Chapter Text
For the first time in years, I don’t want to survive anymore. I desperately want to cross to the other side and never return.
I want to sink into endless oblivion, but I don’t have a choice. I never get a choice. I never get what I want.
Fortune has other ideas in store for me, whether I like it or not.
I lie on my bunk for hours, curled up in a fetal position, staring ahead, vaguely aware of Rachel’s soft voice as she tries to console me, with Scott and Renata watching on and trying to help. But there’s no comfort to be found. Not for me. Not anymore.
I stare through the glass, desperately wanting it to change, but it doesn’t. Her cell is silent. Her bed is empty. Her plants are growing limp.
She’s not coming back.
She could be dead by now - like the bodies upstairs, gone forever, though I tried so hard to revive them before he came back.
There’s nothing I could do for any of them. I’m helpless. I’m useless.
Part of me desperately wants to die, to go to the place with the tunnel and stay there. Maybe she’ll even join me there. Part of me wants to find strength like I’ve never found, unleash my rage, and find some way to attack Hap, because I don’t care what he would do anymore. And the last part of me hates myself most of all.
If I’d reacted quicker, if I’d fought back, if I’d held on to her, if I’d tried to grab for his gun, if I’d lunged for the door, could things have been different?
It’s my own fault. I had a few moments of choice - a few precious moments of hope - and I wasted them. All because I was too slow to realize what I had to do.
I sleep on and off, fitfully, for the first days. In my dreams I keep seeing her jerk away from my touch. I hear the sharp gunshot and smell the tinny mix of gunpowder and blood in the air and feel my fists beating helplessly against the door, again and again, her voice fading away into oblivion from the other side.
I see him dragging her unconscious body out of the house, shooting her in the woods, pushing her off a cliff, dropping her from a plane. The awful scenarios keep coming. I know most of them aren’t true. But my mind keeps attacking me, again and again, frantically trying to process what happened and what didn’t.
“Homer?” I hear Rachel’s voice somewhere over my head, trying to cut into my misery, digging deep to pull me out. “We’re going to do morning class now.” She’s trying to plug me into our daily routine, but I can’t. I can’t pretend like things are normal. I’m not ready to pretend like things are normal without her here.
When I close my eyes, I have an awareness of OA, like a phantom limb, a vestigial body, a presence that's a part of me until I open my eyes and lose her all over again. I can't sleep any more, my body is too tightly wound, but I still lie with my eyes closed, trying to protect my raw nerves by feeling for the remnants of her where I'm used to seeing her.
“We need you,” Rachel says. “You know we can’t do strength training without you.”
“You can,” I murmur. It’s the first thing I’ve said in a day, maybe two or three. “You can do it without me.”
“Renata needs you to watch her form. You have to get up and do class with us. Please.”
She’s right. I manage to drag myself out of the bed and count through the strength training regimen I developed for all of us. Renata’s form seems much worse than usual and it’s only later, when I’m curled back up under my blanket, that I realize she probably did it on purpose, to give me something to do.
Later, at Rachel’s soft urging, I sit back up and choke down a few bites of food with some water. Only for Rachel, not because I want to.
I lie for hours staring listlessly at the glass wall beside my bed, until Rachel’s voice cuts back into my solitude, quietly pleading for my attention.
“Homer, sweetie?” She taps at my glass, peering at me.
I offer a murmur of acknowledgement, but I don’t move. She’s never called me “sweetie” before. Somehow, right now, I don’t mind.
“You can lie there all night if you need to. You don’t have to say anything or do anything right now. But when the lights come on tomorrow morning, you’re going to walk over here, and you’re going to tell me one thing I can do to help you. Okay?”
I don’t say anything, but I don’t object, either.
When the lights buzz me awake in the morning, it takes me a moment to remember that I have an appointment at the window. I wonder if she’ll forget.
“Homer?”
“Mmm hmm,” I murmur into my pillow.
“Remember?”
I drag myself to my feet and cross to the glass beside her. Rachel stands at the window, waiting for me with deep concern. Behind her, Renata is starting to stir awake, and Scott is getting in place for his morning piss. I stare down at the stone floor.
“So?” she asks.
I lick my lips. My mouth feels dry from the long silence. “Will you sing something to me?”
“Of course I can.” She sounds relieved to have a purpose. “What do you want me to sing?
“Dunno.” I honestly hadn’t thought that far. “Anything. Maybe something to make me feel like it’s gonna be okay.”
After a minute of thinking about it, she starts to sing Hey Jude. I sink down on the bed and close my eyes again as I lie back. But Scott cuts her off before she even finishes the first verse. I can hear him zipping his pants up as he interrupts her.
