Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“You think we’re about to meet our spouses?”

Mark and Helly stood face to face next to the elevator on the Severed Floor. The slow hum of anticipation that had been gradually building between them was getting louder and harder to ignore. There was something tense in the air, waiting to snap, and Mark knew that the nerves and rush of emotions that were roaring in his chest had absolutely nothing to do with the mission that waited for them on the outside.

“Uh, maybe”, he said, the words catching awkwardly in his throat.

They had never entertained the idea of their outies’ spouses with one another before. Mark had always assumed his outie was married, that was the norm for a forty something year old office worker, right? But he’d never considered Helly going home at the end of the day into the arms of a faceless man. Thinking about it now, it made Mark feel uncomfortable, his skin crawling, for a reason he couldn’t quite place. It was strange that she’d speculate about this now, during what could quite possibly be their last moments together. Mark hadn’t expected it, but then again, she wouldn’t be Helly if she wasn’t constantly keeping him on his toes. He wouldn’t have her any other way.

Helly raised her eyebrows at him, a daring smile on her face. A flicker of hope in her eyes.

“Maybe it’s each other. That would be a hoot”.

Oh.

The idea took Mark’s breath away. It knocked him sideways, tilted his world on its axis.

“Yeah like uh, mid-argument over car wash coupons”, he stuttered.

“Honey, you’re cutting them wrong,” Helly laughed, indulging in some playful roleplay.

The fantasy washed over the two of them, vivid and tantalising. Mark sat at the kitchen table cutting up coupons, Helly standing behind him, hands on his shoulders, telling him off for cutting the pieces of paper incorrectly. The windows would be open, a soft breeze blowing through the kitchen, whilst something cooked on the stove beside them. A place neither of them had ever been, and it felt like home.

The dream felt like stepping outside and feeling the sun on your skin for the first time after a long winter. A brief window into a mundane and domestic life that was impossible, simply too good to be true. Mark craved it, aching at its astonishing simplicity. Whatever confusion he’d had about his feelings towards Helly fell away in an instance, as he was struck with a sudden clarity about who they should be, are, to each other. Husband and wife. His heart clenched. That was it. That felt right.

Holding each other's gaze, their smiles slowly drifted from their faces. They don’t have time for this. The stakes at play were too high. The moment passes. It’s time to go.

“Ok,” Helly says, nodding.

“Alright,” he responds.

Mark gravitated towards Helly as she walked away from him, pushing her key card into the slot and then entering the elevator. He gave her a nod of encouragement, reassurance, one final act of service for the woman who had turned his world upside down in the most wonderful way.

What happened next, happened so quickly. Doors closing, arm stretched out, a firm grip on his jacket, a flash of red, and her lips, pressed to his, warm, and so, so soft, a sigh and gentle exhale on his cheek. She pulled back slightly, keeping their faces close, clutching his hand, and oh, when did that happen?

“In case we don’t come back. Or, I don’t know, in case we do?” She said, almost nonchalantly. Her hand trembling in his told him she was anything but.

“Right,” he breathed, stunned.

Just as suddenly as Helly appeared, she was gone, back into the elevator, eyes fixated on him. Mark missed her already.

“Good luck out there boss.” The doors closed again and this time she disappeared.

Mark was utterly speechless, but there was no time to process what had just happened. He had to go. He told himself that the sooner he went up in the elevator, the sooner he would come down, and the sooner he would see Helly again. Mind reeling, Mark followed in her footsteps and entered the elevator, with the ghost of her lips on his, her voice echoing in his head. They would come back, they would have to come back. It was inconceivable that he would never see her again.

Maybe it’s each other.

As the elevator ascended, Mark allowed himself to hope that he would close his eyes and wake up with Helly outside. Maybe arguing over car wash coupons, or perhaps doing the dishes. Maybe curled up together on a couch, under a blanket, watching old reruns on television. As husband and wife.

That would be a hoot.

—

Mark blinked and woke up in a new world. His heart was still racing from Helly’s kiss, and now from the fact that it appeared they’d actually pulled off their scheme. For the first time in his entire life, he was not on the Severed Floor. Taking in a deep breath, Mark took in his surroundings.

He was in a warm, dimly lit room, full of strangers - he’d never seen so many people in his entire life - all sat down in chairs arranged into neat rows. Everyone had a book open, in their hands or on their laps, apart from him, though the woman to his left was holding out her copy for him to presumably share with her. A man’s voice was the only sound in the room, controlled and commanding. Mark looked up to see who was speaking and -

Ricken Hale?

That was unexpected. He stood at the front of the room, larger than life, reading out loud from a book that Mark knew all too well. Looking around the room again, he surmised that he was at a book reading, for Ricken Hale no less. Was this Ricken’s house? Was his outie a fan? Had he smuggled the book onto the Severed Floor for his innie to read? As the shock at waking up outside wore off, the questions started to accumulate.

After scanning the room a couple of times, Mark realised he didn’t recognise anyone else. Helly was nowhere to be seen, of course. It had been fun to indulge in the fantasy of a world in which they were happily married on the outside, but that was all it was, a fantasy, and a childlike one at that. He’d been privileged to meet and know Helly on the severed floor, he would never be so lucky to wake up with her on the outside. The chances were next to none.

Mark wondered where Helly was, how she was doing and if she was safe. His mind was racing as he tried to put her out of his mind, at least for now, for there was nothing he could do for her at the moment, trying to piece together where he was and what he was doing. His thoughts were interrupted by a polite round of applause.

“Let’s all take a seven minute reflection break and then come back”, Ricken announced, then walking away from his homemade stage at the front and out of the back door and into a garden.

Mark automatically stood up to follow him outside, instinctively drawn to Ricken, when he was interrupted by a hand on his shoulder.

“Hey, I’m going to see if she’ll have more bottle. Give me a couple minutes then meet me in the baby room?”

A woman was speaking to him. Before he even had a chance to respond she left, rocking a baby in her arms. Mark had no idea what that was about, but he was pressed for time and had other priorities. He had to talk to Ricken. His was the only face he knew in this room, and even though he had no good reason to, other than reading his book, Mark’s intuition told him that he could trust him.

“Um, Mr. Hale, Ricken?” Mark called out to him, stepping outside.

“I don’t know why my voice shakes like that. I sound like a sad old hamburger waiter prattling on about sauces. ‘Hamburger waiter’ what the fuck is that? Jesus, why do I ever open my buffoon mouth?” Ricken rambled, flustered.

“Uh, it’s going great, I mean the book is brilliant -“

“Okay, Mark, thank you, but you don’t have to say that, I’m well aware of how I come across to you”, Ricken said, exasperated.

“What?” Mark was confused. What was their relationship? How does he come across to Ricken? “No, I mean it, your book, it opened up the world to me,” he insisted.

“Mark, are you okay?”

“Yes! This book changed my whole life.”

“You actually read it?” Ricken was in disbelief.

Mark didn’t know how much time he had. As much as he would have liked to talk Ricken through his insecurities, make him understand just how big an impact his book had had on him, he needed to cut to the chase. They had a mission, to take down Lumon, and Ricken felt like his best bet to do so.

“Ricken, are we friends?”

“Look, I know I sometimes make you feel ‘less than’ for having had the procedure. And I regret that. You had to deal with the divorce in a way that was best for you.”

“Divorce?”

It was one thing to speculate about his outie’s life down on the Severed Floor. To actually hear about it, to learn something significant, shook Mark to his core. Distracting him again from his original plan.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have mentioned it, I know you don’t like to talk about it”, Ricken said, brushing it off.

“No, no, it’s just… the divorce… I don’t like to talk about it?” he questioned, mirroring Ricken’s words back to him.

“Yeah but, you know you can, right?” Ricken affectionately placed a hand on Mark’s shoulder. “You can talk to us about anything. Your sister worries about you more than she lets on, you know.”

“Right…” was all Mark could say. It was all so overwhelming. “Could - could we talk about it now?” He was desperate to learn more.

Alas, the conversation was cut, far too soon for Mark’s liking, when a voice called Ricken from inside telling him that the seven minutes were up.

“Sorry man, I’ve got to get back in there. But look, I think it’s great that you’re finally ready to talk about it. And we definitely will. Tonight! After the reading! I’ve always wanted to have a brother-in-law to brother-in-law pow wow with you!” Ricken said, giving him a friendly pat on the shoulder and flashing a smile, before returning to his audience.

