Reconciled Acquainted

by CarlinJ83

Helga Pataki is at the top of her game, being fresh out of college, logical and busy at work; now grown up confident and successful despite her early childhood. Believing she has it all until she meets a familiar face. Will the old feelings surface. All rewritten.

AN: Hello fellow writers and readers, I'm sorry about the story that i keep rewriting it over and over. I'm just struggling on Helga's occupation. But Helga is a mult-Tasker, so if you stick with me, I think this time will work anyhow thank you for putting up with me:)

Love

C

XOXO

Summary: Helga Pataki is at the top of her game, being fresh out of college, logical and busy at work; now grown up confident and successful despite her early childhood. Believing she has it all until she meets a familiar face. Will the old feelings surface. All rewritten.

Reconciled Acquaintance

Chapter 1

BEEP-BA-BEEP.

"Son of a bitch."

Helga cursed as she tossed and turned in bed, restless, in and out of sleep. She jerked awake to her alarm blaring, the pounding of her heart rattling her ribs like the bars of a cage. Despite every effort Helga had made, she failed to prevent what was to come. Her gaze probed the darkness, landing on a dresser, a chair, empty pillow, the familiarity of her surroundings slowly penetrating her half-asleep state. The lonely clock on the kitchen wall ticked louder and louder as the minutes passed. It should be a crime to have to get up before six o'clock in the morning. Eight more minutes is all you get, losing seconds, minutes, hours. She mumbled into her pillow, talking to herself in frustration as she smacked the snooze button on her phone.

Beep-ba-beep.

Eight minutes was not nearly long enough. It felt more like two. The morning came earlier than Helga expected. She'd never liked mornings. And, okay, fine, it was safe to say, Helga wasn't a morning person, but this was one of those rare days when it was necessary that she got up at the ass-crack of dawn. The worst time of the day as far as Helga was concerned.

But it was a necessary evil, because unlike…nobody…She didn't crawl out of bed looking like a supermodel. That shit didn't really happen. To anyone. She stirred without opening her eyes. Helga rolled onto her stomach and kicked the comforter off her bed and onto the floor.

Getting rid of my warm cocoon was the only way to ensure she wouldn't snuggle down again and ignore the annoying beep-ba-beep that was supposed to be a signal to get her happy ass out of bed. Of course, she still closed her eyes. That's what snooze buttons were for, right?

Beep-ba-beep.

"Craaaaaap!" She was jarred awake by that annoying sound once again, but this time procrastination was not her friend. A few hours later and it felt like she had just fallen asleep. That wasn't anything new, though. Getting more than six hours of sleep had become a luxury. Helga rolled over, allowing her arm to fall onto the mattress beside her.

She snuggled in deeper, not opening her eyes, blankets, soft against her skin. Sleep beckoned her back into its arms as something foreign tiptoed across her mind. It called to her like whispers on the wind. A shadowy sound called to her again and again, rousing her too early from her slumber. The sound of birds chirping causes me to stir, so Helga pulled the quilt around her, not even bothering to open her eyes and doing her best to ignore the sounds of morning. A couple hours of sleep is not enough to live on… good thing she had no life. Helga merely needed to function until she makes it through finals, she reminded herself as her body relaxes back into a dreamlike state.

The haze of sleep was eager to claim her once more and she was more than happy to comply when an unearthly roar filled her room terrifying her wide-awake. Once again, she's cocooned in her bed, hoping with all her might there's no photographic evidence. It was Monday morning again and the beginning of a new week. A retching sound drifts through her bedroom.

Between the blaring of police sirens, honking horns, and banging garbage trucks. Slowly the noise began to fade away, and her eyes slid shut. With her head buried under her pillow, about to go into overkill, as she awoke to the annoying sounds going on outside. She leaped out of her once cozy bed, whipping her head to face the window, chest heaving. It's the most revolting sound. What is that sound?

The sound could only be described as a jackhammer, but what the hell would anyone need that kind of machinery for first thing in the morning. And then the penetrating ringing noise from the alarm clock that woke her up too soon. She groaned and covered her ears with her pillow, silently begging the ungodly noises from the streets below, to shut it.

All the disadvantages when it comes to living in the city. Her body had slowly acclimated from the fast pace and a sense of urgency she experienced in the city to the slower, quieter rhythm. The echoes reverberated in the still night. She thrilled to the sound, so different from what she was accustomed to. New York hums with a frenetic energy.

She loved this city, its buoyancy and the constant whirr of life more than Helga ever thought possible. Others might see the grit and grime, but when the sun bounces back from the skyscrapers, she's seen the rainbows. To Helga, this island belongs to dreamers.

New York City is nothing more than a shit-filled wasteland, a dump where failures are forced to drop all their broken dreams and leave them far behind. The flashing lights that shined brightly years ago have lost their luster, and that fresh feeling that once permeated the air—that hopefulness, is long gone. Frustrating and downright torture some days. The agony and it was bittersweet music to any tortured soul's ears.

