Oh god I sound like some lovestruck school girl.
Who: Asami and Helena What: Supporting Helena, Asami being cute when she's in love When: Recently Where: Workshop Status: Complete Rating: PG
At the moment, Helena wasn’t working on a new idea for an invention. She didn’t have one at the moment at all, actually. Instead, she was simply taking apart a Roomba, identifying where she could improve it and was making such adjustments and additions. Doing this was more about letting her brain process other things.
Mostly it was Christina hitting puberty, and her twelfth birthday was just under two months away, that was causing her some distress. She wasn’t completely certain how to handle the upcoming issues of dating and sex and other such things. In this, she didn’t have dream experience to draw from given Christina had died when she was eight.
A coil snapped and it narrowly missed hitting Helena in the face. “Oh bollocks,” she cursed. She set her tools down and got up to track down the wayward coil that was rolling along the floor.
They hadn’t had one of their engineering sprees in awhile, so Asami was glad to see Helena there. She was in a fantastic mood - being in love did that to her and everything was, so far, going great. She was humming to herself as she worked on a new iteration of her glider suit, looking up when Helena cursed. “Everything okay over there?”
Grabbing the spring, she stood up and took a deep breath. “Yeah, a coil snapped is all.” Which yes, such things did happen, but it didn’t happen very often. It was also probably telling that Helena wasn’t actually working on an original project of hers and that she was instead working on a Roomba.
“Are you going to soup that up?” Asami asked. “Turn it into a droid?”
Roomba-D2.
She came over, sensing there was more going on, and leaned on the work table. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Helena gave a little half-chuckle as she set the coil back on her worktable. “No, I was simply improving its ability to vacuum.” There were no grand plans for the thing beyond that. She ran a hand through her hair and took a deep breath.
“My daughter. Let us say puberty has hit and I’m having a crisis on the matter.” Was this how all parents felt sooner or later?
Well, that was something outside of Asami’s wheelhouse. She smiled reassuringly, though, “Because she’s getting older now? Or because you’re not at all prepared for all that puberty entails?”
“Both. Also maybe just a bit of the dreams rubbing off as well. I mean, Christina died when she was eight in them, and sometimes I wonder if she’ll die young here as well.” And given just how frequent students were shot and killed in schools in this country? Helena was way more than a little petrified about it becoming a reality. And she knew she couldn’t recover from such a loss, even with Harley’s help. Losing Christina in both lives would devastate her beyond belief.
She’d had four extra years, which wasn’t nothing, but no parent should outlive their child. Asami felt a pain in her chest - her father had died in her dreams and would likely die in prison, neither of which sat well with her, no matter how angry he made her.
“You’re protecting her as best you can.”
“I do what I can.” So long as Christina avoided going to Paris for...the rest of Helena’s life, things would be okay. If Christina ever wanted to go to Paris, Helena was certain that would kill her. And she’d make Harley go with her because she couldn’t set foot in that city ever again.
“Just don’t get to thinking about things too much, Helena, you’ll get into this feedback loop that’s really hard to break out of.” Asami squeezed her shoulder. “Believe me. You’ve got this beautiful wife, this beautiful daughter. Everything is wonderful, and beautiful.”
And redundant apparently.
“I do. And I do what I can to not take them for granted.” Helena said with a smile. She ensured to enjoy the present with her wife and daughter as much as possible. Of course, over-thinking was Helena’s downfall when she was given enough time to do so.
“Though I must say, you are in a rather good mood today, Asami.” Despite her somewhat distracted mind, Helena had noticed Asami’s mood.
“I love watching you with them.” Asami grinned, flushing a little bit. “Uhm. Things are really good on my end. With Lena. And things.” She pushed her hair over her shoulder. “I’ve always been a little terrified of how quickly we clicked, but it’s only gotten stronger since we got back together.”