Brother-in-law. Wow. Mark’s mind was racing. He knew he should stick to the mission, to blow the whistle on all the wrongdoings that were occurring at Lumon, but he couldn’t help but try and find out more about his outie’s life. He had a sister and a brother-in-law, and it seemed that they were all close. And an ex-wife. Who was she? What happened?

Mark didn’t go back to the book reading. Heading back inside, he took to exploring the house. Though large, it was comfortable, homely. Love lived within its walls. Straying further from the party, Mark passed the entrance hall, the kitchen, and came across a child’s room. Or was it a baby’s? Maybe both. A crib, a child’s sports car bed, and a normal bed lay side by side. How strange. Was the woman with the baby his sister? Was this the baby’s room?

Continuing further into the house, Mark came across a study at the end of the corridor. Inside, hundreds of books lined the walls, a grand, ornate wooden desk the centerpiece of the room, a desk chair behind it and a rocking chair next to the window. This must be Ricken’s study, it was clear a writer worked here. An old-fashioned typewriter was placed in the middle of the desk, a closed laptop to the side. Papers were scattered everywhere amongst other items cluttering the desk, a large desk lamp, a Newton’s cradle, a snowglobe and a couple of Chinese finger traps.

Mark didn’t see any of this.

On the far side of the room, on one of the bookshelves, was a photograph in a thin gold frame. It captured four happy people in formal dress. To the left, Ricken, and on his arm the woman Mark had briefly spoken to earlier, the one with the baby.

Mark didn’t see them either.

It was complete, and total tunnel vision. He recognised himself immediately, in a black tux, next to Ricken and the woman who must be his sister. But that’s not what he was focused on. The Mark in the photograph had his arm wrapped around her waist. Her red hair was done up in a way he had never seen before. A blinding white wedding dress. He didn’t think it was possible for anyone to look so happy.

“Honey, you’re cutting them wrong”.

Mark’s mind short-circuited and he felt himself black out for a second, paralysed.

“You had to deal with the divorce in a way that was best for you.”

Sheer panic coursed through his veins. He snapped out of his state of shock and lunged for the photograph, tearing it down from the bookshelf, knocking half a dozen books and knick knacks onto the floor. Mark turned and ran out of the room, calling the only name that he knew.

“Ricken!”

He sprinted through the house, calling for his brother-in-law as loud as his lungs would let him.

“RICKEN!”

Mark stumbled into the main living space where the book reading was taking place. Fifty pairs of eyes landed on him, dumbstruck and confused.

“Mark?” His sister, still holding a baby, stood up, eyebrows furrowed and her face full of concern.

“Where is she?” He yelled, looking back and forth between Ricken and his sister, holding the photograph in front of him.

“Where’s HELLY?!”

He didn’t get an answer. Mark blinked and the next thing he knew, he was back on the Severed Floor.

Chapter Text

At the very moment Mark came to in his sister's house, Helly opened her eyes to find herself in a bleak, silent room. It was devoid of warmth and colour, the walls and furniture washed in white and grey. Harsh lighting was eerily reminiscent of the fluorescent tones she was so used to in MDR. As Helly took in her surroundings, disappointment slowly crept in, quelling her initial reaction of surprise and elation at the fact that their plan had worked. She’d spent her entire existence fighting to leave the Severed Floor, and now she finally had, only to end up in a place that looked and felt exactly the same. Just as heartless and sterile. Cold.

She was sitting at a grand dining room table, ostentatious silverware holding a meagre amount of food in front of her. Looking through the floor to ceiling windows that stretched across the entire left hand side of the room, Helly was unable to determine her location, the view outside cloaked in darkness. She had no idea where she was. 

A familiar pinch around her toes told her that she was wearing her usual heels, that much was the same. The rest of the outfit was different. She was dressed in trousers, for the first time in her life, and a turtleneck jumper was wrapped tightly around her neck.  Dark blue, as always, of course. 

Staring out of the window into the darkness outside, Helly started to feel on edge. Something didn’t feel right. This room didn’t feel safe. Scanning her surroundings, her muscles slowly started to tense. The hair on the back of her neck stood up, her body instinctively on the defensive, and - 

There was an old man at the far end of the table. 

Helly froze, a deer in headlights. It was just the two of them. He was staring at her with black, sunken eyes, unmoving. There was no plate in front of him, suggesting that he was not there to eat with her, but rather, to watch. Helly shifted in her seat, the atmosphere deeply uncomfortable. There was something familiar about him, she was sure, but she couldn’t quite place it. 

The thought of him discovering her true identity caused a surge of deep fear to rise within Helly. Her basic survival instincts said that this was not the person to alert about Lumon’s transgressions, and that she needed to act like an outie and avoid arousing any suspicions. Not knowing who she was meant to be or how she should act, Helly reached for a decorative serving bowl that was on the table, to add a serving to her plate, in an attempt to blend in. This was a normal thing to do at dinner, surely. 

The man spoke.

“Don’t you think you’ve eaten enough already?” 

Apparently not.

His voice was weak, a raspy whisper, but the warning, the threat, was clear and felt very, very real. Helly’s stomach gnawed. There had always been an emptiness, but it was sharper now, more defined. She closed her eyes and thought of Mark, remembering the tender pressure of his lips on hers, trying to gather courage from the memory of him to face this moment. Helly hoped that he had found himself in a kinder place than this one. 

“I - I guess I have”, she replied quietly, pushing away her untouched dinner in submission. 

The man’s eyes narrowed, observing Helly intently.

“You are to have dinner with the Senator next week. I will not tolerate you embarrassing the Eagan name with such a hoggish appetite. It is unbecoming,” he continued. 

Bile rose in Helly’s throat, her hunger disappearing in an instance. The mention of that particular name hit her like a bullet, and one puzzle piece of this mysterious setting suddenly fell into place. She knew this man, she had seen him before, in the Perpetuity Wing. 

Why the fuck was she eating dinner with Jame Eagan? 

The Eagan name? What the fuck?

The room stayed cold yet Helly felt her temperature rise, her skin burning hotter and hotter. Her heart pounded as she took short and shallow breaths to try and keep the panic attack bubbling under the surface at bay. She couldn’t speak, completely shaken as the reality of her vulnerable situation sunk in. 

Jame’s face hardened. He took her silence for disobedience. 

“You tire me, Helena. You used to be such a good, little girl. But every day, you stray further from Kier. I see it,” he said coolly, reprimanding her. 

Helly had nothing to say to this. She digested her outie’s name. Helena . A foreign sound, but at the same time, an undertone of something ever so slightly recogniseable.  

“After that Scout boy abandoned you, I expected you to… ameliorate”, Jame continued. “What a wretched match that was. You have proven yourself incapable of maintaining interpersonal relationships, and yet you continue to resist me. It makes me angry. Why do you make me angry?”

Helly could barely comprehend his words. 

“I… apologise. That is not my intention”, Helly said, a desperate attempt at mitigation, her voice unintentionally coming out in a deep and level tone that she had not heard from herself before.

“Hmm.” Jame let out a dismissive grunt in response, with a look of scorn. “Should the dinner succeed and the Senator find you… desirable… the arrangements are such that the wedding will follow in a month’s time. And this time, you will not say no”. 

Apart from that brief daydream with Mark, imagining them curled up in a home play fighting over car wash coupons, Helly had never given marriage any thought. An engagement for her outie didn’t mean much to her, that wasn’t her life. However, it seemed as if her outie had been resisting this betrothal for some time now. If she were to marry the Senator in just over a month, it would not be a marriage built on consent. It would be against her will, this was clear to Helly, and for the first time ever she felt a pang of sorrow towards her - Helena. 

Why was Jame Eagan arranging a marriage for Helena anyway? As if she was an object, cattle, something to be used. It started to dawn on Helly that perhaps this man was her father, because that’s what some father’s do, right? Trade their daughters. She prayed to gods she didn’t know that this wasn’t true. Because if Jame Eagan was her father, then what did that make her?

Despite her terror, despite her abject horror at this entire situation, Helly cracked, ever so slightly. She felt rage begin to stir in her chest, anger at the thought of her body being exchanged. Her rebellious streak that was so intrinsic in her nature, shone through. Just for a moment.