Groaning, Helga rolled onto her side lifting a sleepy hand to her nightstand and fumbled around, almost tempted to hit the snooze for the third time and put her pillow over her head. Reaching over to silence the god-awful beeping and knocked it over in the process. Gazing at the clock to see what time it is, as it read 5:30 am;

Let's talk about five A.M. For a second. Also known as the worst hour of the day, was she right? Here's why: If you're awake to see five in the freaking morning, it means one of a few things, all of them heinous.

Scenario one: You're on your way to the airport for an early morning flight. Heinous.

Scenario two: You've been out all night, and now your vodka buzz is fading, and you're just sober enough to realize that the rest of your day will likely involve Excedrin, carbs, and indoor voices. Heinous.

Scenario three: You've got a crap-ton on your mind, and you're lying awake in bed, staring at the ceiling, hating your life. Maybe hating yourself a little bit, I dunno, who am I to judge? Heinous.

Now brace yourself, because scenario four is the most heinous of them all: You're awake at five A.M. Because you're an uptight prick whose schedule is even more rigid than your posture, and your life is an endless string of working out, the corner office, repeat. You're also likely the type of person who subsists on protein shakes and kale smoothies, and you have been known to utter the phrase the body is a temple, thus solidifying what we already knew about you.

You have no friends. But wait, she's getting ahead of herself. See, it's five A.M., and she, Helga G Pataki, am. . . Kind of excited about it. She lays there, snuggled in amongst her cozy down pillows, blinking, rousing. Allowing herself these first, and last, a few seconds of the day that she could call her own.

Giving herself time to gather her thoughts. The delicate chirps drift to chiming, and Helga squeezed her eyes shut so tightly, in fact, it's possible that she popped a blood vessel. No! It can't be time to get up! Sliding her phone under her pillow, Helga rolled over, attempting to ignore the digital sound reminding me that time waits for no one.

Helga has hit rock-bottom. When what should have been her happiest moment turned out to be anything but, it sent her plummeting. Sometimes things aren't as perfect as they seem…What do you do when your world falls apart? Helga's spent her life, putting on a good face. Looking for the positive in the light of all the negative in her world.

She had her life all planned out. Helga is a hard-core planner, and she doesn't care who knows it. She believes in schedules, routines, Washi-tape-covered calendars, bulleted lists in graph-paper journals, and best-laid plans. The kind of plans that don't go awry, because they're made with careful consideration of all possibilities and outcomes. No winging it, no playing things by ear. That's how disasters happen.

But not for Helga. She makes blueprints for her life and stick to them. She's in charge of writing columns for a world renown magazine. Helga is logical. And busy. She spends her days writing about romance and love. Only she doesn't believe in it herself. Happy ever after…nah. It only exists in books and movies. And earning her law degree, she has already devoted her life to working.

The kind of work that is worthwhile to help others. She calculated at three hours and forty-five minutes, after which, she knew her life would be forever changed - more so than it already had. She could barely hear herself think over the deafening buzz in the room. So much was going on. Helga G. Pataki never thought she'd be a nurturer.

Growing up in a dysfunctional family ingrained that into her personality early on. She feels obligated to do anything she can for anyone, whether it's in her personal life or her career. Helga has always wanted to make her own mark in the world, regardless of the money behind her name. Her choice in men has left her heartbroken more times than she cares to admit. Helga wasn't meant to feel anxious. Today of all days, she wasn't meant to feel like this impending doom lurked in the distance, ready to strike and attack whatever semblance of peace in her life. But as the days neared to the day of the year when I was born, the more Helga felt this needle taunting the bubble of peace she was wrapped in.

Dangling its point towards me and as the days continued to pass, the more I could feel the bubble nearing its inevitable pop. But her anxiousness for doom didn't really make sense. Suddenly, it felt like the weight of the world crashed on her shoulders and she was pinned down to the ground. The warring of emotions inside of her made her feel like she was caught up in a whirlwind of hate and love. But which was overpowering the other?

Only time would tell. They say that you never know the exact minute your life has changed; that circumstances and situations happen and one day you wake up and you just feel differently. It's meant to be gradual—a shift in your life is like the rotation of the sun, it happens so slowly that you barely know it's happening.

That's not how it happened to her. She knows the exact time and day that her life changed. Helga couldn't pretend that her life hadn't changed. The dream was as familiar as always, but that didn't keep my heart from practically beating out of her chest from the anticipation of seeing him again. The bright moonlight overhead and the lights from the amusement park in the distance provided just enough light to see him waiting for her. She couldn't help the smile that tugged at the corner of her mouth as she slowly walked toward him. The hard-packed wet sand crunched under her bare feet as she walked along the tide line.

Helga couldn't pretend that her life hadn't changed. The dream was as familiar as always, but that didn't keep my heart from practically beating out of her chest from the anticipation of seeing him again. The bright moonlight overhead and the lights from the amusement park in the distance provided just enough light to see him waiting for her. She couldn't help the smile that tugged at the corner of her mouth as she slowly walked toward him. The hard-packed wet sand crunched under her bare feet as she walked along the tide line.