“Thank you,” Helena responded with a smile. She was proud of her family, and she loved them dearly. Her smile only widened as Asami spoke about Lena. “I am very happy for you, and that things are working out. Sometimes you can’t help how quickly you become attached to someone else. When you meet the right people, sometimes it just clicks into place like that.”
“I keep thinking, this is new, it’ll pass, the feelings will calm down, and then they don’t.” Asami fidged with the edge of the work table. “It’s really complicated, considering we’re competitors. I’d usually… use my business for something that would help her, but I can’t do that.”
“Perhaps being competitors helps fuel your feelings for her. In business you strive to outdo each other, see how the other reacts to what’s happening in the world of technology. You see that other side of each other.” Helena spoke from experience. It was part of what had attracted her to Myka initially. Myka had viewed her as the villain at first, and Helena had rather enjoyed seeing how Myka tried to counter her, even after they’d become friendly with each other.
“What happens if we want to get married?”
Asami clapped her hand over her mouth. She hadn’t mean to say that out loud, she hadn’t meant to even think that. “Oh god I sound like some lovestruck school girl.”
Still, she did enjoy the rivalry, the trying to outdo each other. And the times they could work together.
Helena only barely contained a laugh at Asami’s reaction to her own question. Though it took biting the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing.
“To be honest, you kind of are a lovestruck school girl, and I mean that in the nicest way possible.” She said with a grin. “If it comes to you both wishing to get married, you could always do it secretly. There are ways of keeping such things out of the press if you are discreet enough.”
“I’m not THAT young.” Asami pretended like she was offended, but she wasn’t really. “I don’t know. But I’m going to sue Skeeter out of existence before I take that chance.”
But now that she’d said it, she was thinking about it. Oh, it was too soon, but she liked the idea, as an eventually.
Lena could propose they elope and she’d probably go along with it, though. But Lena was a planner and if she ever did that Asami was pretty sure she’d have spent the preceding six months planning out the ‘sudden’ elopement down to every last detail.
“I love her, though.”
“You can be over one hundred years old and still act like a schoolgirl in love, you know.” Helena winked. She had her own moments of such things. And she was well over a hundred years old. Or her dream self was. Some days she felt just as old as her dream self was.
“I am very happy for you, Asami.” Helena said with a warm smile. She set a hand on her shoulder and squeezed it gently. “You deserve to be happy.”
“You’re looking very good for a centenarian,” Asami joked. And she’d had the personal experience to back that up. She’d never quite understand Harley and Helena’s marriage, but they’d been there at a point in her life when she’d been feeling very down and very lonely. She was grateful for the experience, even if she’d prefer to keep Lena to herself.
“Why thank you. Not everyone will look this good at my ripe old age of one hundred and fifty-one.” Helena chuckled. She definitely didn’t regret what she and Asami had had before she’d met Lena. But she had backed off when she’d noticed Asami had become smitten, and she respected that. Besides, she wanted to keep Asami’s friendship. That meant more to her than a sexual relationship with her.
Deciding Helena needed more distraction from worried about her daugher, Asami pointed at the Roomba, “What if we turned that into one of those fighting robots?”
Because if anyone could do it, they could.
Helena glanced at the Roomba, then looked back at Asami. “You mean the fighting robots with the heads that pop up when they’re hit?” That would take quite a bit of work, but it was definitely something that they could definitely do.
“Not exactly.” Asami pulled out her phone and googled up a youtube video. “Here, it’s called Robot Wars.”
Leaning in, she watched the video and now understood what Asami meant. “Ah! Yes, I think we could certainly do that. I promise to not put a heat ray on it.” She said with a chuckle. As much as sticking a heat ray on it would be awesome, Helena wasn’t going to go that far with it.
“A heat ray isn’t technically on the banned list,” Asami said. “Some of them have flame throwers.”
“Oh really? Well, might have to try something then. It’s not exactly fun if we build something we’ve already done before.” But there were other types of weapons and such they could build into the robot.
Asami regarded the little Roomba for a moment, “Okay Stabby. Lets see if we can’t bend engineering ethics just a little bit. For fun.”