“What if I don’t want to marry the Senator?” she questioned. Challenged. 

“You are my daughter, Helena. What you want is irrelevant. You do as I command you. As Kier, commands you.”

And there it was. Confirmation of her worst fear. 

Who are you?

Now she knows. She is Helena Eagan, Jame Eagan’s daughter and heir to Lumon Industries. It feels awful. 

-- 

Helly’s thighs ached from the hard and rigid chair, her back stiff from sitting for so long. She wasn’t sure how much time had passed since he left, since he had hesitated at the doorway and left her with one final look of disdain before waling away. Helly did not dare move, not for a while. Not until she was sure that she would not run the risk of running into him again.

Jame Eagan, her father. Helly mulled it over in her mind. It explained so much, why her outie - Helena, kept returning to the Severed Floor even as her acts of resistance became increasingly violent, that demeaning video message in which her own self told her she was sub-human. A few words from Jame Eagan and Helly could finally contextualise her entire existence. 

“What you want is irrelevant”. 

Helena Eagan did not want. She waited for the world to come to her and did what it told her to do. Perhaps that’s why she had woken up on fire, Helly wondered, the severance procedure stripping Helena of decades of repression and subjugation and igniting a seed of rebellion that had been dormant for so long.

Eventually, Helly stood. She had a mission, one she was failing so far, and she couldn’t stay in this dining room any longer, for Mark, Irving, and Dylan, they were all counting on her. With no idea as to where to go, Helly drifted through the house, a ghost haunting a place she didn’t quite belong. It was deserted. Even if Helly did come across another person, she knew she wouldn’t be able to trust them. This was the Lumon’s epicenter, the enemy’s headquarters. 

Without thinking (perhaps it was muscle memory), Helly found herself in a bedroom, tucked away in a distant corner of the mansion. It was sparsely furnished, a bed, a dresser, a desk, and a bathroom off to the side. Whilst it was as grey and cold as the rest of the house, there was something different about this space. It was softer, not quite so sterile. Lived in. 

Helly switched on a lamp and was bathed in warm light. The bed looked heavenly, enticing, the duvet thick and the pillows soft. An array of pink makeup items and perfume bottles were arranged neatly on the dresser and on the desk, a laptop and a vase of bright yellow flowers, clearly well tended to, adding a burst of colour to the room. A handful of books were carefully stacked on the bedside table next to a purple candle and a matchbook. Deep down, Helly knew that this was Helena’s space. She had visions of her outing reclusing into this sanctuary, away from her father and the rest of Lumon. 

Her best bet, Helly decided, was to try and gather as much insider knowledge as she could about Lumon. There was no one here she could trust, and it was impossible to leave the estate at this time of night. Researching was the most she could do and the laptop on the desk was as good a starting place as any. Helly took off her heels, toes curling into the thick and fluffy carpet, lips twitching at this new sensation. She made her way across the room, grabbed the laptop and crawled into the bed, the sheets swallowing her whole as she indulged in this unknown comfort. 

As she leaned into the pillows, something hard prodded her back. Reaching underneath, to identify the source, Helly pulled out a book that had been hidden under the pillow. It was nondescript, no cover giving anything away as to what it might be. Curious, Helly opened it to a random page. And her heart stopped. 

Mark’s face gazed back at hers from the page. It was a drawing, just of him, no background or setting or context. Just his face. But it was his - the Mark she knew, the Mark she had come to love. His expression was gentle and his eyes were kind.

Helly forgot how to breathe as she flicked through the pages of the sketchbook. It overflowed with illustrations of Mark. There were dozens of them and they were beautiful. As she studied the drawings, it dawned on her that the composition and the shading was similar, very similar, to the style of her silly little pictures Helly had mindlessly doodled when she was bored at MDR. It was her hand, Helena’s hand that had drawn Mark so lovingly. And Helena had kept them under her pillow, like something precious, something treasured. 

Helly let out a whimper, the emotions she had been trying to keep in check all evening releasing, a dam broken at last. A teardrop fell onto the page, smudging Mark ever so slightly, so Helly closed the book to protect it, protect him, clutching it tightly to her chest. She sobbed with relief at the sight of him, even if it was just a drawing. As horrendous as Helena’s life initially seemed, there was a silver lining, a lifejacket in this storm. The sketchbook meant that Mark was in Helena’s life, somehow, in some capacity. For the first time that evening, Helly did not feel hopeless. 

She needed to leave this place. She needed to find Mark, or god, anyone else. Helly didn’t care if she had to walk miles in the middle of the night in her heels, she would do anything to see him right now. Where was he? Who was his outie? Why did Helena keep drawings of him underneath her pillow? And what was their relationship to one another? Questions plagued her and she jumped out of bed, determined to find answers. Striding across the room, Helly opened Helena’s bedroom door and walked through it.

 Right onto the Severed Floor.

Chapter Text

Five Years Ago

Mark Scout was in a foul mood, but what else was new. It had been six months since Gemma had packed her bags and left - there was nothing to be happy about these days. He went through the motions, miserable, wondering if things would get better, telling himself he wouldn’t deserve it even if they did.

The drinking was getting worse, he could admit that. But god, he needed one tonight. He was stuck at a Ganz University Fundraiser, in a suit he didn’t want to wear making small talk with people he didn’t want to see. These things were exhausting at the best of times, but he’d had a long fucking day and all he wanted to do was go home.

His knees were killing him. He’d had to climb the five flights of stairs to his office multiple times that day because the elevator was still broken. The textbooks the students used were defaced to shit and embarrassingly out of date, and worse of all, he’d had to tell them today that the annual field trip to the Imperial War Museum just outside of Kier was cancelled because the university no longer had funds to support it. 

And it’s not as if the fundraiser tonight would solve any of his fucking problems. What little donations they received would end up lining the pockets of those at the top and Mark and the rest of the faculty would be left to make do with what little they had. None of this pretense would be required if the Eagans, the family that owned this entire town, Mark’s employers included, took the slightest interest in the university. However, unless it was Myrtle Eagan’s School for Girls, the amount of shits the Eagans’ gave about academic facilities in Kier amounted to approximately zero. They were heartless billionaires though, Mark thought, what else could you expect?

Mark was mulling all this over from the sanctuary of the bar, nursing his third (or fourth?) drink of the evening when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw two of his colleagues talking to the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen in his life.

She was all red. Red hair, red lips, and an elegant red dress, that dipped dangerously low to her chest and hugged her waist just so. She was gorgeous, stunning, ethereal, and oh shit.

It was Helena Eagan. 

Even though he’d spent all evening stewing, bitter over the Eagans, blaming them for everything that was wrong with his life - Mark was utterly captivated. He’d always been aware of Helena, you couldn’t avoid her in the news headlines. But that was background noise. He’d never seen her in person before, and now, he was completely blown away. Feeling an overwhelming desire to be close to her, he crossed the room on autopilot, entranced. 

“Oh hey Mark,” his colleague greeted him.

“Hey guys,” Mark said. “What’s up?” he asked, trying to play it cool, as if this was totally normal. He glanced at Helena and oh, she was looking right at him. Her face gave nothing away. Mark tried to ignore his heart pounding in his chest.

“We’re talking about Jame Eagan, actually. You know the work he’s done on that chip? Apparently they’re launching it soon”.

Despite knowing where he was and who he was with, despite Helena’s eyes burning a hole into him, the mere mention of that name was enough to irritate Mark. Instinctively, he rolled his eyes and scoffed, unfiltered:

“That creep? We wouldn’t need to bother with this event tonight if he took his head out of his ass and gave us the proper funding in the first place”.

The air left the room. Fuck. It’s not as if Mark forgot about Helena standing there - how could he? It was just for a moment, he didn’t reconcile this beautiful woman with the evil capitalist Eagan dynasty that he spent his day to day hating. He was tired, a little bit drunk, and in all honesty, he just couldn’t help himself. His heart was still racing, but for the wrong reasons now. Trust him to immediately sabotage any conversation he could have had with her.

She broke the silence and stepped forward, well into Mark’s personal space. Her face was still unreadable.

“I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Helena Eagan”, she said in a neutral tone, with a slight emphasis on Eagan . She raised her hand, palm open. 