She could feel the cold water lapping over the top of her feet, reaching her ankles. The fact that she has never seen his face didn't diminish the intimacy that has blossomed from the many nights we have spent together. There was a subtle, cool breeze off the ocean that might have chilled me if not for his warm embrace that comforted her like a down blanket on a cold winter night. Helga hoped against that the new twist of the dreams was a fluke, and that tonight would be different. She felt his fingers tighter around hers, and she tried with every bit of strength she had to hold on, but the invisible force yanked him away like a kite in the wind, and in an instant, he was gone. She woke to a damp pillow from the tears she had shed while dreaming.

The dream had changed over the last few years, and she could hardly control the sorrow that filled her when she'd awakened. Helga didn't understand why, after dreaming about him her whole life, the dreams were now different. What was this mysterious force that suddenly pulled him away, leaving her all alone in the darkness? As she sat up and brushed away the wet blonde strands of hair that was stuck to the moisture on her face. Long-forgotten memories infiltrated her brain.

Glancing at the alarm clock beside her bed, she was dismayed to see that dawn was just minutes away. But she also couldn't bring herself to regret the irrevocable consequences that forever changed her. She learned the true meaning of selflessness and what it meant to love someone so much you'd give up everything for them.

She finally understood what it meant to sacrifice your own heart, just to allow another to beat. One night. One stupid decision. And the most precious of consequences. 10 seconds. That's how long it took for her world to fall apart. 10 agonizing seconds.

Some people say that your life can change in a moment. It can be faster than a blink of the eye. One second, everything is fine—you're going along your merry way, satisfied in the minutiae of your life; even if you're not exactly pumped or overwhelmed, you still exist. Your heart still pumps and your brain keep thinking and you just continue as you are. That state of mind can also be known as barely existing.

Because that is what it is for most of us. But any kind of existing gives us peace of mind. Well, that peace of mind can disappear in a second. Or 10 seconds. Helga knows that now. Sometimes everything you've ever thought was important can disappear in a moment. And then your very existence calls into question.

Sometimes we choose our path. Sometimes the path is created for us, and we can only follow. There has to be a corollary scientific relationship between being genetically blessed and acting like an asshole. Sometimes Helga wondered if there are some memories the mind doesn't want to deal with and that if it wants to, it can block out the images, shut down, numb the pain connected to what we saw—what we didn't want to see.

If we allow it to, the numbness can drown out everything, even the spark of life inside us. And eventually, the person we once were is nothing but a vanishing memory. She didn't always use to think this way. She used to have hope. She used to believe in things. Like when her father told her if she wanted something bad enough that she could make it happen.

Sometimes she hated the girl she was back then. It's like how, when you see a horror movie, you can't help but feel contempt for the virgin who goes for a walk in the woods after midnight. How can she be so stupid? Doesn't she know she's about to get gruesomely hacked to death? She should know. That's why it's so hard to watch.

Because you want her to know. You want her to defend herself, and you look down on her for not knowing, even though it's the guy who hacks her up who's at fault. The thing is, the movie makes him seem like a force of nature—unstoppable—so the virgin comes off as a total dumbass for not checking the forecast to see if it calls for serial murder before she skips off into the night. Okay, maybe that was her fault.

Maybe she's too jumpy, too untrusting. The thing is, once something bad happens, there's no way to undo it. There's no erasing button on life. She can't just click the delete key and start over. Few things trigger old memories so quickly as authority figures from our youth. She's not saying those memories are necessarily good ones; they're simply old and tend to cast us back into the roles we thought we grew out of long ago. Sometimes the memories are warm and blanket us like a mother's love. More often, however, they have the sting of hoar frost, which bites at first, than numbs and settles in the bones for a deep, extended chill. The ancient man who was pushing himself up into a sitting position in front of me triggered very few memories of the warm sort.

Apart from being brilliant and magically gifted, her Archdruid had frequently been abused and had made few friends during his life—a life that, until recently, she thought had ended millennia ago. After he bound her to the earth before the Common Era, she'd seen him only a couple more times before he drifted apart, and she'd always assumed he'd died, like almost everyone else she knew from her youth. But for reasons unknown, the Morrigan had frozen him in time. And now he was about to confront the fact of his time travel—to, I might add, flecks of spittle and bacon around the edges of his wrinkled lips. Helga hopes that if she ever travels two thousand years into the future.

However, the older she gets, the more she needs answers about who she is. What she discovers is a tangled web of secrets better left in the dark. Some truths do more harm than good. Everyone has a secret. Dirty secrets. We all have them. We guard them fiercely, Some people will do anything to protect it. Protecting them like a mother does a precious newborn infant, cradled to her chest, away from the world's prying eyes.

Yet those dark, forbidden desires, we crave won't stay hidden for long. They have a way of coming out—usually at the most inopportune time. Secrets are a funny thing, she thought. You keep them bottled up, hidden thoughts nobody else hears. It makes it hard for others to get close to you—for them to ever really know you—when you hold the deepest parts of yourself back, only letting people graze the surface. But some secrets, she always thought was better left unspoken. Sometimes secrets have the power to kill. The power to destroy. We each hold nuclear weapons inside of us, our fingers always hovering over the buttons for detonation.