“Goddamn, girl. You’re supposed to be comforting him? Not makin’ him want to stab himself.”
“Well, then, what do you think I should sing?” she snaps.
“I dunno! Make him feel better.”
“Yeah. That’s what I’m trying to do over here.”
My face is buried in my pillow but I have to smile as they snipe back and forth.
“It’s okay,” I say, tilting my head up so they can hear me. “I like that one. Sing something that makes me think about her. I want you to.”
“I got it,” Scott says. “I know. What’s that one song? The one with the mouse?”
“The mouse?” Rachel presses.
“Yeah! The mouse and, uh, the moon! That one.”
“Scott, I literally have no idea what you’re talking about,” Rachel says patiently.
“You know that song. Everyone knows that song.”
“Uh, yeah, maybe, but I’m never gonna get it from the way you’re describing it.”
“I used to love that song,” he goes on.
“And all you can remember about it is a mouse?”
I sit up, cutting off their argument as they turn to me in surprise. I lean my head back against OA’s cell. “Somewhere out there, beneath the pale moonlight…” I’ve never been that great a singer, even after my journeys through the afterlife, but I can carry a tune all right. And as I start to sing, I remember the familiar tune from the VHS tape I used to watch at my babysitter’s house.
Scott snaps and points at me, then looks back at Rachel, nodding in confirmation. “The mouse song!”
“Someone’s thinking of me, and loving me tonight,” she sings softly.
I close my eyes again and let her soulful, angelic voice wrap around me, carrying the tune away from me, carrying me to somewhere else. Carrying me back to a childhood of trusting that my parents would always come back for me eventually. Carrying me back to a powerful connection that kept me fighting to survive, when everything else seemed hopeless.
And even though I know how very far apart we are
It helps to think we might be wishin’ on the same bright star
And when the night wind starts to sing a lonesome lullaby
It helps to think we’re sleeping underneath the same big sky
There’s no sky down here. No stars for us to wish on. No wind singing in the night, at least not where we can hear.
But Rachel is still here. And Scott. And Renata, too. Because of OA, we’re together and we’re united, and we know what we can become.
And she’s out there somewhere. Either she’s alive, or she’s crossed over, but I know from everything we’ve done that there has to be some way to find her, and I’ll figure it out if I try hard enough.
I’m down, but I’m not out. Not yet.
I just need time to figure out what the hell I’m supposed to do without her.
After a couple more days, though I’m still shell-shocked, I force myself to teach them the fifth movement and tell them what Evelyn said before she was killed. In turn, Rachel quietly tells me what they saw. Yes, Hap took OA’s unconscious body out of the house. No, no one saw her die. He came back hours later, without her, and has been suspiciously quiet upstairs ever since.
“Rachel. I couldn’t revive them,” I whisper to her. “I tried, but-“
She shakes her head to silence me. She doesn’t need me to say anymore. I can barely look at her. Instead, I look behind her at Renata, who is still trying to perfect the connection from the fourth to the fifth movement.
“She’s not coming back.” It’s the first time I let myself say it out loud. I manage to say the words without letting my emotions burst through. “But even if she’s dead, I’m going to find her somehow.”
“She can’t be dead,” Scott offers quietly from where he’s crouched against the wall. It’s his idea of comfort, blunt as it is. “Cause, if she is, why’d he leave for so long? Where’d he go?"
“No, she’s not dead. He couldn’t,” Renata chimes in, stopping her movement. “The rest of us, yes, he could. But not her. He could never.”
“You didn’t see the look in his eyes that day.” My voice cracks on the sentence. I sink back down on my cot and close my eyes, leaning back against the glass that divides my cell from the hauntingly empty one. “He’s dangerous. He’s changing.”
“He let her go,” Renata says. “I know it.”
“But why would he do that?” I ask, my voice a low monotone. “He’s obsessed with her. He hates me. Why free her, and keep me? It doesn’t make sense.”
“It doesn’t bother him to see you suffer,” she says softly. “He just couldn't stand it for her any longer.”
My eyes stay shut. “God. I hope you’re right.”
I settle back down on the cot and try to let my mind fool me into thinking it might be okay. That she’s still here. Or that there’s a simple way to find her again.
None of it works.
My thoughts are interrupted hours later when I hear the familiar beeping from the top of the stairs and immediately sit up. He’s back. I climb to my feet and pace to the glass, glaring at Hap, so I'm as close as I can get to the stairs when he strolls down them, all business as usual.
His casual demeanor offends me. This is not business as usual.
"Where is she?" I growl in a low voice.
He fixes me with a stern look. He doesn't want to have this discussion. "You’re not going to see her again. That's all you need to know."