“Yeah, I know who you are,” Mark replied, returning her handshake. Her grip was firm and controlled, but her skin. Her skin was soft. Delicate. 

“You do?” she raised her eyebrows in surprise - just for a split second - momentarily taken off guard. 

“Yeah.” 

“So, it’s normal for you to go around insulting the father’s of people you’ve just met?” she asked, almost sarcastically. 

“Only when they deserve it,” Mark retorted. He might as well own it, stand his ground, he thought. He didn’t really see a way to climb out of this hole he’d dug for himself. Might as well be honest.

“Interesting… Mr?”

“Oh, Mark Scout. Professor, actually. I teach History.”  The handshaking motion had stopped, but she still hadn’t let go of his hand. Or was it he hadn’t let go of hers? 

“Ok. Professor Scout,” she nodded. She gave him a long look, and Mark could swear he could see a glint of something in her eyes. Of what, he couldn’t tell. But there was something there, shining. 

Eventually, the moment broke. Helena turned away from him, now addressing his colleagues. 

“Well, it was lovely to meet you”, she said, back turned to Mark, blatantly ignoring him. “If you’ll excuse me, I must have a word with the dean regarding my speech later”. 

She walked away and didn’t look back. The second she was out of earshot, they were on him.

“Do you have a fucking death wish?”

“What’s wrong with you!?”

“A lot, apparently,” was Mark’s dry response. That stupid comment had more than likely cost him his job, but fuck it, he didn’t care. It would have been worth it just to have those minutes with her, to hold her hand in his. Helena was likely on her way to tell the dean that his employment should be terminated right away, but so what? Gemma was gone, there was nothing keeping him in Kier (let's face it, Devon would be fine without him). He could take the severance and move somewhere warm. It would probably be for the best.

--

Half an hour later, Mark found himself smoking in the university gardens outside, back resting against a brick wall. The usual bright and multicoloured flower beds were now shades of grey under the moonlight, darkness blanketing Mark with the privacy he had craved all evening. He savoured the silence. He was wondering what the earliest socially acceptable time to leave would be, trying (and failing) to not think about his fuck up from earlier when - 

“Professor Scout.”

Her voice cut through the grounds. There she was, at the other end of the garden, walking towards him. Mark stood up straight, instantly sobered by the sight of her. What was she doing? He looked around - no one else was here. They were alone. 

“Helena Eagan,”

“You needed some air too?” she asked. She was standing in front of him now. 

“A smoke, actually.” Mark said, gesturing with his cigarette. 

“A vice of yours?” 

“One of many. In addition to drinking and insulting people’s families, of course.” 

Helena’s lip twitched at that - the smallest of smirks. It was the first time Mark had seen her crack, and it stirred something within him. Something he hadn’t felt in a very long time. 

“You really knew who I was?” she questioned, head tilted.

“Yeah.”

“But you said it anyway?” she still didn’t quite believe it.

Mark shrugged. “It’s been a long day.”

A pause. Then, Helena closed the distance between them, and joined Mark leaning against the brick wall. Standing side by side, shoulders pressed together, Helena turned her head so she could look at him properly. There was something different about her, Mark realised. Outside, in the darkness, just the two of them - her posture wasn’t quite so stiff, her face not so guarded. 

“You’re a real fucking asshole, aren’t you,” she teased, smiling at him now. Something bloomed within Mark’s chest. 

“The realest,” he conceded, smiling right back at her. They held each other’s gaze for a moment, and then another, before breaking into laughter. Mark was so confused, he wasn’t sure what he had done to earn this, laughing with Helena Eagan, genuinely laughing, alone together in the gardens. But he sure as hell wasn’t complaining. 

“You’re not here to fire me are you?” he asked. “For being an asshole?”

“No, Mark. I’m not going to fire you. Not for being an asshole, anyway. I might if you don’t help a girl out though,” she said, gesturing towards his cigarette.

Mark didn’t even think about offering her a new one from the box he kept in his pocket. Instead, he held out the lit cigarette in his hand, already half-smoked. Helena took it, and Mark felt it with his entire body when her fingers brushed against his. He couldn’t help but stare as she took a long drag, and god, her cheekbones. They could cut glass. 

It was cold in the garden but he felt warm, with her. It seeped into his skin, nurturing something he thought had died within him a long time ago. They stood there in silence, passing the cigarette back and forth. It didn’t feel like he was sharing a smoke with a stranger. It felt intimate. Like they did this all the time. 

“I liked it,” Helena confessed, out of nowhere. 

Mark frowned. He had no idea what she was talking about. 

“What you said earlier”, she clarified. “Your authenticity. It was refreshing”.

“You don’t get much authenticity these days?” Mark probed. He wasn’t sure where she was going with this. But he wanted to find out.

Helena sighed and nodded. “I hate it. No one ever says what they think, at least not to my face, because they’re afraid. Of me, the board, my father. You were right about him, you know. He is a fucking creep. And just for once in my life, I’d like to have a real fucking conversation with someone.”

Mark was floored. What he thought was the biggest faux pas of his entire life had led to this - Helena opening up to him, of all people. The preconceptions he’d had about the Eagans, at least about her, faded with each passing second. 

“A real fucking conversation, huh?”

“Yes! Something meaningful, you know? I’m so tired of fake smiles and empty conversations”.

“My wife left me six months ago,” the admission fell from his lips before he could stop himself.

“Oh… I’m sorry to hear that.”

“It’s ok,” Mark said, half brushing it off. “Sorry, I don’t know why I said that. I should have kept it light. It was just the first real thing that came to mind.”

“Well, I did ask, I guess.”

She was looking up at him, solemnly, waiting. Mark couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a real conversation with anyone either. Devon tried, but it just wasn’t the same. He felt an urge to bear his soul to her, all the emotions he’d spent years repressing suddenly rising to the surface. 

“Yeah. She used to work here, actually. It was the classic workplace romance, you know?” Mark said, although the words died in his throat as he saw on Helena’s face that no, a workplace romance was not something that she knew. 

“Anyway. It was good, until it wasn’t. It’s not as if anyone did anything wrong. It’s just, by the time I realised that there was distance growing between us, I didn’t know how to stop it. And then it got so big that neither of us knew how to find our way back to the other.”

“It might not be too late. Maybe - maybe you two can still fix things,” Helena said quietly, genuine sympathy in her voice. 

“No, no, it’s fine, truly. We just finalized the divorce. To be completely honest with you, she left me because I didn’t have the balls to leave her first. I just hate that I failed her. That I let her down.”

“Oh… well, for what it’s worth, I am sorry. I know it must have been hard. But I hope you can still find value in it. I can tell you loved her a lot. Just because it’s over doesn’t mean that you failed, or that you let her down. It sounded like it just…. came to a natural end. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that.”

Mark didn’t respond. He stared into space, her words replaying in his head. He’d never thought of it like that before, but Helena made sense. Sometimes things ended. That didn’t mean that they failed.

“Sorry, I’m not very good at this,” Helena muttered, after Mark hadn’t said anything. “I - I don’t really have any friends, so I don’t have much experience with these real conversations”. 

Mark turned to look at her again, a small smile creeping onto his face when he saw that she was blushing. She was so cute.

“I don’t know, you seem like a natural to me, Helly” he said, playfully nudging her shoulder with his.

Helena let out a gasp. It was quiet, a sharp intake of breath more than anything else, but Mark heard it all the same. Fuck. That was too far, wasn’t it? Who was he to presume he could call her anything but her given name? 

“I mean Helena. Sorry, I don’t know where that came from”.

“No one has ever called me that before”, she whispered. 

“Oh. Sorry - it won’t happen again.”

“No, it was ok. It was nice.” She was staring at him, earnestly. Mark felt himself sinking into her doe-eyes. “You can call me Helly,” she added, quietly. 

“Yes?”

“Yes.”

Mark leaned even closer towards her. He wanted to kiss her, badly, but didn’t want to push his luck. He was astonished they’d made it this far in the first place. Instead, feeling bold, Mark plucked the cigarette that was nestled between her lips, took a deep drag himself, and then put it right back where he took it from, his fingers lightly grazing her lips as he placed it back in her mouth. He could have sworn he saw her pupils dilate. 

“You want honesty, Helly?” Their faces were close now, noses millimeters from touching. She nodded. 

