Work Text:
MARK
"You... Okay. So."
It's after the first time he goes through the story, to make sure this woman—Devon—his sister—has all the pertinent facts. He got through the goat part just fine this time, although she got a little hung up on the O&D rebellion myth because he didn't mention the painting last time and then has to explain the Kier thing, which apparently isn't as big in the outside world as the inside.
"When you saw the business man in my—" Devon stops herself again, then resets. "Mark, my Mark, he met this guy who said he worked with you. He was severed too, in your office."
"Who?" It never really occurred to him that their outies might be trying to get to them too. "Irving? Dylan? Milchick?" Cobel is outside, who knows.
"Peter something? You went to his funeral."
The floor drops out from under Mark's feet, the way it does when he first "wakes up" as it were in the elevator every morning. Without the pressure in his head, the silence is so much louder. It's different. It's...
"Petey's dead?"
His sister's face drops just as quickly, and in the hollow aftermath, Mark can't help thinking that she really must be his sister, because he recognizes her expression from the bathroom mirror. They have the same eyes.
"You knew him." It isn't a question. Her face is drawn. "Oh God, Mark, I'm so sorry. Was he...?"
"He was my best friend."
"Shit."
Petey's dead. In his heart, Mark thought that was probably true. It was all just too weird: how inopportunely timed it was, how no one would talk about it, how Mark came back from being sick without feeling sick, but instead with this sadness in his stomach every time he saw Petey's picture on the desks. When he found the map, he knew something. He didn't know everything.
Petey's dead, and he already kind of was, to Mark, given that he thought he'd never see him again, but he also thought maybe he might. That maybe their outies might meet in the supermarket, and they wouldn't recognize each other, but he'd still feel a lift in his heart like he knew inside that this was a face that brought him joy. But they won't, because Petey's dead.
"Petey's dead," he repeats under his breath, and Devon's face breaks open.
"Mark."
Before he can tell what her expression is saying now—her eyes are so shiny, but he hasn't been in a lot of places this dark before, so he might just be imagining it—Devon is launching forward to wrap her arms around him.
She smells like milk. That's probably a weird thing to say, but it's the first thing Mark notices, and it's because it's a smell he didn't know he knew. Because it's not the smell of the milk at work, but he still knows what it is. Her hair, a cloud in his face, smells like mint too, which he knows, and something green but bright that he doesn't. There's a smell his brain associates with babies, pinkish and cool and powdery, and her warm arms all around him, and it isn't until they squeeze, hard, that Mark realizes he's crying.
He's cried before, of course. He's been to the Break Room, and he's got his allergies. But he doesn't know if he's cried like this.
Devon hugs him closer, if that's at all possible. "Mark, honey, I'm so sorry. Shit. I mean, I didn't know—"
"I understand," he says, or tries to, but the words don't come out, his mouth sealed shut. He definitely hasn't cried like this before. At least, not in his memory.
Mark hasn't been held like this either in his memory, but his sister holds him without a thought, like it's second nature, and he cries more. And for a moment, it's alright. He has someone to hold him: someone who loves him, that much is clear even now, the way she believes him without question when he tells her he means it, the way her heart breaks with his. He tells her about his life changes. His concerns are her concerns. And she believes him.
Find someone it seems you can trust and tell them everything. Mark would never have admitted it to any of them, but deep down he was afraid, in this core of him that felt so lonely no matter what he did, that he wouldn't have anyone like that. That he would get outside and his life would be as bare as it was on the severed floor.
But Devon holds him, the first to ever, and he knows that he trusts her. His sister. Someone he can trust.
IRVING
Irving is driving a car.
A real one. Not just a prop in a training video, or a distorted shape in one of Dylan's caricatures. He's driving the car that supposedly his outie takes to work each morning, though it seems far too nice for everyday travel, in Irving's opinion. He must, though, because Irving's body knows exactly what to do and takes permission to do so before Irving can second guess, one arm over the seat as he backs out of— His parking spot, yes. Milchick said that once, when Irving got a papercut and went home with a bandaid he wondered aloud what his outie would make of. Back when Irving was new and knew nothing.
In his defense, there are no automobiles in the handbook. Kier lived in a time of hansoms, and that was as far as Irving's experience went, or needed to. He never even really wondered, until now, at least—and even then, he simply recognized it on sight, even without knowing why.
And now Irving is driving. He can drive. This is another fact about his outie that Irving commits to memory. His outie can drive. His outie enjoys painting, and rock music. His outie has a dog. His outie had a father.
(For the first time, Irving dares to think, I had a father. I can drive. Only in his mind, but he does.)
He had wondered about that too. He would read passages of Kier and his father chopping wood together, of his mother at his bedside, and wondered if Irving, the real Irving out there, had ever had something like that. A father to guide him. A mother to caretake. He wonders now if he has brothers and sisters—if he has children, somewhere, perhaps grown and no longer in need of him. He somewhat thought he would know, but Dylan certainly didn't. And really, how could any of them?
