Honey&Vinegar (S,H,T)

Stella withered as she followed Hazel. The bodyguard seemed frustrated with her, but the brunette could only guess as to why. She knew she… hadn’t exactly been easy to deal with in the last round, and given the loyalty she’d seen Hazel could be upset that the audience picked her over Helena. It’s possible there could be something else. But it’s not worth finding out what it is.

She was being escorted across the plaza, a short walk from the dining hall to the Stone Cottage. During breakfast Hel had asked her to meet to discuss a secret, and at the time it had seemed like a good way to pay her back for the dress she’d been gifted. But she’d spent the morning wondering what it was and now that it was actually coming, Stella wished she could back out.

“Go ahead.” Hazel opened the door to the Stone Cottage and gestured her in. Stella did as she was told and went in. It felt like she was going into a dungeon, though a surprisingly warm one. Hazel followed behind her as they went into the bedroom.

Helena felt far more normal than her girlfriend. She was sitting on the bed, her head in her hands. A manilla folder was next to her.

“Ready, Ma’am?” Hazel asked as she followed Stella in. The businesswoman realized that she’d been distracted and straightened her back, adopting a pleasant smile.

“Good afternoon, thank you for meeting me.” She sounded like she’d rehearsed it all morning.

If I hadn’t surprised her, I never would’ve known how nervous she was. I wish I could do that. “W-why did you want to see me? You said you had a secret you wanted my help with?”

“You could say that.” Helena agreed. “Why don't you sit down.”

Stella did as she was told.

“Hazel?” The redhead requested, raising the folder in the air. To help her avoid needing to crawl across the floor, her assistant stepped away from her post at the door to give it to their guest.

Stella looked down at the folder. “It has my name on it.”

“Yes, it does. I’m not a very trusting person, and so when my step-brother decided to start spending time around you, I decided to make sure that you weren’t dangerous or associated with anything dangerous. This is everything we found about you, and each of your interactions with Richard prior to our abduction. You don’t have to read it, but when Richard found out about the files he asked me to share them with everyone.”

Stella opened it, twisting at her brown hair to try to ease her nerves. It was sorted in a time based table of contents. It started from when she was born to when she was fourteen, then fourteen to twenty-nine, when Felicia invited Dick into the group. The fourth chapter was everything after that point to the present. The third chapter didn’t have a date attached like the others. Instead, it was titled Operation Flytrap.

“What’s Flytrap?” She asked, unsure whether she wanted to read it.

“Are you familiar with the Gisela Group?” Helena asked.

Stella shook her head.

Hel simply nodded, directing Hazel to explain. “They’re a mercenary group, composed of nearly all women. They advertise themselves as available for situations when the legal system cannot be relied upon. You may know them from their involvement in the revolution on San Seriffe a few years ago. I have a few friends among them, so in cases like Flytrap where Ms.Turner has needed more than I was capable of by myself, we’ve brought them in.”

“I’m sorry, I’m still not sure what Flytrap is. How am I involved with people like that?”

“Go ahead and read it if you have questions. I think that should start on page seventy-four.” Helena carefully suggested. “I want to warn you, this is the most **** thing I did in any of the files of the people on the island. If you decide that you don’t want to know, or if you read it and decide that you can’t forgive me, I understand either way.”

Stella continued to do what she was told, though she needed to take off her socks to make things easier. She flipped past report cards and a steady series of hospital visits. How did they get my medical records? She kept going, focusing on her concern about Flytrap, and found a police report that she hadn’t seen before. She needed to quickly move on to avoid crying.

Thankfully she was out of part one. She saw the documents from when her name had been changed and skimmed through one move she and her mother had taken after another, until she graduated high school. She hadn’t wanted to move that time, having received an acceptance letter from Ville des Saveurs Institute of Culinary Excellence. Her mother had been terrified to leave her alone, but Stella’s therapist had helped her come up with plans to keep safe to assuage Mom’s fears. She’d still demanded Stella carry a tracker and to be called at least twice a day, but studying under chef Fiero had been the first time she’d felt the terror calm for more than a few hours.

She kept going until she found a thinner folder, this one black, with a red and white angel on it. Opening that, she found another manilla envelope.

Sterling Shook, it read. Seeing it made her want to stop. If Hazel hadn’t been at the door, she would’ve ran. But since there was someone scary on both sides… she tried to trust Hel. “Wo-would you be able to tell me what it says in here? I don’t know if I can handle seeing him if there’s any pictures in here.”

Helena hesitated, then spoke. “I can explain Flytrap, from my point of view. If you want me to stop at any point, just give me any signal and I’ll stop. Again, I am sorry for what I am about to describe.”

“You can start if you want.”

“I found out about Sterling during our initial investigation of you. The fact that he spent only a year in prison and then was free to stalk you and your mother again was troubling to me. So I decided to try testing him, and see whether he had changed at all in the fourteen years since you had known him.

“I knew that if we were going to test him, it needed to be someone other than Hazel. So at my request, she reached out to the Gisela group. We explained the situation to them, and they were intrigued by your case. Their founder, Ann Brighton, offered to come out of retirement, and offered us a significant discount for their aid.

“Ms.Brighton, Hazel, and one of Gisela’s cyber specialists wove a trail for him to find. They made several fake social media pages with clear identifying details that he could use to track down the house that we had bought for the occasion. After spending six weeks developing Ms.Brighton's profile under your mother's name and what your mother might look like after fifteen years of aging, and establishing clear patterns of when she was or wasn’t home, he took the bait and drove to the house.