Most of us press them. Some of us don't. Wishing she had that kind of restraint. She envies those who keep everyone at an arm's distance. She was weak. Too fucking weak. Not letting those get too close to her. She had heard this saying once, long ago, that she's never forgotten: She has spilled many secrets her my life, secrets that always ended up with somebody getting hurt. Sometimes because of her, and other times... Well... Because of her.

Thinks about them when she lies in bed at night, see their faces when she closes her eyes, relive the moments the buttons were pressed, and everything around her imploded. Helga was practically giddy with excitement as that dream is within grasp. To the ones who see the light in the darkness. No matter how small the beam may be. She is restless. Things are calling me away. Her hair is being pulled by the stars again.

Darkness surrounds her. Figuratively. Literally. It's dark. It's that heavy sort of darkness, the kind you can feel when you breathe, the denseness filling your lungs, and slowly suffocating you. There's no relief in this darkness… only more torture. Sweat coats my skin as the summer humidity clings to the air, making it hard to find a shred of comfort.

Every time she looks, the clock in the bedroom reads something different, the glowing red numbers taunting her. 5:43 am; 6:00 am; Rolling over onto her back, she squeezes her eyes shut, throwing an arm over her face, trying to force herself to stop looking at that damn clock. It dictates her life and she hates it. She fucking hates it.

The silence is strained, the noises from the old building settling exaggerated to her ears. There's nothing peaceful about it. Another creak. A wooden floorboard groans. The bed shifts suddenly. She moves her arm and opens her eyes, her gaze hits the ceiling when she's jolted. She finds nothing but darkness above her, the glow from the alarm clock in her peripheral.

Slowly, turning her head, She looked at the time again. 6:45; Another noise. A loud click. Her heart skips a beat before hammering hard in her chest. She knows that sound. It's not normal. Unnatural. The cocking of a shotgun. She sits up, blinking rapidly, desperately seeking out whatever's in the darkness, but it takes too long for my eyes to adjust. She is frozen. It's only a second. Just one-second delay until her vision finally adjusts.

It's only a second, but it's a second too long. A second of hesitation that takes away everything she loves. Three little words. If anyone asked what she was most afraid of, what terrified her, stole her breath, and made her life flicker before her eyes. She would say three little words. How could her not so perfect life plummet so far into hell?

The black musty hood over her head suffocated her thoughts and she sat with hands bound behind her back. Twine rubbed her wrists with hungry stringed teeth, ready to bleed her dry in this new existence. THE WORLD WAS a dangerous place, but she was worse.

The human race left the dark ages behind—technology improved and ruined our lives in equal measure, and the devils society hid with better camouflage. As the years rolled by, and we left our barbaric ways behind, people forgot about the shadows lurking in plain sight. Men like me morphed into predators in sheep's clothing. We preyed on the weak with no apology, and everything landed in our fucking laps.

Civilization cloaked us, hiding the animals at heart. We traded caveman mentality and murder for suits and softly spoken curses. She hid her true temper beneath a veil of decorum. She mastered the art of suave. She is suffocating in a tunnel of complete, utter darkness created by the unexpected power outage in the storage unit she has been digging through in hopes of finding the whereabouts.

A fiery light that jars her, thrusting her to consciousness. She sits straight up, once more smothered by the darkness. The sun is shining through the crack in the curtain. Gasping for air, sweat pouring down her face. She blinks rapidly, the scene greeting her, again and again, every time she closed her eyes. Fuck. No matter how much she tries, she can't forget it. She can't stop seeing it.

She can't stop reliving it. The bed beside her shifts, and for a moment she convinces herself it wasn't real. It was just her imagination. That's it. It didn't happen. She is okay. But when she looks over, and reality comes crashing down all over again.

Cautiously in the darkness. She's been stuck in the darkness ever since. Rolling over and saw on her alarm clock that it was just about that time, so it was fair game. She knew that better than anyone. Fear yanks her from a deep sleep, and She sat bolt upright running a hand along her face., in a room shrouded with gray, the muted red light from a digital alarm clock announcing it's time to get up for work. Her breath comes in gasps, and her eyes are wide but unseeing. The last remnant of an already forgotten nightmare brush against her like the tattered hem of a specter's cloak, powerful enough to fill her with terror, and yet so insubstantial that it evaporates like mist when she tries to grasp it.

Before Helga could screw herself out of any more prep time, her feet hit the floor and her tired ass was vertical. Getting to her feet, the chill of the apartment hit her the moment she crawled out from under her covers.

She lived in New York that is known for it's cold weathers, they had a few weeks out of the year where the high temperatures liked to drop below sixty which led to chilly nights. Being from Seattle, where the winters are a bit milder, but they're also darker and wetter, which would negate the mild temperatures in her acclimated body could handle it. In the bright morning light falling through the blinds. She jerked the curtains back and swing the sliding glass door open, filling my lungs with wonderful, fresh air.

