Final Fantasy 7 - Written on Her Back - Ch. 1

Chapter One
Ghosts are Waiting for You

Summary: Helena is desperately trying to piece together a life she never had with the help of her estranged sister, Kathelyn. After escaping from a Shin Ra facility, Helena and Kathelyn must employ the aid of an unlikely unemployed bodyguard, Jofrey. Little do they know that one of Helena's most guarded secrets will come to haunt her and something far worse than Shin Ra will threaten her last chance. 

“I've got quite a vivid imagination and I'm easily overwhelmed by sensations and things that are beautiful or scary. I don't think I've ever seen a ghost - I think I'm probably haunted by my own ghosts than real ones.”

--Florence Welch

I was sitting on the bed, knees drawn up and my back against the headboard. There was a quilt laid out on each bed, tying the room’s homey décor together. I remembered a bedroom that once looked similar, where two sisters, much younger than they were now, would push their beds with the quilts their mother had tirelessly sewn for them bellowed up to form a tent, and they would play with the dolls their father had bought for them with the money he earned working on the Junon docks. But I guess that was a long ways away. I was quite tired and slightly delirious. I imagined the girls carefully dressing the dolls on the carpeted space in front of me, while my eyelids of their own volition would droop over my burning eyeballs, stinging as they slid down. I did not want to sleep, for I feared of what may wait for me when I would wake, but there was something tempting in the sound my body made as it slid down the headboard and into the warm covers.

My joints ached and swelled, making me look like a nubby little beast. My feet were swollen and blue as well. I laid in a hospital bed for far too long, grappling with my topsy-turvy sense of reality and consciousness. Only I had to live with the horror that plagued me for five long, disgusting years, as my sister did not question what occurred behind the hands of the infamous Dr. Hojo. I would rather not discuss the life I left behind. I would much rather believe that I had rid myself of the man employed by the dubious President Shinra. Yes, I will pretend like I have now escaped once and for all, living a life I think I would deserve as a human being. Yet, the more I thought, the more I realized how that in itself was a miracle as so many were entrapped by the war machine known as Shin Ra well before they knew of the life they deserved. I was simply one of the lucky ones, I assured myself. But then why did I not feel lucky?

I looked out to the window, partially covered by a tattered cloth of a curtain and in the distance could see what I assumed was Midgar, beyond the smoke and smog. I left Midgar, feat beyond all feats, to that I had to owe to luck. Thankfully, it was not a sad departure, as there was no time to cry over the decrepit structure but I felt as though I had to feel something as we stopped the car by the Sector 5 wire fence. Nothing could come to mind except the hissing noise in my mind begging for me not to stop as Kathe pulled up a small opening so I could crawl through. I was weak and hobbled around in the hospital clothing they had given me to wear, stripping me of any dignity, any sense of who I was in my past life. My sister offered a black tunic, something to wear as the cool evening air still hung low in the Midgar Midlands.

At first, we walked out into the green plains. Then we found a truck passing on the freeway. It was lonely walking out into the freeway with little indication of where we would go, but that truck offered us some hope that we were going the right way; for once, something was going right. Once we got on the back of that truck, the relief was nothing I had ever experienced. I lay limp next to my sister, her arm wrapped around my shoulders as if holding me down so that I would not float away. It was quite strange to feel her body next to mine, almost uncomfortable, but I allowed it as I hadn’t the strength to protest. We bounced around for a good hour before coming to a smooth dirt road and eventually a paved one. I watched as the sun rose over the flat hilltops and the cool night breeze was chased away to a warm stifling heat.

We reached Kalm by midday, sometime after I started to dry heave over the side of the truck. My sister unhooked my bra allowing some air into my lungs. But the heat... it was unbearable. For how long had I lived in an air conditioned room? We hobbled over to the inn, rented a room and pulled back the curtains. I laid in bed for what seemed like days but was only a couple of hours.

Time seemed to not be what it once was out here, in the real world. My sister was three feet taller, had crow's feet around her eyelids, had thick eczema patches around her knees and had a stoop, not noticeable to the eye but noticeable to the memory frozen lingering in my mind. Yet, she could still hold her ground with dignity, something that I never saw her have before. She was no longer the child I knew. And nor was I. I had lost weight. Not much, but enough to lose a dress size and float about in my medical garments. There were pinpricks around my knuckles. My skin was gaunt. My eyes yellowed. But it didn't matter now. I was free.

