The Eighth Year

By Shahrezad1

Summary: "It looked like it was going to be a long semester."-Arnold "All the privilege I claim for my own sex is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone." –(Persuasion)

Disclaimer: Don't own, don't sue. =D Do you really think Helga would allow herself to be "owned," anyway?

~/~/~

Intro to Theater. Arnold sighed in exasperation as he pulled out his printed schedule, verifying the room. BS106. Held in the Business Building of Hillwood Community College, he was familiar with both the door and its surrounding entrances. As a Business major, this building was his base of operations. Nevertheless, this room had always seemed to fall out of his ken. Until truth, in the form of a required Fine Arts credit, had woken him up.

And now here he was. Taking a deep breath, he slowly entered the room. Okay, nothing so far. An entryway, with either a right or left path. Mentally flipping a coin, he took the left-hand side only to freeze. Class was being held in an amphitheater. A brilliantly orange, slightly musty amphitheater, but an amphitheater nonetheless. Slinging his backpack over one shoulder as a warrior would a quiver of arrows, he entered the fray.

Of the occupants within, half were clearly there out of choice and the rest by necessity only. A flash of pink caught his eye and the college student followed it on automatic to a seat in the back. The pink revealed itself to be an unassuming Coed absorbed in a book. He allowed himself a healthy distance of two seats between them before collapsing into the creaking theater chair, arm scrambling behind him for a few minutes until he'd managed to pull the attached table forward.

The blonde Coed looked up not once in his shifting and rustling, focused as she was on her novel. He snuck a quick peek at the title and nearly groaned. Persuasion, by Jane Austen. It looked like it was going to be a long semester if his seatmate was as much of a bookworm as she seemed. That wasn't to say he didn't like novels, or even plays, himself. Nor was he unfamiliar with Ms. Austin's work. He just found that time passed more pleasantly with someone to talk to.

Just as he was preparing to interrupt her focus with an introduction, the sound of a cane tapping down the aisles caused the room to fall silent.

Ignoring the 'classroom' and its inhabitants with a forceful intensity, the stern figure began writing furiously upon the chalkboard presented upon the stage until his name filled its center. Dr. Augustus Bane. Curse of the College's existence.

Biting back a groan as recalled the teacher that had been assigned when he'd web-registered weeks ago. 'Staff,' it had said at the time. If only he'd known then what he was getting himself into then.

"This is Intro to Theater," the imposingly built, heavily mustached man began abruptly, interrupting his students' sudden commiseration. Even those that had been looking forward to the class, their clothing marking them as one or another variety of theater, literature, or art majors, were immediately bowing under the realization of just what they'd signed up for. And Arnold knew without a doubt that half the class would be dropping it before the week was out, "if this is not the class you signed up for, please leave-you're probably late for your real class. No one is going? Good, that means we can begin," he limped over to the briefcase propped on the podium counter and popped it open with a deft click.

"As written on the board, my name is Doctor Augustus Bane, and I am a professor of music therapy, public speaking, and ballet. I will be your teacher for the course of this semester. Now," the elderly teacher paused with a click of his cane, finally turning to face the auditorium with a distinctly grim frown, "here is the syllabus. It will tell you exactly what supplies are needed, and the expectations I will hold you to. Including participation in class productions, performance attendance, and extra credit. Note this; there is no extra credit. Understood? Good."

The papers began shuffling around through each row before they finally reached Arnold's position in the back. By the time it got to them there was only one remaining, and he slid it onto his companion's desk with a sigh, leaving his own hands empty.

"Over the course of this class much will be expected of you. Including several monologues, dialogues, and famous speeches. Your grade for these will rely on your understanding of the material as well as your ability to communicate what the original speakers were trying to convey," he stopped abruptly and in the silence a malicious smile grew, "now turn toward the person next to you."

Shrugging, Arnold shifted to his right and the oblivious girl in pink.

"Thank you. That person is to be your partner for the semester."

Gasps and guffaws sounded across the room, and wide-eyed, Arnold watched the Coed slowly come to an awareness of sound and movement.

"They will help you practice, they will be your dialogue partner, they will be glued to your hip. Now, spend the next ten minutes getting acquainted."

The young man sighed at the plight he'd found himself in before deciding to let it go, hand stretched out for her to shake.

~/~/~

Helga had barely gotten to class on time, much less to school at all that morning, and all because of that…accursed novel! Bestowed on her as a belated birthday gift from Phoebe, she'd been glued to the silly thing from the very first page.

At first she hadn't understood Pheeb's intention behind the slim volume, her usual gift-giving typically consisting of leather-bound pink books and the odd purple pen. But once she'd begun…

"For one daughter, his eldest, he would really have given up any thing, which he had not been very much tempted to do. Elizabeth had succeeded at sixteen, to all that was possible, of her mother's rights and consequence; and being very handsome, and very like himself, her influence had always been great, and they had gone on together most happily. His two other children were of very inferior value.