“It’s bullshit. Lumon is worth what, billions of dollars? And my students don’t have books. We don’t have functioning elevators. And this fundraiser won’t change any of that. It’s stupid.”

“How much do you need?” Helena asked. He could tell she was being sincere. Mark crunched the numbers in his head, thinks about being conservative, but decides fuck it. He wasn’t above taking a handout from a billionaire, especially if it was on behalf of his kids. 

“Ballpark figure? Fifteen thousand dollars”.

“Only fifteen thousand dollars?”

“Yeah, only fifteen thousand dollars, Miss Eagan. You think you can handle that?”

“I think I can handle that… Professor,” she said, as her eyes darkened. 

It was as if the whole world had fallen away and they were the only two people that were left. Mark shifted even closer to Helena, side by side, pressing his thigh and arm against hers. He lowered his head, noses finally touching, and he was really going to kiss her. 

“Helena?” A stranger’s voice in the distance. Mark and Helena sprung apart, the moment broken. “We’ve been looking for you. The speeches are about to start.”

“Fuck… I have to go.”

“Right.” Mark said. He wanted her to stay. “Break a leg.”

Helena laughed. She reached out and gave his hand a quick squeeze.  

“I’ll be in touch. Thanks for the smoke.”

They held one last gaze, small smiles on their faces. Then, for the second time that evening, Helena walked away from Mark. Only this time, she looked back, biting her lip, trying to compose herself before she entered the building. 

Mark felt light. He couldn’t remember why he’d been bitter for so long.

-- 

Helena kept her word. When Mark returned to the university on Monday morning, the first thing he saw was an engineer working on the elevator. He smiled to himself, reassured that he hadn’t dreamt the entire thing. She was real. 

Even though the envelope left on his desk was pretty inconspicuous, he knew it was from her. All faculty mail was left in their pigeon holes in the staff room, nothing was hand delivered to their offices. Before he’d even taken off his coat or put down his bag, he ripped it open. 

Woah.

Inside was a cheque, but that’s not what was surprising. After seeing the engineer downstairs, Mark had half been expecting this. No, what made him blink several times, made him question his eyesight and her handwriting in general, was the number. The cheque was addressed to the history department, from Helena Eagan’s personal account, and it was for fifty thousand fucking dollors. Had she misheard him? He’d definitely said fifteen thousand. No. She didn’t strike him as the type to make mistakes. Everything about her was deliberate. 

And if that wasn’t enough - a phone number was finely penned on the lower right hand corner of the paper. Without hesitation, Mark made the call. 

She answered on the first ring.

“Yes, speaking?” her tone was professional, and it would be, this was an unknown number for her. But there was an undercurrent of enthusiasm, of hope. As if she had been waiting for him. 

“You know I said fifteen, not fifty , right Helly?” he teased. 

“I figured you could put the rest to good use.” he could hear the smile in her voice. He was sure she could hear the same from him. 

“Well, thank you. It is very generous. I can definitely think of one or two things I can do with this.”

“I’m sure you could. Books, field trips. Maybe you could buy a new suit.”

“A new suit?” he feigned offence. “What’s wrong with my suit?”

“The one you wore the other night?” she chuckled. “Come on, I wouldn’t be surprised if you wore it to prom way back in the day.”

“Wow… first you come for my suit, now you’re calling me old?”

“Sure, why not. How was the hike up the stairs to your office this morning, old man?”

“Please. I think you like it,”

“Yeah, I think I do,”

A pause, and then she was laughing, no, not laughing, giggling. Mark’s heart soared. Everything was so easy with her. The banter, the back and forth. He didn’t want this to end.

“Well, thank you again,” he said. 

“You can buy me a drink, you know,” her voice dropped an octave, laughter subsiding. “To thank me properly.”

“What, like a date?” Mark’s heart skipped a beat.

“Yeah. Like a date,” she said, slightly breathless. 

“Why do I now feel like I’m selling my body for these textbooks?” Mark joked.

“I mean, you don’t have to, of course,” she stuttered, back-pedalling, interpreting his joke for rejection. As if he would ever say no to her. “It’s not like, a requirement, I’d have given you the money anyway-“

“Helly,” he interrupted her. “I would love to take you out on a date.”

“Oh.”

“Oh?”

“I mean, ok. Cool. I’ll be at the Lumon offices. You can pick me up at 8. Oh wait, is tonight too soon?”

“Helly?”

“Yeah?”

“Tonight isn’t soon enough.”

-- 

It was a stereotypical first date - candles, mood lighting, rich food and richer wine. Helena blushed when Mark gifted her a small bouquet of white roses. The florist had told him that they symbolize new beginnings, which felt appropriate. He’d been in a daze ever since their phone call that morning. Up until a few days ago he had been spending his evenings drinking himself into drunken slumbers because he couldn’t stand to be alone with his thoughts. Now, he was buying flowers for Helena Eagan of all people, wining and dining her in the nicest restaurant Kier had to offer. He hadn’t even been here with Gemma. 

And that was another thing - he’d not thought about Gemma at all since their conversation in the gardens. Helena was right. Just because his marriage had ended didn’t mean it had failed, or that he had failed Gemma. Sometimes, people evolve in different directions. It was as if she’d lifted a weight from him he didn’t know he’d been carrying.

“So, what did the great Helena Eagan major in at college?” Mark asked. “Don’t tell me it was History,”

They’d been going back and forth all evening, with these questions. Before Gemma, Mark had found the getting-to-know-each-other small talk from his dating days excruciatingly tedious. But not with Helena. With her, it was so easy, as everything was with her. He wanted to know everything. 

“Sorry to disappoint, I did not take History,” she smiled at him. “I had to do economics, and some pre-law non-credit classes too,” she said.

Mark frowned. “Had to?”

“Yeah, of course. You think the heir to Lumon Industries was going to have any say in what classes she enrolled in?”

Mark contemplated what she said. The more he got to know her, the more he realised just how controlled her environment was. He’d always assumed that as an Eagan she had more power and freedom than the majority of most Americans. But it seemed that wasn’t the case. 

“Well, what did you want to do?” he asked.

Helena paused. 

“I don’t think anyone’s ever asked me that before,” she said, shyly. “Now that I think about it, I don’t think anyone has ever asked me what I wanted”. 

Mark ached. He wanted to give her the world. 

“Helly. What do you want?”

She didn’t even have to think about it. She’d always known. This was just her first time vocalising it, the first time someone cared enough to ask.

“My dream is to do art.”

“Art?” Mark smiled. It should have come as a surprise, but it didn’t, not really. Behind the corporate facade, he could see it. He could see her in overalls, hair wild, covered in paint. 

“Yeah. I really like to draw. I mostly do portraits.”

“Maybe you can draw me sometime?” 

“Oh, I already know how I’m going to draw you,”

“Well, you need to meet my sister, she loves this stuff. She definitely has some illustrations of me knocking around somewhere.”

“You want to take me home to meet the family already?” Helena said, suggestively.

“I think it’s finally time,” Mark said, playing along.

“Ok, sure, let’s do it,”

“No pressure,”

“Yeah, none whatsoever,” Helena bit her lip, and they both broke into laughter. 

Mark reached across the table and interlaced his fingers with hers, caressing her hand with his thumb in soft circles. He knew they were joking. He also knew it was only a matter of time. 

The rest of the evening ran away from them. Before they knew it, the staff were politely asking them to leave as the restaurant had been officially closed for the past hour, and they really needed to lock up now. Mark walked Helena outside, hands locked together, to where her driver was waiting for her.

“Are you free tomorrow?” Mark asked, ignoring all the rules that went with dating. 

“What, you’re not going to wait three days to call me?”

“You want me to wait three days to call you?”

She laughed. They were already standing so close together, and yet she took another step, pressing her chest to his, not an inch of space between them. 

“No, do not wait three days to call me please,”

Her head was tilted up towards his, and Mark needed no further invitation. He lowered his head and finally, finally, finally , captured her mouth with his. It was soft, sweet, and full of promise. Her lips parted ever so slightly and he sank deeper into her. At last, he was home.