My sister did not talk and allowed for the silence to run rampant. It was frightening and sometimes I wished she would talk just to stop the uneasy hollowness surrounding me. She watched as I grew more and more impatient, and decided to turn on the radio from time to time. It was nice to hear a voice, smooth as butter, telling me how hot it was in Midgar. She watched me from a seat across the room as I rocked my head to the music, mouthing the words, realization slowly sinking in. We both knew she had done wrong but I didn’t want to talk about it for fear of the consequence. But she knew now that, more than ever by returning to Midgar she would not leave with the sister she once knew, only a faint reminder.

She sat up, finally gathering some courage to say something. I anxiously awaited the result. “I think we need to consider our future, Helena. They’ll be looking for us. Shin Ra will. And I doubt it will be on happy terms.”

I turned over to face her. “I’m not going anywhere, Kathe. I’m tired and sick. Even if we leave, where will we go? What will we do?” I leaned back into the headboard, my head rearing from the little effort I put in. I needed to sleep. “I just want to rest. I just want some time. That’s all. Can you just give me some time?”

“I...,” I could hear her voice crack before she cleared up and regained composure, “I guess. Whatever you want.”

She stood up to look out the window. It started to rain. The rain droplets seemed to fall like crystals, their melodic tinkling driving stakes in my ears. I threw my hands up to my ears. Two index pads dug deep into my canal as I cried for it to stop. Kathe came running, desperately unsure. She took me, a shivering mess, into her bare arms. She tried to smother my head into her warm chest, her loud beating heart drowning out the maddening sound of raindrops. She continued to rock me back and forth, begging me to stay with her. I decided to, for her sake. She sounded desperate and I was tired.

I think I passed out. I woke with a start. The small fire that Kathe had started to warm the small inn room was now nothing than embers and she was in her own bed, sitting upright. She was alerted by my struggle with the sheets and called out to me, noting that she was very close.

“Can’t sleep?” I asked finally.

She smiled. Something was killing her. “I had a weird dream.”

“What about?”

She shook her head, as if still trying to shake off the night’s horror. “I dreamt about Gast. He had his daughter with him.”

“He was executed, wasn’t he? Treason or something?”

Her face viably soured. “Hojo. That fuck. That’s why, Helena, that’s why we can’t stay here.”

“I know. I heard. Shinra has been telling everyone it was a removal of another parasite, but I know. It was Hojo.”

“He gets rid of his mistakes,” she said, quiet and simple-like.

“I know,” I replied, “but I’m not going anywhere, Kathe. If he finds me, he finds me. I got my chance to live a minute in peace and I’m not about to ruin that opportunity by running.”

“I know,” she parroted, “but I’m scared. I’m scared that I’ll find you dead somewhere. I guess that’s selfish, but I don’t want to be the one to bury another family member.”

“It isn’t selfish, Kathe. But you have to understand: you were the one who picked me out of there. Now you’ll have to deal with my one last wish.”

“What’s that, baby girl?” She asked. I don’t remember the last time anyone called me that.

“I want to live like nothing happened.”

She nodded, “alright, alright. You win.”

She walked up to the fire and placed another log into the pit. She stoked it a bit and then satisfied, returned to bed. She wished me a goodnight, hoping that I would have nothing but good dreams. I did the same, unsure of what that brought us. I watched as she shrunk into her blankets and disappeared. I did the same, now convinced I was not back at the hospital after the fifth or sixth time trying to get comfortable in the overtly warm sheets, I finally drifted off to sleep. I assumed it would be a faceless slumber like the many nights before it.

Since I was placed in the ward, I lost the concept of a dream long ago. When I first felt the sweet warm embrace of medicated slumber it came and went as if I were both suspended in air and barreling down the freeway. It was trippy as fuck to realize days had gone by and everything meld into one blob of a memory with no dreams to break it up.

But tonight would not be one of those nights, I had told to myself as I slipped into a feverish scene, written straight from a horror novel. I remembered being able to calmly tell myself that it was simply a dream as I slipped further and further into my subconscious until I no longer could realize I was dreaming at all. I remembered looking around, taking in the hellish sights as I moved down a long narrow corridor. It had no windows nor lights but an eerie greenish glow permeated throughout, outlining smears of blood on the grey monotone walls and floors. I called out a simple hello, which made no logical sense but somehow it made sense here. My voice, being both foreign and similar to me, echoed down the seemingly endless hallway.

