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Back when she was in prison (This morning, part of her whispers), there were times (in the endless period when Helen was gone and it was beyond thought that she would return) when, for days or weeks at a stretch, Nikki receded so far back into herself that her senses seemed to overtake her; she swam through a soup, hearing herself speak at a distance, the sounds of others (the night calls, the barking of the screws, the heavy smack of the doors in their frames) heard magnified, fuzzy, as if through water. Days or weeks when over and over again she thought, for just a second, that she could hear someone calling her name in the squeaking of hinges, in the toilet flushing, in the hiss of the showers. She told no one, of course; she hid it; she knew, even as the core of her sat shell-shocked, numb, dumbly blanketed by the tricks of her senses, that others still saw her self-assured and tough, brooding occasionally, sometimes helpful, not someone to fuck with; she, after all, unlike some others, knew herself.
Now she sits here in the chill on this bench outside the back door of Helen's flat, overlooking the night-blackened garden, curled up in the familiar ratty blue and yellow robe (Trish had always hated it, before) that had served her, hideous as it was, through all her time in that place. She could have taken one of Helen's, of course. The blue one, that only came to her elbows and knees and smelled so comfortingly (and so disturbingly) of her lover – she remembered it from before, she knew it was hanging on a hook in the bath. But after she'd slid out of bed (Helen's breath regular and soft in the dimness), she'd gone and dug this robe out of one of those awful plastic bags -- a bag she'd then mechanically destroyed, her fingers hooking into the words "prison service" and ripping them apart.
The robe smells like Larkhall. Part of her, even as she sits here wearing it, cringes away from that smell, hates that smell with a desperation that makes her stomach turn; but another part of her finds comfort in it, perversely, irrationally. An old thing, a same thing, continuity, on a day of so many changes; a thread to cling to.
She wonders if she's finally gone mad. There are thoughts in her head when there shouldn't be. She feels numb when she should feel sharpness, and almost unbearable sharpness when she should be calm. All day, it's been like this; all day, since the moment outside the club. When she'd heard Helen's voice cut through her disappointment, and turned, and there she'd been. Since then. Through the window of the taxi they'd called, after, the sight of the trees, with their spindly branches giving up the flame-coloured leaves of autumn, had made Nikki almost insensible with wonder; the warmth of Helen's hand on her leg had suffused everything, made a background ache that threw all of the world sideways, into contrast. Even the colors had seemed to shift (but then Helen had often altered the world like that, to her).
Nikki's senses have enveloped her again, but it's not like before, at Larkhall. It's not vague. It's the clear complex trilling of a nightingale, a block or so away, singing to attract a mate. It's the clean halo of yellow light around the streetlamp on the other side of the garden wall, throwing crisp shadows over the stones, and the cold fingers of the breeze in the feathery hair on her temples. It's the tension in her muscles, gone earlier but returned when she'd woken up panicked, not knowing where she was, thinking someone was attacking her.
It's the padding of feet in the hallway, and the low creak of the back door opening. The feel of fingers in her hair, light over her skull; the wash of relief is immediate, the comfort of touch, and she closes her eyes. The smell of Helen surrounds her and she breathes deeply, instinctively. The shivering part in her begins to still.
A thumb runs down the side of her face to her jaw. Helen's voice when it comes is soft, rough. "Swee'heart, are you alright? It's cold."
The nightingale is still singing, warbles and trills and pipings, eep-eep-eep-eep. Such a loud voice for such a small creature. "It's too big," Nikki hears herself saying; "It's too big."
There's the rustle of Helen's pajamas, and a shift in the scent and the warmth of her as she moves closer, and the feel of her fingers sliding across the skin of Nikki's face to cup her cheek.
Helen's voice deepens, goes even softer, gently starts to pull the scattered shard of Nikki's self into a kind of focus. "What's too big?"
Her eyes still closed, to keep at least one sense quiet, Nikki feels herself make a helpless gesture with her hands. Everything. All of it. But she finds she can't speak. There's a tear sliding down the cheek Helen's touching.
"Shhh." There's Helen's breath, in her ear. "Shh." Helen's finger, brushing the wetness away. "It's alright, love. I'm here."
And she is. Oh, that voice. That voice, and those fingers, that body, righting the world, putting it back into its proper place.
Something shifts, and all of a sudden, Nikki comes back to herself. She's Nikki, she's Nikki Wade, and this is a bench in a garden in London with the open sky above it, and it is cold, and today she was released and she got back Helen, and her friends and her club and her life; and she knows herself again. The trilling of the bird recedes, resumes a normal volume as the world comes back into its proper focus. She reaches over and takes one of Helen's hands (small and warm in hers) and shakes her head and feels an embarrassed smile come across her features, and she opens her eyes and looks up into Helen's (concern and love, radiating even in the dim light of the hallway lamp, spilling out the back door).
"Sorry," Nikki says, "I woke up and I thought I was back in that place, and—"
Helen waits, but Nikki can't finish because there still aren't really any words, so after a moment Helen leans down again to kiss her temple and tug gently on her fingers. "Come on," she says, and Nikki gets up slowly, joints aching from sitting still so long in the cold. Helen takes her other hand and grimaces briefly at its chill before grinning, a little timidly but still putting on the charm. "I can't possibly sleep properly unless I've got your ice-cold feet in bed with me."
There's an open sky, above. Nikki can feel it. "Didn't know you had a foot fetish," she murmurs back to her lover (with gratitude, at the attempt to lighten the mood, at the offer to banter). Then she lets Helen pull her back into the house, lets Helen lead her once more to the bed, lets Helen (as she has so often, so crucially) move her on into the future.