, making eye contact in the mirror with a little grin.
They look… different, the Helper considers as he looks at them both. She’s in her Ignaro form, having just come home from work and not minding the difference as much, so she stays like this more often. She lived her whole life before Santo Berço looking like this, the Helper supposes, so it’s not that much of a change for her as it is for him. Still, the contrast stings a little, her white work uniform and pale skin next to his black hoodie (which she gave to him, and is oversized on her but a regular fit on him, though it still feels weird, a type of clothing he still isn’t quite used to) and grey skin. His facial markings, and her lack of them. The only marking the Nurse has in this form, he knows, is a small tattoo of a flower on her left arm; one that he thinks about more than he’d maybe care to admit. (It’s pretty. Who can blame him, really?)
“Helper?” The Nurse – Cibele – is looking up at him, concerned. (Some small part of him goes she’s worried about me!, but he can’t bring himself to focus on it.)
“I…” He trails off. He doesn’t know what to say.
“Hey, hey, Helper.” She gently knocks her shoulder against his, still looking at him in the mirror. She sounds like she usually does when she tries to distract them from thinking about things. “When’s your birthday? And… the Gatekeeper’s?”
The Helper opens his mouth, closes it again. “I, um. I don’t think we…”
Her eyes widen. “Oh.” She winces. “I guess Santo Berço didn’t really…” She swears under her breath. “Sorry, I… wasn’t thinking.”
“It’s okay.” (Now he just feels worse, though, because it’s yet another reminder of how they’re different, they don’t belong, and—)
She sighs, looking at her own reflection instead of his. “I just… didn’t get a lot of time to experience it all, did I?” She takes his hand, lacing their fingers together, and he looks down at their hands, then at her, feeling warmth rush to his face. Oh. “I wish I could have. I… I miss being there, you know? It was… nice.”
“Yeah,” the Helper says softly.
He can’t help but wonder what it would feel like if things weren’t like this. If they were living together by choice and not by forced circumstance. Greeting her as she comes home from work, being able to chat idly about their days, about what do make for dinner that evening, or whether to go to the tavern instead. To meet with their friends, see the Gatekeeper, the Artist, the Collector. The Blacksmith. The Doctor…
The Nurse leans against his shoulder, their hands still clasped. It’s… comforting, once he's gotten past his initial flustered reaction. “Like, I know that it was… what it was.” She sighs. “The Gatekeeper… He was right. We saw that in the end.”
The Helper nods wordlessly. He’s thought about that enough himself, over the past few weeks.
“But, like, it was nice, you know? It was… I felt accepted, there. More than I ever did here. And I barely ever got to experience it and now it‘s gone and I shouldn’t even have liked it in the first place.” She sniffs, and he sees that she’s tearing up a little. He blinks, and then she’s in her Lusidius form, and it’s so comforting to see that he squeezes her hand a little tighter. “I just… I don’t know.”
“Yeah, I get it.” He swallows, gently extracts his hand from hers to put his arm around her, because he’s pretty sure she needs a hug right now; and indeed, she melts into him without a word. “It was… home, you know? And now it’s… all been a lie. It’s just, like… It can’t all have been bad, right? I know how it was for the Gatekeeper, and like, what he said, but just… People were happy there, you know?” I was happy there. We were happy there.
“Yeah,” the Nurse says. She sounds… tired. “Yeah, it’s… complicated.”
The living room door clicks open, casting more light into the otherwise darkened hallway. The Gatekeeper freezes, makes eye contact with them both in the mirror.
“Oh,” he says awkwardly. “Hey, Ci—Nurse. How was work?”
“Oh, it was… okay.” She extracts herself from the Helper’s hold, and turns to face the Gatekeeper properly. The Helper turns too. It’s a bit awkward, the two of them standing in the cramped bathroom space, but he’s just tall enough to see over her head. The Gatekeeper and he exchange a glance. The Helper himself isn’t sure what it conveys.
“We were talking about… you know.” (There’s only one you know in this household.)
“Oh. I see.” The Gatekeeper takes a step backwards, brow furrowed. “I’ll just—”
“No,” the Nurse interrupts. “No, stay here.” Her voice is still a little wet, but she sounds sure of herself. “I want to say something.”
He freezes in the doorway, seeming halfway torn between fear and… something hopeful. “Yeah?”