Suddenly I came to an opening, an opening that was even darker than the corridor I came from. Two masses could be seen down a stretch in the opening, their outlines drawn in green. I approached with caution, something deep down telling me not to go closer, to close my eyes and hide. But I knew there was something to be seen in the darkness. One mass began to move and I realized it wasn’t a mass at all but a man, his piercing green eyes slicing the thick darkness. Somehow I knew he was smiling. I looked over to the mass on the ground. Slowly it became clear: two bodies piled onto each other, both men I knew, both men I loved. I cried out, out of terror and anger: “what have you done?!”

And his simple reply was: “they were in the way.”

I shook myself awake, my head launched up from the pillow. Kathe snuck into my bed during the night and found a rude awakening herself as I knocked her awake. “What? What’s going on?” She stumbled on her words. I looked around once for good measure. I was awake. Or at least, I thought I was. I couldn’t be sure anymore, to be honest. As if realizing I was struggling, Kathe assured, “you’re okay. You’re awake. See,” she touched my arm, “awake.”

“Yes,” I affirmed to the morning sun, “awake.”

She stood up and got dressed. She announced that she would grab some breakfast for us, so that I could hide in the comfort of four walls. I was anxious at first, I didn’t want to be left alone. But then I thought, what was twenty more minutes in my life? I allowed the loneliness to seep in as I watched the door close and heard the lock turn, a click resonating in the empty room. It was dangerous to be alone. Every time I found myself alone, I found myself in harm’s way.

The fire died out some time ago and all that remained as a dusty reminder of the countless logs Kathe murdered. I surveyed the rest of the country style abode, a place that both comforted me and made my skin crawl. It was small and quaint, with its two little beds and its coloured quilts. I could see everything with almost crystal clarity now that the sun rose up over the fortress-like walls. The curtains were indeed pitiful as they did little to smother the hot rays. I decided, with a gusto, that I should go and pull the curtains back. I stood from the bed, my head swirled with dissatisfaction and I fell back onto the bed with a gooey thud. Even that hurt. But that did not stop me. I went up for another go at it, this time taking care, reading my body and its shrunken limits. It served me well as I was able to stand and then, hunched over, walk to the window. I pulled back the sheets, clouds of dust pillowing out and releasing Kalm from its dying grasp. It was so beautiful.

I collapsed onto the chair conveniently stationed by the window, the sight seemed as though it may be too much for me. It wasn’t that Kalm was at all a grand city nor was it the contrary; it was entirely ordinary. But it was in its ordinariness that I could appreciate where I had come from and where I was potentially heading. I grabbed hold onto the pendant on my neck unsure of what I was really thinking or what I should do with this new found freedom. Guilt struck me dumb and blind, and it took a place I could potentially call home, such an ordinary place, to remind me of what I cherished most in the world.

“But I don’t know what that even means,” I told myself, “you’re all dead. All of you. Why should I care for something long gone?” 

“I don’t know,” a little voice, meek and afraid, came from the doorway. “Talking to yourself, Helena?” 

It was Kathe, she had already returned with breakfast in a brown paper bag. I nodded, unsure of what to say to that. I was always one to talk to myself but rarely did I get caught in doing so. I guess Kathe was catching me in a really off year. One where I lost my job, my friends, my livelihood of any sort and now I was getting caught talking to myself. What bothered me the most about this about all of it was how vulnerable I was and how little strength I had to hide it. I didn’t want to rely on my sister who suddenly waltz into my life unannounced and unwelcomed. A disturbing thought crept into my head more than once, telling me to go back, that a life in medicinal chains seemed more appealing that chaining myself to the one woman I could say I truly hated. A loaded statement but I was prepared to defend it.

She handed me a piece of warm doughy bread, a breakfast delicacy very common in Kalm. I accepted the gift of food, peeling off the crust and placing it back into the bag. She smiled as she watched me doing so, a habit I never could get rid of. In solidarity, she took the discarded crust and piled it into her mouth. I looked at her for a moment, our eyes locked. A sudden sensation washed over me, like the past twenty years never happened and as sisters we were sharing a very natural breakfast. But it came and went as she took a paper coffee cup and handed it to me. “I wasn’t sure what you took it in, so there’s some packets in the bag.”