Standing at the window, she watched the activities below. Helga made a big production out of yawning and stretching as she marched groggily to the bathroom. Washing the tiredness away. Staring at her reflection, she had changed through the years everything about her was different, going threw her adolescence, she no longer had that hideous unibrow, it's like she went from an ugly 9 yr old to beautiful looking 20 something overnight, stared stubbornly at the mirror, her mind magnifying the flaws that existed. She was almost five feet seven inches tall. It's a lucky thing she finally stopped growing before she became a giant! But she was not hopeless.

The fantasy blurs with memory, jarring her with its potency. It's fast and powerful, and a little disturbing because she hasn't needed the pain in a long time, and didn't understand why she was thinking about it now when she felt steady and in control. In her weaker moments, She would agree. Helga had always thought she was above average in the looks department and blue eyes, but her athletic build was far from that of the skinny Minny standing.

She smiled and was pleased on how she turned out, back to the time she did herself a makeover realizing how disastrous, it was to a point it dawned on her that she made herself look like a hooker, Helga is still looking back on it and laughing, realizing by the end of the night this whole girly, feminine stuff just wasn't for her, Helga had respect for herself, she was proud of who she was and never lose sight on who she is and set an example all those other girls to realize it too and do the same and Helga wouldn't have it any other way.

Celestial occurrences. Her favorite poem came to mind — When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer, a comparison between the scientific and romantic views of the heavens. I often felt the two extremes at war within me — the stargazer and the pragmatist. This class should satisfy both, and maybe one day when she stood in a lecture hall to talk about what inspired literature, she would have a brilliant example. Will shock most people, She thinks, by stating that at the nearly unthinkable age of twenty-two, her hymen remains intact. No, She won't answer any questions about why this is. Yes, She is heterosexual. Throughout history, there has been a global truth established that a woman has higher personal value if she has kept herself "pure" until she reaches the married state. It is ubiquitous across all cultures. he Manifesto was a reality now, and it was about to affect her future in a very big way. In the end, Helga sat back in disbelief, the wind knocked from her. She blinked a few times, looking at the figure, with all the zeros following, barely able to breathe. Her mouth was as parched as the Mojatake one last opportunity to look back on her childhood and remembering where everything once stood.

It would be impossible to forget that place, but she would never be able to recall the few good memories it held. Those were all tainted, the innocence ripped apart and thrown away. She didn't know what frightened her. She only knows that she is alone and that she's scared.

Her life is a case study of gluttony. If you're looking for an apology for that, you'll want to look elsewhere. Helga was not sorry in the least. Everything she did, she did it in excess; everything she has more of than she'll ever need. What could she say? She didn't deny herself anything. And maybe living alone was for the best. But at least the rent was cheap. She'd become a creature of habit. They'd probably only get on each other's nerves.

As she surveyed her appearance in the mirror, nervous even though no one would see her. She was broken inside. She was well on her way to letting a lifetime of bad decisions and even worse choices screw up. The bad decisions had sort of become her stock in trade and were as familiar to her as her face, She was almost legendary, at this point, for putting all her trust in the worst kind of people.

If there was a wrong path to take, She was going to skip gleefully down that road and not look back until she ended up exactly in the kind of situation she found herself in at the moment. No matter how hard she tried, She couldn't get herself turned around, and the longer she was circling this dead end, the darker and more wicked it became. Helga knew better. She did, even if there was a boatload of evidence contradicting that fact.

For a long time now she had been spiraling out of control, whirling, falling deep and deeper into a pit of really awful actions and consequences, each seemingly worse and more painful than the last. She also hadn't made any kind of effort to try and pull herself out of the tailspin, so logically she knew the only place she was going to end up was right here, she'd never imagined the landing would be so jarring. She hadn't needed rescue for a long time and now, never in a million years would have imagined rescue coming in the form of a man, not salvation and redemption.

Over a decade had passed and not a day went by that she didn't wish she could rewrite history. Some secrets had a way of eating a person alive. From the inside out, one giant bite at a time. She wasn't exactly innocent in all of it either. You'd think she had learned her lesson from past encounters.

Sadly, that was the story of her life. Being the wonderful and unselfish little girl that she always was, the one who was just bad enough to be trouble, the tolerance or patience to deal with any of the chaos that she always seemed to be drowning in.

Her future had always been uncertain, resting on the shaky and unstable ground on a good day. Right now, she was longing for that wobbly foundation and scared shitless that her bad decision had finally landed her in a spot that she couldn't lie, cheat, steal, or manipulate her way out of.

Letting the darkness wash over her knowing it's the only way the pain will go away. She closes her eyes, thinking back over the last eight years and wondering about all of the things she should have done differently, the choices she made.

