packapunch | (no subject)

It isn't that she's here. It's that she's back. Even if she hadn't already had these niggling, bone-rattling feelings of déjà vu, the signs are everywhere. There's even a photo of her and Neil, beaming like total fucking dorks, in a frame that she remembers buying.

It's been coming back to her in bits and pieces, like a puzzle filling itself in.

There's a girl here. Her friend. Gwen can see her dark hair and the curve of her nose. She can see a forest of umbrellas in front of a lake. A van lifted from the water, but that isn't Darrow, that's a dream. For a moment, those memories overlap Camp Alpine memories — a metal barrel, a forest of pine overlooking the frozen lake it's been hiding in — and Gwen isn't sure if she's sobbing or laughing when she realizes how similar their lives ended up being after all.

Hilde. That's her name. The more Gwen thinks about her, the clearer she gets. Hilde and Gwenny, they'd been inseparable with their naturally rhyming names. Gwen's been walking the city all afternoon, trying to find more of those puzzle pieces, and her feet start taking her towards the Children's Home like it's instinct. She stops short, though, and frowns up at the street sign, then turns and instead starts walking a different route.

This is right, she thinks. Hilde doesn't live at the Home anymore. She lives with...

Gwen doesn't even want to say the name. She doesn't have a problem with this Bill, but the name still sits sour on her tongue. Still, she goes there, keeping her left hand in her pocket so she doesn't have to swing it too much. The stitches are still a little numb, but she doesn't need to make it any worse.

Well, any worse than she already is by wandering the city instead of resting with her arm pillowed beside her. She just couldn't sit still. Not knowing what she knows, not feeling what she feels. Maybe that's a character flaw, but she isn't going to worry about that right now.

Right now, she's looking up at a townhouse door, stepping up to ring the bell. She feels nervous, but it isn't totally a bad feeling.

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Hilde has spent the two-point-five days since Thanksgiving in a haze of schoolwork. It isn't how she would have preferred to spend a holiday weekend, but American Thanksgiving, as she's been reminded by several impatient teachers, isn't considered a holiday here, and high school waits for no woman. She's already gotten an extension on this particular science project, anyway, the stipulation being that it has to be in at the start of class on Monday before her grade will get dinged for it. She would rather avoid that if she can. There's been too much upheaval this year already. Bill has been nothing short of amazing, but some voice in the back of her head says that she doesn't want to disappoint him. Her grades tanking seems likely to accomplish only that.

So she's at least making something of an effort, even if she would rather be working on book edits or article research than anything remotely pertaining to science. After Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday night, she'd hugged Gwen and said she'd get in touch before the weekend's over. She hasn't actually done so yet, having only recently put her schoolwork away and emerged into the kitchen for a snack and a drink — which is what makes it so surprising when she goes to answer the door after the bell rings and sees Gwenny standing there.

Part of what makes it so surprising, anyway. That she didn't call or text first is also on that list. The way she looks is another. Sometimes Hilde can't stop the analytical part of her brain, and though she smiles instinctively to see her friend, there's a moment where her photographic memory goes into overdrive, cataloging things that seem different. Gwen's hair is the obvious one, but this is something more than a haircut. There's new stiffness in the way she holds her left arm, and a few inches of height that don't seem to be the result of shoes. She can't quite pinpoint it, but she also isn't going to hyper-fixate (at least not yet).

"Hey, I didn't know you were coming by," she says, stepping aside to let her friend in. "I was seriously just about to text you. ...Is everything okay?"

"Hilde," she says, not in greeting, but like she's testing her own knowledge. Now that she sees her face, though, Gwen knows that's her. Her best friend. Better than Suzie, maybe even better than Ernie — though maybe that's a little like apples and oranges.

She steps inside, watching Hilde'a face. Unlike Neil, Hilde isn't trying to hide surprise or hope or pain. She just has that smile on her face, maybe the tiniest bit of confusion and a little concern, too.

She didn't know.

The Gwen from three days ago might have been offended by that, but the Gwen standing here today isn't. She's relieved. Hilde wasn't missing her, wasn't crying or trying to figure out whether to grieve or not. She was blessedly unaware.

"There's something I need to tell you," she says.