--

For their second date, Mark took Helena back to the university, after hours, to the art department where she could use all the supplies to her heart’s content. She painted the gardens from the night they’d met, and when Mark had said it was beautiful, she admitted that because she rarely left Kier, she lacked inspiration for landscapes, so wasn’t as confident with these. So, for their third date, Mark drove her all the way out of town to one of the most famous hiking trails in the state. Helena’s face lit up at the top, overjoyed, clutching his hand as she took in the wild terrain around them. Mark vowed there and then that he would spend the rest of his life making her feel such a way, if she would let him. 

Their fourth date was actually a double date, with Devon and Ricken, a simple dinner on a Friday evening. They adored her, of course. At the end of the night, Helena cancelled her driver and finally went home with Mark. She ended up staying the entire weekend and the only time they left his bedroom was to open the front door to collect the take outs they’d ordered. 

One week turned into two, then three, and the next thing Mark knew, three months had passed. Three blissful months. Helena almost never went back to the Eagan estate, she’d all but moved in with him. Mark noticed one day that he’d pretty much stopped drinking and hadn’t even realised it - the need to drink to get through the days, the desire to numb himself, was gone. Helena had walked into his life and turned his world into technicolour, and he wanted to be fully present for every second of it.

He thought that her being an Eagan would have been an issue, but as it turned out, this wasn’t an obstacle for them. What Mark did find difficult, though, was the way she was treated by her father, by Lumon. The way she would come home so late some evenings, exhausted, her eyes dull and the light behind them extinguished. Or worse, those evenings when she didn’t come home at all. 

At first, Helena didn’t like to speak about it, but as time passed, she slowly revealed more and more to Mark about what it really meant to be an Eagan. She was not allowed to make any choices, from big corporate directives, right down to the food that was put on her plate. All of this was decided for her, she was simply a PR puppet who did what she was told to do. Mark, she told him, had been the first decision she’d made for herself in a very, very long time. 

Upon learning this, Mark wanted to whisk her away, run as far from Kier as physically possible. We could move to the Equator, he’d whispered into her ear in bed one night and she’d smiled, and told him he was ridiculous. He knew she would never leave. So, instead, Mark made sure to always ask her what she wanted, showering her with a range of choices every day. Which shirt do you think looks better? What movie do you want to watch? Zufu or Pip’s tonight? 

And he never cooked her eggs. 

When Helena didn’t come home one evening, Mark didn’t think too much of it. She didn’t spend every night with him, sometimes she worked late and it was easier to stay on the estate. When she didn’t come home the following night, he likely wouldn’t have thought too much of that either, except for the fact that she wasn’t answering any of his texts or calls. 

Two more days and nights passed, and Mark was going out of his mind. He’d called and texted hundreds of times, and received nothing but radio silence in return. He’d even circled the Lumon parking lot, looking for her car, but she was nowhere to be found. On his fourth night without her he was sitting on the couch, trembling, debating calling the police when there was a quiet knock on his door.

Mark flung it open and there she was. He’d been so distraught that he wasn’t even upset with her, just sheer relief washed over him at the sight of her standing there, unharmed. 

“Helly!” he gasped, immediately pulling her inside and crushing her into a hug. 

“Mark,” she whimpered into his chest, softly clutching his shirt. Her voice was broken.

Mark led her further into the house and pulled her onto the couch with him. 

“I was so worried about you,” he whispered, still holding her tightly, cradling her head and stroking her hair. 

“I’m so sorry,” she was shaking. “I didn’t mean to.”

“Hey, it’s ok,” he said, peppering her face with kisses. “Are you ok? What happened?”

Helena rested her forehead against his, eyes closed.

“My father found out about us. He’s… displeased.” 

Mark digested the news. This was bound to happen eventually. A part of him always hoped that he’d be welcomed into the Eagan estate with open arms, for Helena’s sake more than anything else. But that was never going to happen. 

“He told me I’m to stop seeing you.”

Mark was silent. He didn’t need to ask why - he was too old for her, and far, far below her station. Jame Eagan would never accept him as a match for his daughter. 

“I’ve spent the past four days trying to change his mind. I did everything I could. But he won’t listen.” Helena opened her eyes now, gripping Mark’s hands with her own. Her chin trembled as she held back tears.

“Mark, I know we’re only a few months into this, but you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me,”

“You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me too,” Mark’s eyes were welling up now, but he tried to stay strong for her.

“I don’t want to let you go. I can’t.”

“Me too, baby. I’ll do anything for you, you know that.”

“You… you think I’m worth it?” her voice was so small. 

“Helly,” Mark pressed his lips to hers, a gentle, reassuring kiss. “You are worth everything to me. There is nothing I wouldn’t do for you.”

Helena exhaled, sighing in relief. Mark realised why he hadn’t heard from her - she’d been afraid he would leave once he found out about her father. That he wouldn’t want to fight for her. 

“I’ve never defied him before. I’m nervous.”

“Me too. But… there must be something we can do, right?”

Helena’s eyes flashed and Mark saw it - she had an idea. She’d thought this through already. 

“Well… he keeps trying to marry me off. To politicians, powerful business men.” Helena lowered her head, unable to look at Mark in the eyes as she prepared for what she was about to say.

“But, he can’t do that. If I’m already… married. And if I go public with it, he won’t be able to do anything. Divorces tank share prices, you know.”

“Helly,” Mark raised his finger to her chin, lifting her head. “Are you asking me to marry you?”

Once Helena’s eyes met Mark’s again, all her anxiety melted away. He was beaming at her.

“I know it’s too soon. And I haven’t even told you I love you yet. But I do, love you. And I think this is how I get to keep you.”

“Oh my god, Helly,” Mark wrapped her in his arms again, gently pushing her so she lay down on the couch, blanketing her body with his. “Helly, my Helly,” he breathed, in between kisses. “I love you too. So, so much. Of course I will marry you.”

--

The following week, they were married. It was a tiny ceremony at the local registry office, with only Devon and Ricken as their witnesses, and it couldn’t have been more perfect. Mark forgot how to breathe when he saw Helena in her white wedding dress. He’d never been so excited for the rest of his life. 

Jame was furious, of course, but there was nothing he could do. Helena had been right, a divorce would have tanked the share price. A local History professor who was clearly very infatuated with Helena, their love story and simple wedding humanised the Eagans in a way that had never been done before. The market, and the wider general public, idolised them.

Mark and Helena settled into married life effortlessly. 

Publicly, she still went by Helena Eagan. Helena Eagan walked through the halls of Lumon Industries, Helena Eagan was in newspaper headlines and listed in shareholder reports, Helena Eagan cut red ribbons and shook politicians’ hands. The name was the brand of course.

Legally, she was Helena Scout. It was Helena Scout’s signature on Lumon’s paperwork, Helena Scout on her passport, her driving licence, and Helena Scout on doctors prescriptions and bank statements. 

And at home, at home she was Helly. She was Helly when she cooked dinner, Helly when she was buried in her sketchbook, Helly inbetween the sheets, and Helly, Helly, Helly , on her husband’s tongue.

Chapter Text

Helly walked through Helena’s bedroom door and onto the Severed Floor. Right into Mark’s arms. 

“Helly!” he called out. “Oh my god, are you okay?”

Helly collapsed into him like a dying star. He was here. She was home. 

“I’m ok,” she exhaled, burying her head into his shoulder and breathing him in. “Did you wake up?”

“Yeah, it was crazy,”

“Same,”

“Oh god, I was so worried about you,” he murmured into her neck. 

They hugged, swaying slightly in each others’ arms. Just seconds ago, Helly had been looking at his face in her outie’s sketchbook, in Helena Eagan’s sketchbook, fearful that she might never see him again. Now he was here, in the flesh, warm and firm, and so, so real. She sank into the solace of his embrace, a consolation she had been desperately craving after the horror that was her OTC.

“Are the other’s here?” she asked. They reluctantly pulled away, though Mark reached out and gently cupped her cheek, tenderly wiping away a tear she didn’t know she had shed.

“Yeah, they’re in there already. Do you want to go now or do you need a minute?”

And there he was. Always looking out for her, making sure she was ok. She leaned into his hand that still cradled her face. Her reunion with Mark soothed the inner turmoil that the OTC had caused and she felt herself calm down and relax, floating on still waters in the eye of this storm. 

“I’m ok. Let’s see the guys,” she said.   