I slam the side of my fist against the glass, because it's the only thing I can do. I can't touch him, but I have to direct my rage somewhere to keep from burning alive. "What did you do to her?"
"I told you. We don't need her now."
"You released her?" Rachel asks, her voice hopeful. He shrugs.
"I don't believe you." My voice is shaking. He's too obsessed with her to let her go this easily. Something bad has happened. I'm sure of it. For the first time in years, my helplessness crashes over me as if it's all new again - the conviction that I should do something, that I need to fight back, but I can't, because he's taken everything away from me.
Now he's taken her from me. The only thing he ever gave me worth having. The only thing that kept me alive.
"Believe me or don't believe me. We have more important things to focus on."
"Nothing else matters.” I try to keep my voice steady, but it falters.
He sighs, rubbing his temple. "You see? That’s the point. You've never seen the big picture. Nothing matters but this. The work. And now, we can focus on it."
"Fucking bastard," Scott mutters, loud enough for him to hear, but he pretends not to and takes a deep breath, as if he’s about to change the subject.
"Hey! Wait.” Hap takes a step back and studies me. “I'll cooperate," I say, words tumbling out of me with desperation. "I'll do whatever you say, whatever you want, I'll help, just please, tell me something. Anything. I have to know if she's okay. Or if she’s not." He squints. “Please.” My voice rises to a squeak. I don’t think begging will help, but I don’t know what else to do.
"She's alive," he says brusquely. I release a deep breath I hadn’t realized I was still holding and sink down onto my cot.
I pray that he’s telling the truth.
He walks to OA’s empty cell and opens it, then walks himself inside. I hate seeing him in there. That’s her space. “I assume by now you all have the fifth movement,” he says, looking pointedly at me. I stare back down at my feet. I’m weaker than usual, I’ve barely had an appetite since that day, but I don’t want him to know. I’ve been hiding the extra chow in the drawer of my cot. But right now, he’s not interested in signs of life.
“We have to leave soon, one way or another.”
“Why?” Renata blurts out.
“Do I really need to explain this?” He peers over his glasses. “We’re exposed. She’s a liability, and we can’t stay here. So I suggest that you work on the movement while I finish preparations.” He looks at Scott. “You’re also probably wondering how I’m going to make you do the movements. I suggest you don’t try and find out.”
She’s gone. But I can’t lose the others. I couldn’t bear it. They’re all I have left.
As soon as the door latches at the top of the stairs, I leap to my feet and move to the center of the cage. My grief, my fatigue, my weakness – none of it matters anymore.
I have a mission again.
“Guys,” I hiss. Rachel is already there. She studies me, then gives me an encouraging nod. I meet her eyes, silently assuring her that I’m ready for this. I have to be. Renata and Scott wander up to join us. It’s almost as if we’re all in a room together, standing in a circle with a missing piece, if you ignore the unbreakable walls keeping us from each other.
“Listen,” I say in a low voice. “We’re leaving. We’ve got to leave evidence behind.”
“Isn’t that your bloodstain on the rocks?” Rachel taps my glass to illustrate.
“Yeah,” I say. “What else?” Renata is already ripping out strands of her hair and tucking them into the corners of her bed. Rachel nods at her, approving.
“We should take stuff with us, too,” Scott chimes in urgently. “Leaves and shit? All of it’ll tie us back here, if we need to prove anything.”
“Yes,” I say, pointing at him. I snap my fingers. “Rachel, your Bible.” She has years of notes scratched into her small, worn Bible, which she retrieves from the drawer under her bed. That reminds me of something else, something they don’t even know about, something that was our secret. I retrieve it from my drawer and tuck it into my pocket without a word.
“Food,” Rachel says. “Everybody take a pellet. If we can get to the authorities with it, we could prove that we didn’t make it up.”
“But listen. Whatever we do out there, we’re doin’ it together,” I say firmly, moving back to the center and commanding their attention. “All right? No one jumps ship.” I look around, making eye contact with everyone in turn. “We’ll find another way. We always do. We’re strongest together, so we stay together.”
“We’ll find another way,” Rachel repeats my words.
“We always do,” Renata agrees, dropping her last hair. She puts her hands to the glass, one hand on each side. Scott does the same, meeting her hand and putting his other one against OA’s empty cell. Rachel joins them, and finally, I do the same. We’re almost a complete circle. Our hands touch at the glass. I feel a thrill at the connection. Only one piece is missing. The one that should be between Scott and me.
“Strongest together,” Scott says with urgency, nodding toward the rest of us. “We stay together.” His decisive tone seals the deal. We’re agreed.