“We had the site ready, unlocked so he could let himself in if he chose to. We were hoping that if he was still the same man, then we would have enough evidence to have him sent back to prison. After the first time he hit her, she retaliated. He revealed a gun, and died at the end of a brief scuffle.”

Helena watched for Stella’s reaction. She’d been hoping to be interrupted. But Stella had been silent the whole time, a hand still in her magenta hair.

Finally, she spoke. “You killed my Dad?”

“Yes, and I can never apologize enough. I was hoping it would go differently, and if I’d known-”

She was interrupted by the other woman springing up and almost pinning her to the bed with the **** of the hug. “Thank you.”

“You’re…thanking me?”

“Of course. Mom and I have been trying to hide from him for years. You have no idea how many times she thought she saw him in a crowd and we had to move again. I guess you do know, since you have all of our old addresses. I-I don’t know what to say, other than thank you for stopping him. I just wish I could tell my Mom what you've done for us.”

Helena was trying to think. The room feels so warm. It’s like my head is underwater. Why am I thinking about Hazel right now? She tried to focus, unsure why she felt so distracted and hot.

“It was Hazel and her friends at Gisela that did most of the work. I just talked to Ms.Brighton about my concerns and paid for the mission.”

“Still, I can never thank you enough. I still see him in my nightmares."

“I’m sorry to hear that, You didn’t deserve someone who would inspire this sort of…relief at being gone.”

Stella finally let the mastermind go, still elated but unsure how to respond. Hel asked: “I don’t want to spoil your mood, but given how visceral your reaction was I wanted to ask since institutional reporting can be unreliable. Was there ever any sexual ****?”

Some of the color drained from Stella, leaving her with brown roots. “No. He beat us, but never anything sexual that I know of. He'd sometimes brag about not having done... the kinds of things you're talking about.” The color was still draining from her hair.

What's happening with it? “Stella. I know your hair color is part of your new transformation. How does it work?”

The chef looked up. “It changes pink when I’m particularly happy, or aroused.”

And I made it turn back with my question. Helena cocked her head, signaling for Hazel to step away from her post at the door. The bodyguard put a hand on the anxious woman’s shoulder, and she flinched.

“It happened, and you don’t need to be scared of him anymore. None of us expected to meet like this, but as part of his life you will always have our protection.”

“T-thank you both. I still can’t say enough how grateful I am.” Stella stood there, not responding as directly as she had when she was first thanking Hel.

From the bed, the redhead tried again to balance the situation. “If you’re feeling overwhelmed, would it help to talk about it with Luna? I know the two of you are close.”

Stella nodded. “I think it’d be good to talk to her about it after dinner, when she’s no longer busy. I know my words and my hair don’t really match right now, there’s just a lot of hard memories tied to Dad.

“I wanted to ask what might be a strange request?”

“I will do anything within my power.” Helena promised.

“It’s not as grand as you’re making it sound. I just wanted to see if I could use your bathroom to take a shower? I like to use it to calm down or when I’m having trouble sleeping, but my new room this round just has a bathtub, which doesn’t work for me the same way.”

“Of course. If you don’t want to go back to your room to get a change of clothes afterwards, you can dig through my closet.” Hel offered.

Stella nodded and left, leaving the two women alone. The water began running in the other room.

“I feel like it shouldn’t have gone that well.” Helena confessed now that they were alone. “I would’ve understood if Aubrey was thankful, but… that felt too easy."

Her girlfriend sat down next to her. “Luna recommended we start with her for a reason. Did you want her to be angry with you?”

“She had every right to be. I killed her father. That’s the worst thing that anyone can do.”

“He wasn’t a father to her. He was more like Gilles than your dad.” Hazel stroked her protectee's thigh, hoping that the sensation would help her see the truth.

“And I still want to see if Gilles can ever feel remorse. That’s why we kept him alive. I thought you understood that.” She sounded hurt.

“I’m sorry, Ma’am. I'm not saying that Gilles won't change.” She’ll never acknowledge that he likes who he is too much to change. “We had enough material to make sure Gilles was behind bars. We tried to capture Sterling the same way, but you know he was just too aggressive. Anna and I didn’t feel guilty afterwards, and you don’t need to either. Stella is going to be happier in the long term from knowing what happened. Her file says Stella Steward, not Stella Shook, for a reason.”

Helena was silent.

“Ma’am?”

“I wasn’t expecting Father Livingston to be such a big part of what I’d miss about home. It’s been too long since I’ve been able to go to confession.” Helena sighed.

I feel like I’m not the person to help at this point. When she starts feeling this kind of guilt that I can't relate to... “I want to check something for you quickly.” She got her phone out and shot out a message, barely needing a moment to get a response. “I know it’s not the same, but Maeve agreed to hear whatever you wanted to talk about tomorrow. Until then, I want to keep you busy. Tomorrow morning we can check in with your step-brother before tennis. We can go to the gun range now to give Miss Steward some privacy, I know you wanted to try my new gun from the navy girl?” She waited again for any sort of response. "Dr.Petrov should be able to give a fair judgement on what you did, if you want someone to give you an objective view. If I'm wrong and we hurt Stella, then I'll be there to help you support her like we've done for Aubrey."

“I don’t know what I’d do without you.” Her partner went in for a hug, which became a kiss, which became several kisses and might have become more until they remembered that Stella could come out of the bathroom at any time.

Still inches from her, Hazel kissed her one more time before standing up. “You’ll never need to find out. I’ll be right back with your leash.”