Mark nodded and took her hand, leading her into MDR. Irving and Dylan were waiting for them by their desks, and if they saw Mark’s thumb tracing Helly’s skin in soft circles, neither of them said a word.

“Thank God,” Dylan exclaimed. “We’re all here, I can’t believe it. What -“

“Dylan!” Irving interrupted. “Not here. What if they’re listening?” he whispered, looking around.

The four of them stood still, in a state of collective shock. Now that it was over, it truly sunk in how risky the OTC had been, and how lucky they were to be reunited. There had been a very real chance that they wouldn’t have woken up, Helly thought. That she never would have seen Mark again. She looked at his face, then to their intertwined hands, then back to his face. How on earth could she have put this at risk?

In silent agreement, the team made their way into the bathroom. It would have looked incredibly suspicious to anyone monitoring them on the cameras (that is, if anyone was), but logically, this was the place least likely to be equipped with microphones. It would have to do. 

“So?” Dylan asked. “What the hell did you guys see up there?”

No one spoke for a moment. Helly froze. Everything had happened so quickly, she hadn’t even considered telling the others about what she’d seen on the outside. Her anxiety from earlier started to return at the thought of revealing her true identity to her friends. 

Mark broke the silence. 

“So, I was at a party at my sister’s house, for Ricken Hale ,”

“You know Ricken Hale?” Dylan asked, quietly impressed. 

“He’s my outie’s brother-in-law.” Mark still couldn’t quite believe it himself. 

Helly’s heart softened as she listened to Mark describe his outie’s family, a spark in his eyes when he told them he had a baby niece. It made her happy that he’d woken up in a place full of love. At least one of them had, and she was thankful that it was Mark. He deserved nothing more. 

“Anything else?” Dylan asked. “Did you tell them about Lumon?”

Mark hesitated. He looked at Helly, as if he wanted to tell her something. She leaned forward, to listen to what else he had to say.

“I…” he trailed off. Mark then looked down, away from her, cheeks turning slightly pink. “No, sorry. Nothing else. I ran out of time.”

“Damn sorry, that’s my fault.” Dylan said. “I saw Milchick coming on the camera and had to get out of there. I didn’t want to blow our cover.”

“That’s ok, Dylan. You did great.” Mark said. “Who knows what they would have done to us if they’d realised what we’d done.”

He then turned back to Helly, looking at her fondly.

“What about you, what did you see?” he asked her.

Now, it was Helly’s turn to hesitate. The shame festered under her skin, slowly, but surely. 

She looked at Mark, who had just found a family he would never get to go home to. To Dylan, who would never know his child. To Irving - the only real paternal figure she would ever have in her life. It was her fault they were all trapped here, in this prison born from the sins of her real father. Helly may have found some sympathy for Helena from the brief time she spent on the outside, but that did not mean she wasn’t complicit in Lumon’s violations. That she, Helly, did not also bear some of that responsibility. 

Her friends were looking at her expectantly and her confidence crumbled. She couldn’t do it, couldn’t tell them the truth. It was humiliating, the idea of admitting to them who she really was on the outside. What if they resented her for it? Helly couldn’t stand the thought of losing her friends, her family, the only human connections she’d ever had. 

“I saw the inside… of a really fucking boring apartment.” 

And so the lie was born. 

“You live by yourself?” Mark asked.

“Yeah?” she phrased it as a question, as if, I think so, your guess is as good as mine . “I was watching some nature show on TV, wearing sweatpants and a T-shirt”. 

“What kind of T-shirt?” Dylan asked, genuinely interested. “Did it feature like a band or a pocket?”

Helly felt increasingly uneasy. This was her family, it felt so wrong to be lying to them. But the alternative, the thought of telling the truth, was beyond unbearable. 

“It was like a save the gorillas shirt?”

“And then what?” asked Irving. 

“Then, I went outside and found a guy… he looked like a gardener.” Helly wished they would stop asking questions. She hadn’t prepared for this at all. “Told him everything, I think he kind of thought it was bullshit, but he said that his brother was a cop and that he would tell him everything… I don’t know, sorry guys, I really tried,” she said, praying that would be the end of it. 

“A gardener?” Irving questioned. “A night gardener?”

“I think so? I mean, maybe he has a different job during the day.”

Please, please, please , Helly begged internally. Please, let it be.

“What about you, Irv?” Mark asked, and oh bless him, Helly thought. He was always there, saving her, even when he didn’t realise it. How many times had he rescued her now? Her heart swelled in affection for him.

A range of emotions flickered across Irving’s face. As if he was reliving his experience on the outside. His expression settled on sadness.

“It’s not our world up there,” he said despairingly. “That’s what I saw.”

“Come on, man.” Dylan said. “You can tell us.”

“Yeah, it’s ok,” Helly said reassuringly. She then thought of Jame. “Even if it’s bad.”

Whatever it was, it must have been bad. Instead of responding, Irving turned around and headed towards the door. Helly wondered what Irving could have possibly experienced out there, and if it could be worse than finding out you were an Eagan. 

“Irv!” Dylan called, following him.

“I just want to walk for a bit!”

Mark and Helly started to follow them, but were stopped by Dylan. 

“I’ll talk to him,” Dylan said. “Let me talk him down. I’ll get you if I need you.”

He left the bathroom. And then they were alone. 

“I guess we should get back to it,” Helly said, gesturing towards the door. She wished Mark would hold her hand again. Or that he would kiss her, this time. She didn’t know how to ask for his affection anymore, her bravery paralysed by the shame of her self-discovery. 

Mark made no move to leave. 

“Helly, did you see anything else? On the outside?” he asked. 

Fuck. He knew her too well. He knew she wasn’t being completely honest with him. Helly thought of the sketchbook under Helena’s pillow - had Mark found something similar? How did their outie’s know each other? He may know her, but she knew him too. She could tell that he was also holding back, dancing around something he didn’t know how to approach with her.

“I found something…” Helly began, slowly. Mark’s eyes widened and Helly saw him hold his breath.

“My outie had drawings of you. A lot. I don’t know what it means though.”

“Oh… just drawings? No photographs?”

“No. What do you mean just drawings? Why would there be photographs, Mark?” 

Helly frowned, her heart beating faster. Mark had found something, that much was clear now. But the way Mark was looking down now, avoiding eye contact with her and fiddling with his hands, it made Helly nervous. So, so nervous.

“I - I found a picture. Of us.” His face burned red.

Helly’s jaw dropped. After seeing the drawings, she had a strong inclination that their outie’s had known each other. But to have confirmation of it, from Mark no less - it was overwhelming. She was speechless. 

“Helly,” he continued. He was trying to find the right words. His eyes met hers again. “Helly, it was a wedding photograph.”

It was as if he’d physically pushed her. Helly’s back hit the wall. A fantasy rushed to the forefront of her mind, so real it could have been a memory, and who’s to say it wasn’t? A dream of a house with big windows, where they cooked dinner together and had movie nights and argued over car wash coupons. 

“I’m your wife?” Her voice was so small.

“No, Helly, oh god. I am so, so sorry. I’m divorced. We - we are divorced. You’re my ex-wife.” Mark sounded broken.

That was it for Helly. The past twenty-four hours had been too much, too turbulent. She’d finally kissed Mark, and he’d kissed her back, only to immediately be flung into hell itself, dinner with the devil, and then it had been revelation after revelation, until this one, which revolutionised the entire fabric of her being. She couldn’t take it anymore. Her legs gave way and she fell in slow-motion, her body sliding down the wall until she hit the cold tiles on the floor.

“I don’t understand.”

“Oh, Helly,” Mark immediately sank to his knees, joining her so that they were sitting with their backs to the wall. 

“I don’t really understand either, to be honest with you. I switched back as soon as I saw our wedding photograph, I didn’t get the chance to ask any questions.”

“But how do you know that we’re divorced?” 

“Uh, Ricken mentioned it to me. He said that I didn’t like to talk about my divorce. Sort of implied that it was the reason why I got severed.”

Helly didn’t say anything. Jesus, she’d fucked him up so badly he’d had to have brain surgery to forget about her. It was too much to process. 

“It must have been some argument about car wash coupons, right?” Mark said, an attempt to break the tension. For a moment, it worked. Helly let out a laugh. 

“I knew my outie was fucked up, but wow…” Helly said, shaking her head. “I’m sorry, Mark.”

