for the 2024 syot verses victor exchange
for bexly, with love
Helena cannot stop running.
Her feet pound against metal, clangs and clashes echoing through the space. Something sharp whizzes by her head; Helena hears a fwoosh as it grazes the tip of her ear. She can feel blood begin to drip down the side of her face and neck, but there's no time to deal with that now.
She can clean up the blood when she survives. Right now, she needs to get away.
Up ahead, she notices the catwalk in front of her splitting into two paths, one leading left and one leading right. Helena glances over her shoulder quickly. She's got a bit of a lead on her pursuers, but not enough to pause at the intersection to decide which way makes the most sense to turn. And certainly not enough to double back once she makes her choice.
Her mind races with every step. Left? Right? Left? Right? She searches desperately for anything on the walls or floor that could give her a clue of what might lie in which direction, but nothing jumps out to her. It may as well just be a coin flip.
So when she reaches the edge of the platform, she goes with her gut and veers to the right.
(After all, Helena Nikolina is always-)
Her foot lands on nothing but air.
Helena flails, barely able to reestablish her balance before her body topples over the edge.
She grabs onto the railing, breathing heavily as her heart beats loudly in her chest. Helena glances over her shoulder, then curses, realizing that the other direction would have led her down another long catwalk. Instead, Helena's now trapped at a dead end, with nothing to stop her from falling down into the depths of the Arena.
The footsteps grow closer. Helena curses; for the first time, nobody else is going to come to get her out of this.
But Helena refuses to be backed into a corner.
Like a flash of lightning, an idea bursts into Helena's mind. She looks up, noticing that the catwalks above her head have metal pipes on the underside that seem thin enough to grasp onto. Helena grabs the railing again, looks over the edge - and breathes a sigh of relief.
Finally, something like a plan.
She doesn't hesitate. Helena slides under the railing, grabs the pipe below her catwalk with one hand, and leaps.
God. How the fuck did I end up here?
Yes, I'm fully aware the heading said 2024 and it's now 2025. You're not seeing things - this is in fact the long-overdue final VE fic from 2024.
When I started writing this story, I did not at all intend for it to take me nearly this long to write it. But circumstances, both personal and professional, beyond my and the mod team's control made this take much, much longer than I could possibly have anticipated back in August. We've apologized to Bexly privately for this, but I hope that if you read this, Bexly, you appreciate this public one as well - I am so, so sorry that it took me as long as it did to get pen to paper.
That said, through this process, I fell so deeply in love with Helena, perhaps against my better judgment. I'm so glad that I got to be the one who gave this girl the story she deserves, to bring her as fully to life as I could. And I hope my love for this girl comes through in the story you're about to read!
With that, and without further ado, come gaze into the Eye of the Beholder.