It was quiet. So quiet I could hear myself slurp at my coffee which was driving me nuts. I tried, in larger gulps, to drink the liquid but it only resulting in louder sips. Kathe saw how desperately hypersensitive to the world I was, a condition she had hoped I would have grown out of but she suspected was exacerbated by years of solitary confinement. I wanted to show her how wrong she was about me. I wanted to show her how little I needed her. But the more I tried, the more I faltered. The more I faltered, the more I realized I was the one who was wrong.

“They have this nice apartment for rent,” she spoke up finally, “it may be nice to go and check it out.”

“Maybe,” I replied. Was I having second thought already? Maybe I didn’t feel like I belonged and if I saw the little place I would change my mind.

“Are we going to talk about--?”

“What?” I interrupted

“Well,” she started, trying to gather up the words necessary, “all last night you were tossing. I figured it was the medication, so I climbed in, just to make sure everything was okay. But then you started to scream: don’t go, don’t go.”

“Did I?”

She nodded. “What were you dreaming about?”

“I don’t really remember,” I lied. With that, she returned to her coffee, staring at the lid as it approached her. She was sulking, it seemed. How childish. “I don’t remember the details,” I caved into her pouting lips, “but I can say that I was dreaming about old friends. Genesis and Angeal… they’re both gone now.”

“I know. I heard.”

“I miss them like I would a limb, torn off of my body.” I laughed. “I feel so guilty that I’m here.” 

“Don’t. They wouldn’t want that. They would want you to be happy, here, in Kalm.”

“No, that’s where you are wrong. They wouldn’t want me to stay here and rot away until the day Hojo would find me. They would want me to fight.”

“What are you saying?” I could hear the faint flicker of hope in her tone.

“I’m saying that we should fuck the apartment and get the hell out of here.” I was determined suddenly to leave although I did imagine myself in a small apartment up by the fortress wall; closer to the ocean than I had been in a very long time. But this wasn’t the time. Perhaps there would never be a time. I was finally given the gift of freedom and I wasn’t about to squander it here for my own selfish desires. I would run until they grew tired of me, and then maybe, just maybe then I would be able to settle somewhere knowing I had done them all justice.

“Then we should leave soon.”

“There’s just one problem, we can’t go at this alone,” I revealed a very real truth I think Kathe realized the very moment she dragged a very sick sister out of Midgar. “I’m tired and have no strength, even before all of this. And I can’t burden you by having you solely responsible for the both of us.”

“It isn’t a burden,” she quipped.

“You can’t do this alone, Kathe.”

“So what do you expect for us to do? Hire a bodyguard? Oh no, no,” she protested as my face changed at the notion, “what are we going to tell them, hmm? About our situation? They’d would rather work with Shin Ra then against them. It would pay them better.”

“Nothing, bluntly put. And if they ask, we lie, simple.”

“This isn’t going to work.”

“It will,” I pushed, “we have to make it work. If we want to win, we’ll need to be a step before everyone else.”

“Fine,” she sighed, “you’re right. When did you get to be so right?” We laughed, a short lighthearted laugh. A laugh people would make at a very sad reality: she would have never realized when I became so right because she was simply not there.

My sister put down her cup and went for the door where she deposited another bag. She grabbed it and brought it over to where we were sitting. “Look what I got,” she said. There were two bottles of hair dye and a pair of sheers. I smiled. She asked me which one I preferred. The blond seemed the most drastic.

We crowded the bathroom mirror, cutting our hair on a towel laid on the tiled floor. We were jovial suddenly. Laughing and nervously snipping away at each other's hair. I instructed her to give me bangs. I never had bangs before. She corrected me: "mom used to give you bangs all the time." I couldn’t remember that. I changed from a brunette to a blonde, which was a task itself: the dye came out orange twice. I amazed myself, looking the mirror, at the changed woman staring back. It startled me even to see Kathe, now a redhead, gingerly touching my shoulder as we gazed at our mutual reflections.

She had bought contact lenses, something I never used. I was always with my glasses. Probably something I should have left behind as I climbed the Shin Ra corporate ladder. I suddenly dawned brown eyes. Something I never thought I would ever have the experience of having. Suddenly, I was someone new, someone who had a new slate, a slate I would paint with my own intentions.