…Anne, with an elegance of mind and sweetness of character, which must have placed her high with any people of real understanding, was nobody with either father or sister: her word had no weight; her convenience was always to give way;-she was only Anne."

It was like reliving everything. The pain and the longing and all the sorrow of lost chances. Then the sweetest of reconciliations, coming to an end that was the culmination of all her childhood dreams and adult wishes.

"She knew that when she played she was giving pleasure only to herself; but this was no new sensation: excepting one short period of her life, she had never, since the age of fourteen, never since the loss of her dear mother, known the happiness of being listened to, or encouraged by any just appreciation or real taste."

"Your grade for these will rely on your understanding of the material as well as your ability to communicate what the original speakers were trying to convey."

"Eight years, almost eight years had passed, since all had been given up. How absurd to be resuming the agitation which such an interval had banished into distance and indistinctness!...No; the years which had destroyed her youth and bloom had only given him a more glowing, manly, open look, in no respect lessening his personal advantages.

…There could have been no two hearts so open, no tastes so similar, no feelings so in unison, no countenances so beloved. Now they were as strangers; nay, worse than strangers, for they could never become acquainted. It was a perpetual estrangement."

"…now turn toward the person next to you."

"All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one, you need not covet it) is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone."

Movement stirred to her left, a mix of blonde hair and a dark blue sweater. She could tell that the figure was about so say something or maybe interrupt, but ignored it the way she ignored every other pest which invaded her life.

"I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own, than when you almost broke it eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant."

"Thank you."

"The disproportion in their fortune was nothing; it did not give her a moment's regret; but to have no family to receive and estimate him properly; nothing of respectability, of harmony, of goodwill to offer in return for all the worth and all the prompt welcome which met her in his brothers and sisters, was a source of as lively pain as her mind could well be sensible of, under circumstances of otherwise strong felicity…"

"That person is to be your partner for the semester."

"…Anne was tenderness itself, and she had the full worth of it in Captain Wentworth's affection. His profession was all that could ever make her friends wish that tenderness less; the dread of a future war all that could dim her sunshine."

And so it ends, Helga thought to herself among the shuffle of her peers. The reality of where she was sitting, not in the past but in the cold, metallic world of 2010's was almost surreal as her senses first took in her environment, then what she'd missed. The other students were groaning over something but she couldn't tell what, until-

"They will help you practice, they will be your dialogue partner, they will be glued to your hip. Now, spend the next ten minutes getting acquainted."

Wait, what? Dialogue partner? What was he…wait, it was 11:00 AM, making this her Intro to Theater class. Meaning that when the man she assumed was the teacher said 'partner,' he really meant…

A wide hand entered her line of sight, causing her eyes to widen.

"Hi. I'm Arnold Sh-," a sudden bark of laughter in front of them interrupted the introduction, but she didn't need to hear the rest for her blood to run cold. And not just from the over-air-conditioned theater. Time seemed to almost slow down as the world turned and her head went with it, long ponytail falling over Helga's opposite shoulder with more force than she would have expected for a time-delayed moment. Blue eyes fell as wide as the Pacific and Atlantic oceans combined, and for once in her life she, Helga G. Pataki, honestly had nothing to say.

Nothing as the seconds crawled by and her seatmate continued to curiously hold out his hand. But the confusion on his oblong head oh-so-very simply shifted from that emotion to another, like the colors in a sunrise, knowledge slowly dawning. It became recognition and familiarity and, when the girl continued to stare, open-mouthed, it flickered into shock. Then, of all things, amazement.

"…Helga? Helga Pataki?"

"Arnold?"

Hoo, boy. So much for reality…

~/~/~

AN:

Found half of this when I was cleaning out some baggage from the first visit I made to Montana over two years ago. You'd be surprised what you find in your own pockets. Especially fanfiction that's sketched out on both sides of a paper towel, since I was out of paper at the time. XD –wiggles eyebrows-

Also, Persuasion is my favorite of all Jane Austen's writings. It and Northanger Abbey were the last ones she wrote before she died and were published posthumously. It's a hard read but a short one, and you almost have to go over each passage twice to understand all the nuances of her conversation. But it's just the sweetest, most heart-rending love story I've ever read. And the (older) movie really does it justice. I love that story. –sighs- And I figure Helga would appreciate it. Especially given all the similarities to her own life. ^^;

Sorry about the heavy quoting, by the way. I just kinda…skimmed through and found all my favorite parts and descriptions. Yep.

And yes, they quote it in "Lake House. " ;)