Case in point: Irving flexes his fingers against the wheel, feeling the pleasant creak of the leather that travels all the way up to his shoulders, in his matching jacket—also far from what Irving expected and yet not frighteningly so. (Which is perhaps saying a lot, as anything new tends to frighten Irving, at least until he knows how to feel about it.)
His outie is much more casual a dresser than he would have thought, but he kind of... likes it? Maybe not the paint covered clothing, which actually explains some things, or the shirt that is far too thin (and unbuttoned) for this cold, even indoors. Irving isn't exactly sure, but the clothes are comfortable, and the jacket is... very snazzy. He caught a glimpse on his way out the door, and though he didn't have the time or honestly wherewithal to think about it at the time, on the last long stretch of residential dark before Burt's address, he lets himself think about it a little. And to think, Dylan always said his stuffy sweater vests made him look like someone's most annoying grandpa. Disco king indeed.
The echoed words send a pang through him, his hands tightening accordingly on the steering wheel. Irving takes a moment to thank... Not Kier, not exactly, but maybe whatever miraculous force of the universe that put that security card in Mark's pocket, that showed Dylan the Overtime Contingency, that the roads are salted and clear. Otherwise, he might slide off the road at the thought of seeing Burt again, thus ensuring he never will.
Because that's what he's going to do. Even if it turns out he isn't home, well, then Irving will leave him a note and their outies will meet and maybe, maybe, they can do this again and he can see Burt. Because it's possible.
That's all he's thought about since they discovered the protocol. He thought he would never see Burt again, and yet he might. He could. Could see those laughing, kind eyes, feel his dry hands so gentle against Irving's own, hear him laugh without the constant underscore of buzzing fluorescents.
Oh. He didn't notice that before either, really. But without the radio blasting, or the dog (Radar! How lovely is that?) whining or clicking around, Irving finally notices the texture of the silence, out in the real world. There are no buzzes or clicks, none of the ambient machinery Irving is apparently so accustomed to he no longer really hears it: the hum of the lights, the kitchenette refrigerator, the air conditioning or heat, the printer, the computers.
Instead, it's the purr of the engine and the quiet flicking sound of— The car jolts slightly with every one, he realizes. It's the seams in the road beneath him.
And, eventually, the tiniest hiss of air. Irving dares to look away from the road out of instinct, mostly, and he looks straight to the source: a very small gap in the seal of the window, right behind his head where he couldn't feel it. The cold air whistles through that gap, bright and alive.
Irving finds a handle and rolls down the window to let a freezing rush of wind in. Wind. What he only knew from trust falls and the illusion of paintings, Kier standing right on the edge of oblivion. Oblivion streaks past Irving's windows in flashes of white snow and black night. Wind. What a remarkable feeling. Sharp and fresh and beautiful, like the truth. Like freedom, no matter how brief. Like promise, or at least opportunity.
HELLY
Whatever plan Helly had for getting out into the real world, she didn't plan for this.
At first, she felt sick at the idea that the whole time she's been one of these creeps: an Eagan, a grinning mannequin, an old money asshole, take your pick. She's standing here in a dress that probably costs more than her coworkers' wardrobes with a matching glass of champagne, and her outie says she's not a fucking person, doesn't care she's down there—fuck, she hasn't even left the building, has she?—getting tortured, because all her outie cares about is her fucking photoshoot and speech. This party. All a fucking performance. Well, then. Helly's just gonna have to give them a show.
That's when it changes. She knows she's only going to have a few minutes, especially once she gets started, and her eyes transition slowly to the bright spotlight of the stage. For a second, she's in the dark of the Break Room again, with Kier's apology projected into her eyes, and when the spots clear from her field of vision, the first face she sees is Jame Eagan. The walking wax man, her father, stiff and unreal as the dummy in the Perpetuity Wing that she didn't look twice at. But he's real, he's here, and he's her fucking father, and Helly knows without a doubt that he's the reason she's still stuck down there—Helly R, the empty copy of his progeny. Child of industry and blood, not of heart.
She could kill him. Like for real.
Even now, from the stage—Helly could leap off, push through the crowd (now that is more people than she's ever seen) and strangle his chicken neck the way she wished she could strangle her outie's. Hanging herself was the next best thing at the time; maybe now that's patricide.
Cobel is undoubtedly fuming behind her, whatever the outie version of Graner is probably about to storm the stage, but Helly is alight with the possibility.
Malice, Irving once quoted to her, back in the beginning when she kinda hated him and with transparent inflection, is the most noxious and corrosive of the tempers, and its influence and capacity for cruelty must be curtailed in a civil society, kept in perfect balance. Well, it turns out theirs is not a civil society, up or down, in or out, and Helly is definitely not balanced. Some bloodshed is looking pretty good right now.
Dylan had it right. She could totally bite someone.
Helly looks down at the audience, understanding dawning way too slowly across their glittering faces. More people than she's ever seen, and yet right now they feel like nothing. Empty vessels, glazed and confused eyes, like the cattle they treat the innies like, herded down in the basement.