"Helena?" Her voice chirped. I was suddenly transported to a time and place where nothing seemed to matter in the world. Truly I was lost in time, unfocused by the confusing nature of what I was just experiencing for once in my life: freedom. There, on the bathroom floor were two children who sat side-by-side and a green glowing orb being exchanged between them. The girls giggled as they felt the warmth growing from the orb. The youngest looked up, a question forming on her lips.

I snapped up, cutting the conversation of these two remnants of my past. "Yup?" I answered, looking up at the mirror, looking at my sister looking at me. Again we stood there looking at each other, through our mirrored images, for some time. She smiled, placed a hand on my shoulder and said nothing more.

I didn't want her to talk of the past, I made that clear. I didn't want her to know how much I planned this day in my bed, every sleepless night, plotting a vicious onslaught of painful words and threating insults. I didn't want her to know how much hate was harbored here. I didn't want her to know what I had been through all because she refused to acknowledge me as her flesh, as her blood, as someone cut from the same cloth.

I pulled on a pair of jeans, something a little different than what I had grown accustomed to: a billowing pair of white linen slacks and a shirt that hung loose around my neck. It was refreshing. I slipped my pendant back into my shirt, gingerly avoid it knocking against my chest as a sign of respect to the memories of the ones that were left behind. I somehow managed to outlive them both. I looked into the full length mirror hanging behind the door, taking in the new being. I suddenly felt human again.

I walked out into the main room where my sister walked around the room, drilling over and over again her current predicament in her head.

“Don’t worry,” I called out to her, as she spiralled out into whatever world she found herself into, “there's a bar just a ways into the city.”

“Yeah, that's a good idea. There's a ton of miners out of work,” Kathe spoke up, “there's gotta be someone willing to help us out."

"Why are they out of work?"

"Monsters apparently overran the Mythril Mines."

I hissed in disappointment, “and you think we'll find someone who can protect us from said monsters?"

She shrugged. "Worth a try. Might find just what we're looking for.”

With that, we walked out into the warm afternoon sunlight. We asked where we would find the famed bar and found ourselves back into an alcove. We sat at the bar, studying the environment for potential candidates. It was a dank little bar and like Kathe had said, it was filled with miners, still in their miner’s garbs, drinking their woes away. It was sad to see them in such a state of affairs. I knew what it meant to have a livelihood torn away from your grasp. It shakes you to your very core. You can even forget what it means to live a life elsewise.

"You okay?" Kathe asked as she slid a drink over my way.

I nodded, stirring the grenadine at the bottom of my tequila sunrise. It was funny how I suddenly lost the appetite for alcohol and the elated feeling I got as a result. I would increasingly bet on being inebriated as an adolescent and young adult, hoping that I felt less of the dread that came with living such an emotionally-charged childhood. I looked over to my sister's drink: straight up whiskey. I didn't take her for a "straight up" person. Did she realize it was what our father would smell of, coming home after his binging days?

"I didn't know what to order for you," she revealed about my own drink, staring down her own drink, probably contemplating how she came to enjoy her own taste for hard liquor.

"It's perfect. I'm just not feeling well."

She nodded “I understand,” she spoke more to her drink than she did to me. “No,” she suddenly retracted, “I actually don’t understand.” She looked up; she didn’t understand but she knew. She knew of what had happened. Sitting on that damned truck she apologized for every wrongdoing she was responsible for up until the point I had had enough and told her to shut it. She knew of almost everything Shin Ra did. Whether that was a recent revelation or one she kept tabs on, I would leave that a mystery for the sake of my sanity.

“I get it, Kathe.” Despite everything, I knew she was trying. I knew she was trying to feel for me and make amends. That was enough.

I leaned into the bar as the bartender came around to pick up his tip, "We're looking for someone."

His eyebrow raised. "In particular?"

I shook my head. "A guide, of sorts."

He nodded, stroking his stubbly chin in contemplation. He looked around the quiet bar to find his target. He locked in, "he's usually around this time of the year... Ah, there he is." He pointed to a man the corner, his eyes raised to the television set in the opposite corner.