Flashbacks of the past run through her mind like someone flipping the pages of a book, and her heart shatters at the memories. Of her standing up and look down at the bed, holding her breath in fear of the sounds that are escalating from deep within her throat. She promised herself that she will not cry. She will not cry. Slowly sinking to her knees, she placed her hands on the edge of the bed and run her fingers over the yellow stars poured across the deep blue background of the comforter. She stares at the stars until they begin to blur from the tears that are clouding her vision. squeeze my eyes shut and bury my head into the bed, grabbing fistfuls of the blanket.

Her shoulders begin to shake as the sobs she's been trying to contain violently break out of her. With one swift movement, she stood up, scream, and rip the blanket off the bed, throwing it across the room. She balled her fists and frantically look around for something else to throw. She grabs the pillows off the bed and chucks them at the reflection in the mirror of the girl she no longer knows. She watched as the girl in the mirror stares back at her, sobbing pathetically.

The weakness in her tears infuriates her. We begin to run toward each other until our fists collide against the glass, smashing the mirror. She watched as she falls into a million shiny pieces onto the carpet. She grips the edges of the dresser and pushes it sideways, letting out another scream that has been pent up for way too long. When the dresser comes to rest on its back, I rip open the drawers and throw the contents across the room, spinning and throwing and kicking at everything in my path. She grabs at the sheer blue curtain panels and yanks them until the rod snaps and the curtains fall around me. I reach over to the boxes piled high in the corner and, without even knowing what's inside, I take the top one and throw it against the wall with as much force as my five-foot, the three-inch frame can muster.

She headed off to Astronomy, relieved she could finally relax. She loves learning about the stars. Even back in high school, during her emotionally detached days, she would stare up at the night sky and appreciate the beauty of each one; how they seem to be separate but whole. But sometimes life takes away our ability to choose. Sometimes…things aren't in your control. It's the only way to stop feeling. If she doesn't allow any emotion into her heart and soul, she'd have a better chance of surviving in this cruel, fucked-up world. Well, more like existing. In the end, it's the only way to protect herself.

People didn't get her; hell, half the time she didn't get herself. Her so-called friends feared her. And the funniest thing of all? They had no idea how much she feared herself. The first time she ever experienced happiness was when she had been lying in bed one night, staring out her window at the stars shining harmoniously. The prickle showed up and she smiled as the warmth of happiness swelled inside her.

Ever since then, She felt this strange bond with the night sky, like somehow she was connected to it. She'd only hope that one day she could do something with the stars. Because nothing seems to fit right. Whenever she looks forward and tries to envision her future, all she sees is light. Her life has been altered in more ways than one. Every day there's a new experience, whether it's as simple as finding something amusing or crying for hours after the loss of her childhood and adolescence—the regret of endless lonely days.

All her life Helga knew what she wanted. Or rather, what she didn't want. She didn't want the nightmares that plagued her to ever become reality again. She didn't want to return to the past. To live in fear. In constant doubt whether the ground beneath her would hold solid and firm. Ever since she was twelve, she's known this. Helga had a tough life. A good work ethic and a lot of determination are the keys to changing her lot in life.

She had to move on with her life. She had to let go. It hurt, and yet at the same time, it brought her a measure of relief, as if a great weight had been lifted from her shoulders. Helga's only hope is that when it comes time to choose, she gets it right. She's been this way for a long time. She's made responsible choices.

Her life is neat and organized and her heart rate stays constant. She likes it that way most of the time. She should be proud of where she is in her life. But the truth of the matter is, sometimes she feels like she is suffocating in her perfunctory life.

For a moment, she questioned her to herself now, she tried to buy into the vision, but she'd begun to realize that it wasn't the mapped out a life that was bothering her. It was the person she planned on spending that life with. Smiling to herself now, Ultimately, she wanted to meet a special 'someone', fall in love, commit her to have a relationship, and raise a family.

Once overhearing her mother, who couldn't understand why she was about to graduate college without a ring on her finger, ask her father the same question. But she was not in any hurry. Her warm personality and sensual good looks meant that she was never short of admirers. Her heart made a tiny pang, but she was used to that. Her work was varied and fascinating and barely left her with any time to draw breath, never mind for any personal relationships with members of the opposite sex.

From her experiences with men were that she was a particularly poor judge of the breed. First, there had been her revoltingly humiliating and rejection of her. She had been wrong on both counts. Love was the last emotion and relationships weren't anything she let herself have time for. Sure, she went out now and then… Okay, more then than now. But she'd done the settling down, meeting someone else's needs, for ten years.

But right now her growing career was her main priority. Her new job took every minute of her time and every ounce of her energy. Helga G Pataki was fresh out of college, for her it was a big deal. She wanted a fresh start. A new life. Because she had to get out of that place and most of its old residents who are either dead or retired, and she talked to nor seen to any of her old classmates they've all pretty much scattered after they had all graduated from high school.

Helga assumed that college would be the wedge that would drift her apart from that place. Running has been never in her book, but there was no way she could stay in Hillwood, Washington; there was just nothing there for her anymore.

