#zipps director's cute

[performativezippers]

You have no idea how much I absolutely love this line, so please tell me everything

“You can share him with her,” Helena says softly, a raw edge of pain in her voice that comes up infrequently enough that it makes Kate forget her own shame for a moment. “I promise, you can, darling. It’ll be worth it, if you really like her the way I think you do.”

A lot of people mentioned this line to me, and I'm not sure I have anything interesting to say about it from a craft/creation perspective. I don't remember even thinking about it, it just flowed out.

But in general, I love thinking about Kate being like, "this is something no one knows and no one can know, i am unknowable" and Helena being like "with all due respect, bitch PLEASE!!"

Canon Helena talks about Christina quite quickly in relationships. She tells Claudia like their first or second time working together? Like obviously Canon Helena is keeping some Quite Large and Important Secrets that season, right, but this is not one of them. She's willing to talk about Christina, to show Myka her picture, to talk about what she did to the men who killed her. I don't think AU Helena would be different in this case. I think she tells people about Noah, if he comes up.

Not that I think loss of boyfriend can be compared to loss of child, or even loss of beloved brother, but she's kind of like, "Kate, babe, I've created a disclosure roadmap for you here, and so why the fuck are you off-roading in this other direction?"

It's not so painful for Helena to talk about him. It's painful to have lost him, but telling people isn't part of that for her, and I think she wants Kate to get there too, to realize that sharing his loss doesn't increase it. It might even be that pain shared is pain halved.

And I think she also realizes that Kate is a dumb, fence-sitting coward who will hide behind her secrets to push Lucy away, and Helena wants better than that for her.