I took a deep breath and slid off the bar stool, Kathe following suit. He seemed harmless enough. A young man in his late twenties or perhaps early thirties. His skin was tanned and leathery in some patches across his face. But he seemed well kept: his thick beige hair pulled back and slicked, a faint mention of a part on the right side could be seen in the dim lighting. His eyes peered deeply into the television screen; his gaze unchanging as he saw explosions occurring in Midgar. Cold bastard, I thought, maybe just what we needed.

Kathe grabbed my arm, pulling me behind her. She approached the man before me, looked at him for a moment and spoke up, "are you a guide?"

The man didn't move his gaze from the television screen. "Not for little princesses."

Kathe sneered, "want the job or not, asshole."

The man laughed, taking his eyes off the screen to grace us with their attention. "Got money?"

I leaned into the conversation, flashing the brown envelope inside my coat: it was loaded with the cash Kathe managed to liquidate from my account before we made way for the border. He seemed somewhat interested, mildly associating the thickness of the envelope with a large wad of cash. "Okay," He said, "its 14,500 Gil upfront."

I shook my head, "its five thousand up front and you get the rest upon completion." Kathe peered over her shoulder, giving me a death stare. She wanted to handle this man herself. She didn't want me involved whatsoever. Guilt perhaps?

The man let a snicker slip through his cool exterior. "You drive a hard bargain. Do you even know where you're going?"

Kathe spoke up, "none of your business. We tell you where to go and you take us there."

"Boyfriend?" He quipped. Kathe didn't answer. "Nah,” he laughed, “you look like someone running from something. I’ve seen girls running from Don Corneo before. Good deal gone sour?”

“Fuck you,” she spat.

"It doesn't matter,” I interjected, “Are you up for it or not?"

He shrugged, "six thousand up front and another ten when we're done."

"Fine." Kathe fished around in my jacket and pulled out the envelope, counted six thousand and slapped it onto the table. "You just better hope you keep us safe."

The man looked at me and asked, "got an idea of where we're going?"

I looked to Kathe, hoping to interrupt her before she put her two cents in, "Costa del Sol."

The man nodded. "Fine, meet me at nine sharp. We’ll take a boat over, avoid the mines. Better be prepared. The deal doesn't included me holding your hands."

He stood up from his seat and slapping a bill from the cash we had just paid him. His calm cool seemed to evaporate as quickly as he left. The bar's bustle seemed to resume as soon as the door slammed shut. I had just realized that a great number of patrons saw our conversation as afternoon entertainment. No one, apparently, approached the man in the corner. Which seemed strange, he was quite handsome.

"Couldn't have picked a better place?" Kathe snarled.

I shrugged, "I have always wanted to go to the beach."

“Well, I guess we should hurry and pack then,” Kathe walked out first, somewhat flustered. She was literally called a whore, so I didn’t blame her much.

We started back into the tepid afternoon, Kathe bee lining it for the inn. I decided to take it more leisurely. I was uncertain of what the future held for me at this point of my life, so I wanted to take in some of the sights before I was dashed away to yet another exotic location. It was in my leisurely stroll that I heard a name I had not expected to hear and which startled me out of my daydreaming state.

“Sephiroth’s dead.”

“But that was definitely his sword.”

I snapped up, looking for the origin. There, two men stood talking. Sephiroth, I heard from one of the nurses whispering in my ear, that he died too. But from what it seemed, one man was convinced he had seen a silver-haired man with a sword that had an uncanny resemblance to the late General. But it was the other man that interested me. He carried a beast of a sword on his back. “This sword represents my honor as a man.”

My head swirled. What the hell was this? I suddenly could hear my very heart pounding vicariously, throbbing in my chest. They’re all dead. All of them. Yes they were claimed by their own sad dispositions. I took solace in that notion, for some strange reason. But now that it was being challenged I felt as though the very air was closing in around me and piercing glares, meant to strip me of every little comfort I held close. I was scared and alone.

“Helena?!”

“Kathe?” I was suddenly released.

“What the hell is going on? I walked into the inn and you weren’t behind me. Fucking scared me shitless!”

“I was,” I began, looking back to the two men but they were gone. I frantically searched around, looking for any trace of them but could not find either soul. “Did you see a blond-haired man anywhere?”

“What?” Kathe asked. “No… Helena, is everything okay with you?”

“Yeah.” It was probably the medication, I reassured myself. It would take time before I could distinguish reality and dreams; I just had to be patient. “I’m just tired.”

Kathe smiled, “I know, baby girl.”