Work Text:
can we get back to the point in this conversation
when we saw things through each other's eyes?
cause now all i see is ruin and devastation
we all need some place we can hide inside
The snacks are different now too.
Helly scowls as she looks at the offerings in the vending machine. All she’d wanted were her peanuts, her shitty Lumon branded salted peanuts, but the familiar pale green box is missing now. In its place are new snacks, their boxes and wrappers displaying a rainbow of more vibrant colors. It’s overwhelming, and she hates it. She sighs as she drops her token in the machine.
Even the things she’d expected to be the same aren’t. It’s like she’s come back to some place completely foreign, and yet still somehow, exactly the same. As she presses the buttons on the machine to get her snack, C7, strawberry fruit leather, whatever the fuck that is, she realizes she’s not actually hungry as she sits down at the table. All of her emotions - anger, confusion, betrayal - stirring up at once as she rips into the package, the message printed on the inside of the wrapper feeling like it may be her last straw.
Lumon cares about you!
She rolls her eyes so hard she feels like they may fall out of her skull. Bullshit. All of it, bullshit.
She’s about to stand up and throw the whole thing in the trash, what little appetite she had gone, when there’s a familiar voice from the doorway.
“The mango one is better.”
She looks up to find Mark standing in the entrance of the kitchenette, hands in his pockets. Of all the things that have been different, he has been the hardest to handle. And on some level, she gets it. But, selfishly, all she really wants is to be able to talk to him like she could before, or for him to at least help her make some sense of everything that happened, like he’d done the day she woke up on the conference table.
She flicks the corner of the wrapper with her finger and decides to play along. “Oh yeah? You’re done being an asshole now?” She tries to keep the bite out of her voice, but his face falls slightly as he takes a tentative step closer to her.
“I’m sorry,” he begins, shifting his weight awkwardly back and forth on his feet. “I-I don’t know why I do that,” he stammers.
She sits back in her chair and crosses her arms. And even though she knows what he’s apologizing for, she wants to hear him say it.
“Do what?” She challenges.
His face wrinkles in confusion with just a hint of apprehension, she notices, like he’s afraid to give the wrong answer to a trick question. “Act like an asshole?” He phrases the statement like a question, but it’s good enough. She feels her face and body relax as he steps closer.
”Sometimes I just think…” he trails off and now it’s his turn to look down, using his toe to try and get up a non-existent scuff mark on the pristine floor. Finally, he shakes his head and looks up. “You know, I just think it’s easier than being sad.”
He takes another step towards the table and puts his hand on the plastic back of the chair next to Helly - a question. She desperately wants to stay angry at him, to push him away the same way he’d pushed her away, but ever since she woke up at the gala and everything changed, among all the confusion and fear, she’d felt nothing but alone. And right now she doesn’t want to feel alone anymore.
She nods, and Mark pulls out the chair and sits next to her, leaving the space open for her to begin the conversation when she’s ready.
“I knew it would be different after,” she begins quietly, folding and unfolding the corner of the snack wrapper anxiously, “but I didn’t think…” she trails off again, the weight of everything hitting her all at once.
Helena’s deception, Ms. Casey’s identity, Irv.
Irv.
Dylan had warmed up to her enough at lunch to at least explain a little about what happened at the ORTBO— or the FUCKBO, as he’d called it. Irving hadn’t been trying to drown her, he’d been the only one who had recognized she wasn’t herself, and he was trying to get her back. She’d appreciated the honesty, and it’d helped her at least make some sense of why she’d woken up freezing, wet, and out of breath with an apologetic Irv holding her before she’d come to again in the elevator that morning.
If it weren’t for him, Helena would still be doing who knows what with her body and her identity. She owes him everything, and now he’s gone.
”I miss Irv,” she confesses quietly, taking a deep breath as she looks up at Mark. It’s a truth she didn’t know she held. She’d never really thought that much about how she felt about Irv, but his quiet, soft spoken kindness towards her is something she finds herself wishing was still present in the MDR office. Especially today.