Therefore was nothing keeping her, nor made her feel any obligation or no reason to stay. She had been accepted a partial scholarship to Columbia University, she could start over, and become a new person. She was tired of being boring Helga Pataki; a dependable daughter, straight-A student. Helga has always been the ugly duckling of the family. She has always tried to live up to her older sister, but hasn't even come close to succeeding.

How far can obligation take you? Remember, if it was yesterday when she got her acceptance letter. Helga couldn't have been more thrilled—and her mother cried for what felt like hours and Bob praising on about a Pataki in an Ivy League; And that's something Olga never accomplished, they'd longer where they wrapped around Olga's finger, Helga smirked and sighed, finally for once she was the golden child. Bob was persistent and determined had promised that they would call and visit faithfully, it was an expensive plane ride away but Bob said that if she was going to school on the east coast that's where they would move to.

Helga didn't think it would happen. Helga couldn't deny that they were proud that all her hard work had finally paid off. She got into the only college she applied for and, because of the low income, she had enough grants to keep her student loans to a minimum.

She had once, for just a moment, considered leaving Washington for college. But seeing all the color drain from her mother's face at the suggestion, and the way she paced around the living room for nearly an hour, Helga had told her she really hadn't been serious about that. And college hadn't been what she had expected it to be. She thought she would become a fascinating new person, with exciting friends and adventures around every corner. Instead, She realized she was still the same Helga Pataki and she was still dependable and still earning straight-As.

The college life had always seemed so crucial, such an essential part of what measures a person's worth and determines their future. We live in a time where people ask which school you went to before asking your last name. From an early age, she was taught, trained really, to prepare for her education. It had become this necessity that required an overwhelming amount of preparation and borderline obsession.

Every class she chose, every assignment she completed since her first day of high school revolved around getting into college. And not just any college, Columbia University; Helga had no idea that choosing which electives to take during her first semester would seem, just a few months later, like trivial affairs. She was naïve then, and in some ways she still is. But she couldn't have possibly known what lay ahead of her.

Meeting her dorm-mate was intense and awkward from the start, and meeting her wild group of friends even more so. They were so different from anyone she had ever known and I was intimidated by their appearance, confused by their pure in attention to structure. She quickly became a part of their madness, indulging in it...But mostly spent most of her weekends studying.

So far it'd been a good experience, if not a bit sad and overwhelming. But if she wanted to become a writer she needed to experience this side of it. Her supervisor called it the underbelly. Those broken members of society reaching out for help. She'd been told that she was a natural.

Insightful beyond her years. Graduate school had been tough to get into, but when the opportunity to T.A. for the head of the Writing department opened up, she'd jumped at the chance. She had studied her junior abroad in France for a year. She was a regular college student, on her four-year degree plan with a cushion at the end for finding the elusive job. Which, as an English major, doesn't happen all too easily. I wasn't fit to be a teacher; all my social cues came from books.

Everyone deserves one grand adventure, that one time in life that we always get to point back to and say, "Then . . . then I was really living." Adventures don't happen when you're worried about the future or tied down by the past. They only exist in the now. And they always, always come at the most unexpected time, in the least likely of packages. An adventure is an open window; and an adventurer is a person willing to crawl out on the ledge and leap.

When she told her parents, she was going to Europe to see the world and grow as a person, (not that Dad listened beyond the second or third word, which is when she slipped in that she was also going to spend his money and piss him off as much as possible. He didn't notice). She told her professors that she was going to collect experiences. In reality, it was a little of all of those things. Or maybe none of them.

Sometimes, she just got that strange niggling sensation at the back of her mind, like the insistent buzz of a mosquito, that I was missing something. Helga wanted to experience something extraordinary, something more. She refused to believe that her best and worse years were all behind her now that she'd graduated from college. And if adventures only existed in the now, that was the only place she wanted to exist, too.

After nearly two weeks of backpacking around Eastern Europe, wanting to learn of her family origins. She was becoming an expert at just that. She remembered trekking down the dark city street, her stiletto heels sticking in between the cobblestones. She kept a tight hold on the two Hungarian men that she'd met earlier in the evening, and they followed the other two in their group. Helga guesses, technically, she had met them the night before, since they were now into the early hours of the morning. For the life of me, she couldn't keep their names straight. And she wasn't even drunk yet.

Okay . . . so maybe I was a little drunk. She kept calling Tamás, István. Or was that András? Oh well. They were all hot with dark hair and eyes, and they knew four words in English as far as Helga could tell. American. Beautiful. Drink. Dance. As far as Helga was concerned, those were the only words they needed to know.

At least she remembered Katalin's name. She'd met her a few days ago, and they'd hung out almost every night since. It was a mutually beneficial arrangement. She showed Helga around Budapest, and she charged most of our fun on Daddy's credit card. Not like he would notice or care. And if he did, he'd always said that if money didn't buy happiness, then people were spending it wrong. Thanks for the life lessons, Bob.

After her student visa was up; she returned to finish her final year of college and making the Dean's List; After studying Philosophy, English Literature, and earning her a BA in creative writing and getting her Bachelor's, She had gone to work The New York Times; but she felt like the tiniest minnow in the ocean compared to the legends in journalism surrounding her.