If we flock together in a herd, we’ll only make it easier for Hap to control us. But I don’t care. Even if I could get away, I might never find the others again.
I don’t want to be out there alone again, and I don’t want to put the others through it, either. My heart breaks to think that’s where OA might be right now.
“Are we really going to cooperate with him?” Renata asks.
“I think we have to,” Rachel says, looking at me.
“If you mean what I just said to Hap, that doesn’t mean shit,” I say. “He gave us nothing.”
“No, she means he’s going to hurt us,” Scott says. He’s right. It’s one thing to try to sabotage the movements when he’s watching us through a camera. It’s another when he’s there doing them with us.
By the time Hap returns, we’ve obediently mastered the fifth movement. He walks back into her empty cell.
“We’re gonna do this here?” Scott asks skeptically. “What if we jump dimensions and the next one don’t have an exit out of this place?”
“This part of the mine is natural,” Hap says. “We’d have to jump pretty far to get somewhere where it doesn’t exist.”
“How sure are you about that?” Hap scowls at him in response.
I wonder, with some degree of anxiety, what we might find in the next dimension. Maybe we’ll jump into a reality where we already exist in this space, where OA never left, and suddenly there are two Homers, two Renatas, two Rachels, two Scotts, two Haps – and one of her. I wouldn’t hate that, honestly, though the thought of having to share her is a little daunting.
But I know that, most likely, we’ll go farther than that. And somehow, I don’t think we’re going to find her. Not yet.
It takes us a while to get the movements down, though we’re all trying. At various intervals, he barks commands.
Scott is tired. He isn’t getting it exactly right. At one point, Hap looks so angry I’m afraid he might hurt him. I can’t lash out at Hap, but if he goes after Scott, I don’t know what I would do. I see the fear growing in Scott’s eyes as he tries harder. Hap glances at me and says nothing.
I start to zone out after awhile. The muscle memory is burned into me, but the fatigue is overwhelming, too. I’m exhausted, and I’m terrified. I find myself blacking out for moments, coming back around to find myself still in sync with the others, moving and moving and moving. Is this it? Are we crossing? But every time, I come back, testing my memory, and nothing has changed.
Something is keeping me here. I think it’s the pain. He can take away my memories, he can take away my family, my freedom, but nothing can hurt me the way that taking her away from me hurt. She's deeply imprinted on my soul – but would I lose her forever if we jumped dimensions? That's what scares me the most.
Hours pass. Hap starts to look tired as well. “What’s not working?” he bursts out. He finally stops moving. The rest of us take this as permission to stop, too.
“It should be working,” I say dully. “We’re doing everything right.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Believe me or don’t believe me,” I say, echoing his words back to him. His face darkens.
“In that case,” he says, “We’re going to have to go with the backup plan. And I can’t guarantee that you’re going to like this one much better.”
He storms out of the cell and up the stairs to the main house. We look around at each other.
“What just happened?” Renata asks once Hap is out of sight.
“It didn’t work,” I say, pacing across my cell. I fold my arms and shake my head. “We didn’t go anywhere. Was everybody doing it right?”
“I thought so,” Renata says.
“Wasn’t me,” Scott adds. He looks at Rachel, who shakes her head as well.
“So does it not work?” Renata asks. “Did it never work at all? Are we all crazy?”
“We’re not crazy,” I say firmly. “It worked on Scott, it worked on Evelyn. I saw it. We all did. It works.”
“Then how do we cross?” Rachel asks.
“Evelyn told us that only someone of great determination could cross to the other side,” I say slowly, looking at the others. “Maybe we aren’t determined enough.”
“I’m pretty determined to get the hell out of here,” Scott mutters. “I’ve always thought the rest of y’all were, too. I don’t care what the next place looks like. At least we get to roll the dice again. ”
“With him, though?” I ask. “Do any of us really want to go to another dimension, with Hap along for the ride?”
But before anyone can answer that, a noise sounds above the cages. A noise we haven’t heard in a long time, clicking and hissing.
Instinctively, I drop to the floor. “Shit, no!”
It’s useless, of course. It always is. The gas pours into all of the cells. There’s no way to avoid it. He hasn’t used it for years, but the pipes still work. Scott and Renata carefully lower themselves on their beds, resigned, preparing to lose consciousness.
With my last moments of breath, the air turns sickeningly sweet and I feel everything start to fade.
“Strongest… together,” I manage to say weakly.
I stare across at Rachel, the last one awake with me. I know what’s happening, I know we may never be here again, and for some reason I feel strangely sad as she looks back at me, touching the glass softly.
But then her knees start to buckle, and the air goes hazy, and then there’s nothing.