Work Text:
The door to the apartment sticks, so Sarah has to hit the edge of the door with her shoulder in order to pop it open. Inside the room is a maze of old pizza boxes, takeout containers and discarded parts of Barbie dolls. Sarah wasn’t always able to navigate it, but: there are all sorts of things she wasn’t always able to do. She makes her way straight to the shitty sink in the back of the room and starts washing her hands, obsessively. Her hands are clean. She can smell it, though, she swears she can smell it.
There’s a chin digging into her shoulder. Sarah jumps, hisses “shite” under her breath and then jerks her shoulder. “Helena, move.”
“Did you find the next one,” Helena says, not moving.
“Yes.”
“Did you kill it?”
“Get your bloody chin off my shoulder, Helena.”
Helena hums sadly and steps back. Her eyes are wide and bloodshot; she sways back and forth as she stands still. “You didn’t kill it,” she says. She sounds disappointed.
“Thought that was your job,” Sarah mutters.
Helena eyes the ground. “Yes,” she says. Her shoulders move in strange orbiting motions. “That is my job.” She looks back at Sarah. “Maggie used to find the others. But then Beth killed her.”
“I know,” Sarah says, “you’ve said that thirty bloody times.” She bumps past Helena into the main room of the apartment, kicks a pizza box open and grabs a slice. It’s cold and congealed and it tastes good. She throws herself onto the bed. Every time she closes her eyes she can see an afterimage of her own face. She isn’t nauseous, though. She can eat the pizza just fine.
The bed jumps and Helena burrows against Sarah’s side like a puppy. “Get off,” Sarah says, but she isn’t sure anymore if she means it. She used to mean it; at this point she thinks they’re both just expecting Sarah to want Helena gone, so Sarah keeps telling Helena to get gone. She doesn’t know what would happen if she threw the balance off – maybe Helena would stop, or maybe Helena would strangle her to death. Sarah keeps still and doesn’t move. Helena throws an arm over her stomach, and then seems to not know what to do with it. Sarah ignores it. She bites three more chunks out of the pizza and then passes the crust to Helena, who shoves it in her mouth.
“I’m glad you decided to give me the names of the others,” Helena says through a mouthful of pizza crust. “I didn’t want to kill you.” She snuggles closer, flops her arm over Sarah’s ribs and then back again.
Yeah, me too. That’s what Sarah should say; she doesn’t say it. She just lies there. Is she glad? Is she glad that she chose her own life over this whole mess, clones and monitors and Beth’s stupid ringing phones? Is she glad that all of that is gone? Was it worth it?
“I can kill her tomorrow,” Helena says to the silence. “If you tell me where she is. Um. When. You tell me.”
Sarah closes her eyes. Her own face floats to her out of the dark. “Make it quick,” she says, her voice soft and guilty.
“I try,” Helena tells her in the dark. “I don’t want to hurt them. I just want to fix them.” She is silent for a moment, and then she pokes Sarah gently in the side. Sarah hums and Helena whispers: “Do you think it hurts, if they aren’t supposed to be alive and they are anyways.”
“Yeah,” Sarah lies. “Bet it hurts all the time.”
“So it’s good,” Helena says, “that I am saving them.”
“Really good,” Sarah tells the woman behind her eyelids. She doesn’t believe Sarah, but that’s fine. Helena believes it. That’s what matters.
“Soon they’ll all be dead,” Helena says. “And then we can live in the sunshine and be happy. I will get a dog and name him Spot and take him for walks every day.”
Her knuckle jabs into Sarah’s face and that’s when Sarah opens her eyes and realizes she’s crying. She can hear, in Helena’s voice, the echoes of herself at twenty-one – twenty-three – twenty-five – twenty-eight: when all this is over, I’m gonna get Kira and get out of here. We’re gonna go to the Bahamas. We’re gonna be warm in the sunshine.
It’s never over. It’s never going to be over. She wants to grab Helena’s shoulders and shake her, tell her run, tell her get out of this life before it chokes you, but it’s too late for that. They’re both stuck in this, one noose rope around two of the same neck.
Helena is still clumsily trying to wipe the tears off of Sarah’s cheeks. Her face is wide open and it’s scared and it’s sad. Sarah sniffs in a breath, wipes the tears from her other cheek. “I’m fine,” she says. “Sorry.”
“It doesn’t have to be a dog,” Helena says, looking worried. “I saw them on the television and thought you were supposed to get one. It could be a cat. Or a goldfish.”
“No,” Sarah says, “no, get a dog. Sounds great.” She watches the ceiling. Water stains on the plaster, and when all of Sarah’s doubles are dead Helena will get a dog and Sarah will go home and just be herself. Dead women’s bank accounts and a daughter who won’t ever know the things Sarah did or didn’t do. Helena throwing bright red Frisbees in the park. Sit, she’ll say, stay, and the dog will do both of those things.
Helena buries her face into the hollow between Sarah’s neck and shoulder. Outside, cars go by. Sarah sniffles in another breath; she hasn’t stopped crying.
Helena’s hand whaps against Sarah’s stomach. “You aren’t supposed to cry,” she says. “I don’t want you to cry. How do I make it stop.”
“You don’t,” Sarah says. “You wait for it to be over.”
“There is a way,” Helena says. “I can make you stop crying.”
“Helena—”
Helena’s pizza-greasy hand settles in Sarah’s hair and pats it, roughly, like petting a dog. She’s humming a song Sarah doesn’t know; she’s sitting up, now, frantic and focused on trying to wrestle Sarah into calm. God, she’s sad. God, they’re both sad.
Sarah closes her eyes again. “Tell me we’re gonna be fine,” she says.
“We will be fine,” Helena says. Sarah doesn’t believe her. But that’s fine – Helena believes it. That’s what matters.