Helga Pataki tanked her dream of going pre-law. Okay, not really. That was an exaggeration, but it had been her dream to be a lawyer. She joined mock trial. She was a witness the first year. The head defense lawyer my second year. Helga knew her shit. She knew the loopholes. She knew all the motions, what she could object to, what she couldn't, and what she still wanted the imaginary jury to hear. She went the whole nine yards. Helga was going to become a lawyer. Until she marched into her first political science class and everything went downhill from there. Helga learned four things right away over the first couple of weeks:

1. Memorizing laws were boring. No, really. It was really boring. Too boring for me. She knew she'd have to cut her losses here.

2. While she didn't need to study in high school, she sure as hell did in college.

3. She needed to learn how to study.

4. Arrogant pricks could be real assholes in college, too.

She had joined the newspaper a year ago, and had put in her time, but she had always wanted to be some kind of writer. She had pushed and fought for it. She had been writing for most of her life. She had gone back to her early years writing page after page of some stupid crush, but in her upcoming junior year she had the privilege of finally working her coveted position. She had interned covering minor stories and moving onto writing columns for magazines.

Helga went to her laptop open up her email to see what assignment her editor in Chief Liz; had for the day, reading it said interview: at Medecins Sans Frontieres Doctors without borders for an article;

Looking at the clock on the wall she knew had enough time to go for her morning jog, going into her closet she kept her laundered clothes, she changed into her workout clothes, a pair of faded red shorts and a white tank top. She double-tied her beat-up running shoes, grabbed a rubber band and swept her hair up in a ponytail, slipped her iPod into one pocket, and her cell phone into the other, and she was ready.

It was better when Helga had a routine. A routine kept her pulse even. Kept her sane. The moment she stepped outside, the smells and sounds of Manhattan embraced her and invited her to explore.

New York was undoubtedly warmer than Washington. As Helga began her run. She made her way through the East Village wide-eyed, still in awe at the fact that she lived there. The air was thick with the bustle of traffic and the aromas from food vendors' carts. She was adjusting to New York better than she had anticipated. New York was the city that never slept; it never even got sleepy.

From the vibrating subway underneath her feet to the mixed array of faces, everything about the city intoxicated her mind. She groaned after hearing Miriam, she had the feeling that Helga was going to have to constantly reassure her until she got used to her living in New York. She couldn't seem to shake the notion that New York was a scary place where her daughter was in danger of being accosted at every corner. Helga couldn't help laughing at her mother's frantic tone. Helga knew she meant well. her mother just wanted her to be happy and she was worried that she was running away from her problems by moving to New York. She didn't seem to understand that Helga wasn't running from something, Helga was running to something.

It was sensory overload at its finest. Three short blocks later and quite sweaty from her run, she arrived back. Sweat trickled down the back of her neck, and her drenched clothes clung to her body. She probably was crazy, but getting any time to work out was such a luxury, she couldn't afford to be choosy about the flipped on the shower before stripping off her yoga pants and tank top, leaving them on the floor to pick up later. It wasn't that Helga was a complete slob…okay, that was a lie, she was a complete slob. Especially when it came to laundry. Good thing she rarely had people over to her apartment.

The moment she steps into the spray of shower water some of the tension leaves her strained muscles. She is standing here, under the hot water, trying to calm her mind, but really doing the opposite, and I get so distracted that by the time she finally wash my hair and body, she barely have enough hot water to run a razor over her legs from the knees down.

After her shower, wrapping the towel around her wet body, she sits on her bed so she could watch the six o'clock news- a habit she had been in since college. Every now and then her friends would appear but not as often as felt she deserved to. She was a great writer but generally got stuck with the less serious segments. She had a theory that it was because she was so young and a woman. Helga was sure her editor's didn't feel she would be taken seriously with the harder hitting stories.

Thirty minutes later, she was dressed in a pink blouse, black a-line skirt that went to her knees, and black heels that she knew would be kicked off at every available moment. She had also dried her hair and left it hanging straight in a very boring way. Her pale blue eyes had been lined with enough make-up to hide most of her exhaustion but a look in the mirror told her that she wasn't fooling anyone. Scowling with frustration at herself in the mirror.

Damn this hair -it just won't behave, subjecting into this ordeal, and yet here she is trying to brush her hair into submission, Reciting this mantra several times, she attempts, once more, to bring it under control with the brush. she rolls her eyes in exasperation and gazes at the pale, blonde-haired girl with blue eyes too big for her face staring back at her, and give-ups. Her only option is to restrain my wayward hair in a ponytail and hope that she looks semi-presentable.

Grabbing her keys, and and cellphone, hurrying down the stairs into the garage she was in her car by seven putting the address into the GPS and realized she was going to be cutting it close. Helga drove as fast as she could in the early commuter traffic and on her way, the roads are very busy this morning typical New York traffic it's early and hoping to make the journey in time and miles slip away as she hits the pedal to the medal.

AN: Well that's it for now, please let me know what you think of this new version. Please review thank you:)