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When Helly opens her eyes after being silenced at the gala, it's all water, filling her lungs and consuming her whole. After she's ripped from the water, she feels the cold air burn her throat as she breathes in, coughing out spurts of water. Everything is muffled, but she feels arms around her, holding her close, covering her in a warm blanket. She wants to brush the hair from her face, but her body is in such a state of shock that she can't bring herself to move even if she had to. Soon enough, the arms around her leave and are replaced - her eyes unblur enough to see Irving standing and walking away - he was the one who saved her, then. Leaning over her, cradling her as if she was so fragile, was Mark. Were there tears in his eyes? What happened?
The minutes pass, and she sees Mark's eyes look from her, to behind her, to above her. He keeps muttering something, a plea, as he screws his eyes shut and his lip quivers. Mark flinches as something cracks and falls. He holds her tighter, then.
She is helped up, with a pair of soft gloved hands, and the coat is pulled around her shoulders as they carefully hobble back to the campfire. Only as they turn her around, she sees a large indent in the distant snow, and the pieces slowly start to fall into place. In the silent walk - except for Mark's constant apologies - she understands that Irving is gone, that she had something to do with it, and that most likely, Helena *fucking* Eagan was in her body for God knows how long. Helly sits and stares into the fire, her own rage bubbling alongside it. Both Dylan and Mark keep looking at her, staring as if she wouldn't be able to notice, then looking away and acting busy in her peripherals. Dylan pulls Mark to the side of a tent, his signature concern on his face, visible from even where Helly was sat, talking to Mark and shaking his head far too often for a regular conversation. Unfortunately for her, Mark's face was obscured by the canvas of the tent, instead she relied on the gestures his hands made as he tried to calm Dylan down, patting him on the shoulder and pulling him in for a very awkward hug when Dylan breaks down crying onto Mark's shoulder. There was something less stilted about his movements - subtle, but different. How long had she been gone?
There was, frankly, no reason for Helly to move. Flashes of the water kept her from calming entirely, recent memory of the screams and the tightness in her throat that made it impossible to focus on anything else. Mark came and sat beside her after some amount of time. The fire had dimmed and been relit - so it was an extended amount of time, she guessed.
"Helly?" Mark sounded guilty. Not sad, not excited to have her back, but guilty. "Are you okay?"
She said nothing, just looked over her shoulder and met his eye. That answered his question.
"I'm sorry."
Helly spoke her first words since they had gotten back to the campsite, "What for?"
"I didn't realise... I didn't even think that *she* could have been anyone but *you.*" He bit the inside of his lip, his eyebrows furrowing in that semi-pathetic way they often did - but it was part of what charmed her to him in the first place. "If I had, then maybe Irv-"
His throat closed up, the wound raw and bloody in his mind. That was what had dimmed the shine in his eyes as Helly looked closer at him, a familiar burden of grief. They weren't nearly as bright, eager, instead being puffy and red. His whole face drooped with the weight of Irving's disappearance.
Helly's instinct, instead of trying to comfort him, or speak about what happened, was to lean into him, her head resting on his shoulder. Mark's body froze, thinking for a moment she had gone unconscious and went to support her, his arm hovering around her back. There was a minute where neither moved, before Mark adjusted himself, his hand resting on the log behind her, and his posture so that Helly wasn't crouching her neck so much to rest on his shoulder. It was... nice. It felt normal, comfortable. They could try and forget for just a second that they were trapped, that their friend was gone, that they had been lied to and discarded for weeks without so much as a warning. They both stared into the fire, then, burning brighter against the darkening winter sky.
"How long was I gone?"
"They said 5 months since any of us were back, but if I had to guess, a few weeks?"
"*Fuck*."
"They also said we started a movement for 'innie empowerment'." He seemed less convinced of that, even mimicking quotation marks with his fingers, "I-" He went to say something, but stopped himself.
"What?"
"We... *Helena* and I..." His breath stuttered when he corrected himself on not-Helly's newfound name, processing the new information in real time, "I *really* did think it was you."
Helly looked at him over from her placement on his shoulder, a weird angle, but it was clear to see he was upset. The line of his gaze was pointed anywhere but at her, resting mostly on the fire in front of them, the reflections of the flame glazing over his irises. Whatever happened between them, it mattered enough to him to cause him distress. She fell in love with him over a matter of months, kissed him by the end of it. If Helena was in her body, taking advantage of her relationships to what feels like her *family...* She was going to kill her. Or, take down her company and leave her with nothing - so she knows what real hardship is like, have to work for what she wants instead of being handed it on a silver spoon. It was no use thinking on that now, not when there were so many other things she didn't know.
"What happened to Irving?"
"Milchick... he gave an order into his walkie-talkie, said 'It'll be like he never existed'." He paused, gulping down the emotion gathering in his throat, "But we'll remember him. Like with Petey."
Helly nodded against his shoulder, eyes drooping as her body finally started to relax in Mark's presence. "We will."
They sat in silence for a while, Mark's hand moving to rest around Helly's waist, unconsciously rubbing circles into the fabric. Dylan sat across from them while they were all still silent, not bothering to hide his disdain for Irv's disappearance. Helly swore she could see his eyes watering with the reflection of the flame. Mark broke the silence, memories of Irving already taking on a sepia-style glaze, falling into the distant past with every passing second. His voice was solid, but quiet as his eyes met Dylan's from across the campfire, speaking with a certainty he hadn't felt in weeks;
"We have to."