(She never even made it out of the building, and yet seeing herself—her self, not Helena fucking Eagan—in the bathroom mirror and knowing that it was outside that godforsaken floor... Something in her feels triumphant, even among the panic. Because she promised she would get out, and she fucking did. Even if only so far. Even if only so long.)
She thinks about sinking her teeth into just one neck: the woman in red who's her assistant or handler or something, the senator guy, any of them. The morons that think she's one of them and yet, at the same time, don't think of her at all—that is, don't look at the bigass pictures on the walls and realize that's a different person they're looking at, and it's her, right now, among them.
Helly thinks of the serene blue bandaid on Mark's face her first day; the bright red of blood through Milchick's white turtleneck. Red, like her shadow Natalie's dress. (Has Helly seen her before, actually? In passing, in the management wing? Not in red, at least.) The only real red Helly's ever seen is blood: blood, and her hair in reflection, if that even counts. She counts it, at least. Red might be her new favorite color.
Her favorite color. From the outside. And no one had to tell her it was her favorite, she figured it out all on her own. She got there her fucking self.
She got herself out.
Irving was wrong. It's not malice that tears out of her throat with the words, all the shit she's wanted to say to her so-called self, to the fuckers who keep them down there, locked in the basement, in the Break Room, on the clock every second of every day of their lives. It's rage. And it's clear and justified and cleansing. It's real—she speaks, and it matters, because she's in the real fucking world.
In the last second before she's manhandled off stage, as the vice around her brain closes, the world shifting to stop accommodating her. Helly R grins at the empty, horrified rich faces in the crowd and imagines her teeth full of blood. It tastes good.
DYLAN
Three kids.
That's all he's thinking about as Milchick manhandles him off the switches and onto the floor of the security office (which is totally uncalled for, by the way, and he's definitely gonna owe Dylan's outie a new shirt cuz this floor is fucking gross). The anger that held him together across the chasm of the door is gone the second Milchick touches him. The heist is over; if they're done for, they're done for; Dylan is at peace with that and decides not to think about it anymore, just in case this is the last thing he ever does.
Three kids. Three names. Three little faces that maybe look like his, maybe someone else's, may even be the spitting image of his beloved grandma or some shit he wouldn't even know. Shit, they could be adopted for all he knows. But they're out there, they're real, and there's three of them, and he's their dad. He matters to them. He takes care of them. He's there for them. He knows that, even if he doesn't know their names.
The kid he saw, he kinda looked like he could look like Dylan. It was honestly only a split second (and fuck, does he really wish he'd paid better attention, but it was all so fast, a blink of an eye between the elevator doors sliding closed and open again). But the shape of it appears every time Dylan closes his eyes now, half forgotten as it is.
He could look like Dylan. Milchick is handcuffing him right now with fucking zipties, which he either already had on him (creepy) or got from a drawer somewhere (more explicable, but also creepy). Dylan isn't paying attention.
Three kids. Maybe he picked out names for them. Probably not—he gets the feeling he'd be shit at it. But maybe. At the very least, he's involved in the life of at least one of them, which is more than Dylan expected for himself, to be honest. But that closet, at his home, it smelled like laundry detergent, and the kid smelled like strawberries, which Dylan didn't know he knew the smell of, and it was warm and cozy, which Dylan didn't know he wanted until he did.
The kid had been wearing pajamas when Dylan saw him, when he ran into his arms. His eyes were fucking huge, but he was so small. Dylan's never held anyone so small. Dylan's never really held anyone, and yet his arms knew what to do. The boy was kind of squirmy: excited. To see his dad. Him.
It had felt enormous, to have this kid in his arms, like some seasick thing rising out of the water and the resulting wave knocking him flat on his ass, which he was already on. Dylan would absolutely never fucking admit it, not even under threat with a hundred Break Room sessions, but that was why he insisted on being the one to stay behind. Because as scary as the feeling was, it was also just... astounding. Profound, Irv would say. And if the others could feel it, he wanted them to. He wanted to give them that chance, because it was the biggest thing he'd ever experienced.
Milchick is standing over him, flicking switches and muttering into his radio. Dylan should probably pay attention, but it becomes the distant sound of a TV: cartoons. The boy's pajamas had dinosaurs on them. They were soft and washed under Dylan's hands when he hugged the boy back. His son's back fit entirely under his one hand. His son.
He'd like to revise his earlier statement. He's gonna have that in his head every day here, yeah. But, like the cube, maybe it can be a reminder. Of what all of this is for. What they're doing this for.
Milchick hauls him up by his bound hands and pulls him out of the security office with finality, muttering villainous things all along. Dylan doesn't hear them. He thinks about his hand on the switch, the same hand that was on his son last week. Probably this morning too. If he's getting fired, he wants that to be his last thought.
Shit. If he doesn't get fired, he really hopes he gets his cube back.