Mark nods almost imperceptibly as his eyes meet hers. “Yeah, me too.”
Feeling like she’s making progress, and with Irv on her mind, she decides it’s time to try again with the conversation she’d tried to have earlier in the bathroom that Mark had shut down almost immediately.
“You really didn’t know it wasn’t me?” She asks gently, like Mark’s a skittish animal that might flee at the first hint of danger.
Mark takes a deep breath, tapping his thumb on the table, his shoulders tensing up as he averts his gaze up, looking at the small mirror hanging on the wall behind her. It’s not lost on Helly that he’s hesitating, and that there’s something about bringing her up that leaves an awkward, heavy air between them, and she doesn’t know why. Her heart starts to pound in her chest and before her imagination can run away from her, he finally speaks up.
“I mean…,” he begins, clearing his throat, “she was a little different, maybe, you know, now that I think about it,” he stumbles over his words, trying to get them out, “but she was like you.”
Suddenly, Helly feels like she needs to vomit. She hasn’t had much time to come to terms with her identity on the outside, but in the little time she has been able to dwell on it, she had managed to convince herself of one thing— that she had nothing in common with Helena Eagan. And now, hearing Mark say she was only a little different , she feels herself starting to spiral.
Is she no better than Helena? Is she a bad person? Does this mean she’s capable, on some level, of treating people the way Lumon has treated her?
She hates it, all of it, and maybe that means she hates herself. She feels herself getting lost somewhere inside herself, and Mark must sense it too, because he sits up in his chair leaning towards her.
“You never told me what happened,” he says, attempting to pull her back to the present. She realizes she must look confused because he clarifies, “When you woke up.”
“Well, it was…” she shakes her head, trying to gather her now scattered thoughts. How does she explain that she hated what she saw, that she knows now she only exists as a means for Lumon to sell Severance as something it isn’t. She doesn’t know. So she settles for the easiest explanation. “It was really fucked up. They wanted me to give a speech about how great Severance is to a bunch of… I don’t know, Senators or something.”
“Did you?”
Helly’s face wrinkles in disgust. “God, no. Jesus, Mark, did you really have to ask me that?” She rolls her eyes before continuing. “I didn’t. But I knew it meant I probably wouldn’t ever wake up again.”
Mark watches her carefully as she purses her lips together and then shrugs her shoulders, looking down at her hands on the table. “Sometimes I think that might have been for the best.”
“Hey,” Mark begins, getting her attention, waiting until she looks up at him, his features soft, eyes brimming with genuine concern. “I don’t think that.”
Helly swallows hard. She wants to tell him she doesn’t believe him, but as her eyes lock with his, she knows he’s telling the truth. And what Helena did, coming down here, it wasn’t his fault any more than it’s hers.
She nods her head, the hint of a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth before she leans back in her chair.
“So you can tell it’s me now?” She asks with a smirk, crossing her arms over her chest.
“Yeah, Helly,” Mark says, putting extra emphasis on her name. “I can.”
“Good,” she says, reaching out and picking up her fruit leather, pointing it at Mark for emphasis. “So maybe now you can tell me what all these weird fucking snacks are doing in the vending machine.”
Mark chuckles as he rises to his feet. “Why don’t we save that one for later and get back to work?” His smile comes easier now as he holds his hand out to Helly.
She bites her lip as she takes him in standing next to her with his hand outstretched. There’s still something different about him, something hiding just under the surface that she can’t put her finger on, but right now, this is all she has and she doesn’t want to lose it, so she won’t question it. She sighs and turns around, tossing the snack in the trash behind her before putting her hand in his, allowing him to pull her to her feet.
And as she stands, she feels his hand squeeze hers ever so slightly before letting it go, a reassurance. She takes a deep breath. She might not have much right now, but she has this. And it’s real. And it’s enough.
“Alright, boss,” she says, stepping ahead of Mark and heading back to her desk. “Back to work.”