“Thank you,” the Nurse says after a moment, pushing the Helper’s arm off her shoulders. “For… you know. Saving us.”
The Gatekeeper blinks. “Uh…”
“I know—” She stops. “I know that… things have been difficult. And I think I’ve been… a bit harsh. On you.” She glances back at the Helper, then back at the Gatekeeper, who in turn looks at the Helper too. The Helper shakes his head. He doesn’t know where this is coming from, but… it sounds like a good start?
“So,” the Nurse continues forcefully. “So, I… I just think… I mean, all we have is each other, right?”
“Yeah.” The Gatekeeper nods, looking… hopeful.
“So I…” She trails off. “Ah, I don’t know how to say this… Just… oh, come here.” She reaches out an arm towards the Gatekeeper, slinging the other one around the Helper. “I don’t want us to be like this all the time, I just… you know?”
“Yes,” the Gatekeeper says softly, and he looks up at the Helper. “If… that’s okay?”
The Helper hesitates, ever so briefly. But… the truth is, he’s missed the Gatekeeper. He misses being friends with him. And he wasn’t expecting the Nurse to be the one out of the three of them to attempt to bridge that gap. But it seems that that’s what’s happening, and… Well, he wants the Gatekeeper back more than he trusts the voice at the back of his mind that still talks about crystals and knives.
“It’s okay,” he confirms, and he thinks he even manages something like a smile.
And it’s every part worth the look on the Gatekeeper’s face when he stumbles forward and falls into their arms.
The Helper is the one to have to stop them from falling over, a new weight having hit them while they’re all squashed awkwardly into the tiny bathroom doorway, and he’s the strongest out of the three of them.
But he manages, and wraps his arms around the both of them, and lets the Gatekeeper bury his face in his shoulder and cling to them both. “I’m sorry,” he’s whispering, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
The Helper shakes his head. “You saved us. You’re the one who was right. About Santo Berço. You knew the truth. You were trying to protect everyone.” And save me from it, goes unsaid. Maybe bringing that part up isn’t the best idea right now.
“It was still your home.” The Gatekeeper looks up at him, making steady eye contact that the Helper returns. “I… I don’t think I really realised that, at the start. It’s just always been such an awful thing to me, I never really considered that it meant something to people, and… I think some things I said were a little harsh. To both of you,” he adds, looking back at the Nurse. “I just… couldn’t imagine what good someone could ever see in that place.”
“We all misjudge things.” The Nurse sighs. “But… perspective, and all that, right?”
“Right,” the Helper agrees. “It’s just… difficult, you know?”
“Yeah.” The Gatekeeper takes a breath. “But, um. Thank you both. For… this.” He tightens his hold in the hug, briefly squishing the three of them a little closer together, and laughs softly. “I just… yeah. Thank you. You don’t know how it felt to… think I had to…” He trails off, and glances at the Helper, then looks away again. The Helper’s heart twinges. “Well, I’m just. I’m… really glad we got out of there.”
(The Helper doesn’t like to think about how close they got to… so much worse. He doesn’t think any of them do.)
“Yeah,” he agrees, and the Nurse is nodding, too. “I’m glad too.”
“We got out,” the Gatekeeper repeats softly. “We’re here. We’re here. We… yeah.” He looks back at the Nurse. “Thank you.”
They stay like that for a few moments, just quietly holding each other.
“Okay,” says the Nurse eventually. “Okay, um.” She clears her throat. “Now that that's… yeah. Who wants to try to figure out something to cook? Because I am not ordering pizza again. My wallet can't handle that much takeout in a row.”
“Me!” the Helper volunteers eagerly. Lightness floods back into his body as they release each other, and he can’t help but laugh as she sends him a light glare, still standing close enough to elbow him lightly in the side.
“Okay, but I’m not letting you in the kitchen alone. Not after what happened last time.”
“It wasn’t that bad!”
“It smelled like butter for, like, three days!” She laughs. “Ah, we’ll figure something out. Gatekeeper, want to help?”
“Sure.” The Gatekeeper can recognise the peace offering for what it is, and returns her slight smile. The Helper feels something warm inside him as the two of them start swapping ideas, and he follows them into the kitchen. They might only have each other now; but he thinks that hopefully, they can make this into something new. Together.