“What are you talking about, Helly?” Mark immediately objected. “Whatever it was, it would have been my fault. I’ve been going crazy trying to figure out what happened to us. I can’t stand the fact that I’ve hurt you, in any life, in any universe. Whatever I did to you up there, I am so, so sorry.” 

Mark placed his hand on top of hers, touching her again. And even though Helly had been craving his touch just minutes ago, now, it burned. She pulled her hand away and tried not to look at the hurt that flashed across his face. 

How could she sit there and listen to him apologise, when she knew, deep down, it would have been her fault? Mark was the sweetest man she had ever come to know (although granted, she didn’t know many). She was sure his outie was just as lovely as him - and Helly could not see how someone so sweet and considerate could survive in that cold Eagan estate. Jame’s words echoed back to her. 

After that Scout boy abandoned you, I expected you to… ameliorate. What a wretched match that was. 

Mark S. Mark Scout. Of course he had left Helena Eagan. He never would have deserved her in the first place. And if Mark S. found out the truth about who she was, he wouldn’t want her either. Look at who she was, and where she came from. No wonder Mark Scout wanted no part of it. It was a miracle she’d ever had him in the first place. 

“I wish you could have seen it,” Mark spoke softly, interrupting her thoughts. “The photograph. You looked so beautiful.”

Helly wanted to cry. It hurt too much. If he stayed any longer, showed her any more kindness, she would surely break. She would collapse into his arms and tell him everything - that it was her fault, she was the reason that they were trapped there, and why they were divorced. Because she was, is, an Eagan. He hadn’t survived her before and he wouldn’t survive her now. 

“I’m really sorry Mark,” she whispered, fighting back tears. “I think I just need to be alone right now.” 

“Ok, whatever you need. I’ll be outside - take however long you need.” 

Helly couldn’t look at him. He sounded devastated.

She sat on the bathroom floor for a long time after Mark left, going over everything again and again in her mind. The OTC had happened. She’d woken up to dinner with Jame Eagan, her father, who was forcing her into an unwanted marriage. He clearly detested her previous relationship with Mark. 

So, why had he severed his daughter and made her work on the same floor as her ex-husband? It didn’t make sense. But there had to be a reason - everything at Lumon had some sort of purpose, even if it wasn’t always clear to her. 

Helly felt sick at the realization that she was part of some sort of human experiment, one which mutilated her body and her mind, and she hadn’t even consented to it. Why was she down here with Mark? Were they testing if love transcended severance? 

No. Something more sinister was on the horizon. Helly could feel it in her bones. 

Chapter Text

Three Years Ago

On the face of it, their days looked pretty much the same as before. Mark taught History at Ganz and Helena followed orders at Lumon Industries. Subtle differences shone through, though - Mark, no longer crushed by feelings of guilt and self-loathing from previous relationship, didn’t move through his days drunk or hungover anymore. Meanwhile, Helena’s hard edges had softened. Whilst working for her father was still difficult, it was no longer such an isolating experience for her - she wasn’t lonely anymore. 

Marriage changed things. 

Now, at the end of the day, Mark and Helena went home to each other. Not to the apartment that he had shared with Gemma, nor to the Eagan estate she had lived in her entire life, but to a house they’d bought a little outside of Kier, which quickly became their home. 

It was quiet, no neighbours to speak of, cocooning the couple from the outside world in a blissful solitude. Their home wasn’t overly large, but there was room for their marriage to grow. It had large windows, a cosy kitchen in which Mark did most of the cooking, and they’d converted one of the spare bedrooms into an art studio for Helena. 

They spent their evenings and weekends wrapped up as one, dissolving into each other to the point where Mark wasn’t sure where he ended and she began. Whatever anxieties they’d previously held about their rushed marriage, dissipated a long time ago. Their first anniversary quickly rolled around, and then the second, and Mark could have sworn he’d known Helena his entire life. 

It was as if they’d always been a part of each other.

--

Whilst Helena slotted into Mark’s family as if she’d always belonged, Jame’s default position was to pretend that Mark didn’t exist. He was more than fine with that - the less he had to interact with that harrowing old man, the better. The first time they’d met had been nothing short of a disaster. Jame learned of their marriage through a press conference Helena single handedly organised, keeping it a secret from key employees at Lumon so they wouldn’t be able to stop her until it was too late. 

He had launched into such a violent tirade against his daughter, for her so-called ‘insolence’, that they thought he might die from a self-induced heart attack. The only thing that stopped Mark from retaliating to this beratement was seeing Helena flinch in the periphery of his vision. He knew right then, that he would never rise to Jame’s provocations. He would keep the peace as much as possible, for Helena’s sake. 

Jame’s anger never cooled. If anything, it burned hotter as it became increasingly apparent that no, this wasn’t a phase, and yes, Mark and Helena were in it for the long haul. It was therefore for the best, for all parties involved, that interactions between all of them were limited to the absolute bare minimum. 

Unfortunately, business requirements meant that every so often, an event would come up that would require the presence of the three of them in the same room. This time, it was a corporate dinner for a select few of Lumon’s biggest investors. The evening had dragged slowly and the couple could only avoid him for so long. As Jame approached, Mark placed his hand on the small of Helena’s back, anchoring her in advance of whatever cruelty Jame inevitably had in store for them.

“My dear Helena,” he said. He only ever addressed his daughter. 

“Father,” Helena replied, never saying anything more than what was required. She leaned into the warmth of Mark’s hand, trying to remember how she’d ever tolerated this life without him.

“I hope you’ve used your time this evening wisely. William Dupont has come a very long way to be here. You would do well to speak to him.”

Mark could feel Helena tense. Two years into their marriage and Jame was still trying to auction off his daughter to powerful men, for political or commercial considerations. 

“Yeah, we spoke to Mr. Dupont earlier, actually,” Mark interrupted, rather pointedly, possessively wrapping his arm around Helena’s waist. “He congratulated Helena and I on our two-year anniversary.”

Jame’s face darkened as he was forced to acknowledge both Mark and their marriage. 

“Has it really been that long?” Jame said impassively, still looking at Helena. “You’re still yet to come to your senses, I see.”

A pause. They’d had this conversation a thousand times, and Mark was sure they’d have it a thousand more. Trapped in this vicious, never ending cycle of disapproval and scorn.

“It could be worse, I suppose,” Jame continued. “He’s not impregnated you, I assume?”

Mark’s breath caught in his throat. That was a first, for Jame. A new low. New territory for him and Helena, too. Something undiscussed, but not uncontemplated. 

Helena shook her head, so subtly that anyone not attuned to her body language would have missed it. 

“Good. Keep it that way,” Jame told Helena. “You remember what happened to your mother.”

He took one final look at her before leaving, disappointment and contempt written all over his face. These exchanges never lasted long. No one could bear it. 

“Jame Eagan,” Mark muttered, pressing a kiss to Helena’s temple and stroking her back once he was long gone. “Always a fucking pleasure. You ok?”

“Can we go?” Helena asked, quietly. Speaking with her father was always a sure fire way to obliterate what little tolerance she had for these corporate events.

“Way ahead of you,” Mark said, taking her hand and leading her to the exit.

-- 

They didn’t talk about it until later that evening, once they were back home, in bed. Helena rested her head on Mark’s chest, legs tangled together, his heartbeat a soothing rhythm that placated her despair. 

“I hate it when he talks about her,” Helena whispered. 

Mark didn’t say anything in return, just held her a little tighter, gently caressing her arm. He remembered early on in their relationship, when Helena had told him that her mother had died when she was six years old.

That she’d been the one to find her body hanging from the rafters. 

“Tell me about her,” Mark said. He knew it helped Helena with her grief.

She thought about it for a minute. 

“She used to let me play with her makeup. I painted her face and then she would paint mine. It was nice. It’s why I like art, I think. Makes me feel close to her.”

A lump formed in Mark’s throat as he listened to her voice waver. 

“We only did it when father was out of town. He got angry, otherwise, said we were indulging in childlike folly. He’d take it out on her. He always did… about everything, even stuff that had nothing to do with her…I guess she just couldn’t take it anymore.”

“I’m sorry, honey.”

“I get why she had to leave him. But why did she have to leave me, Mark?” Tears now silently fell down her face.

“I was so little. I barely remember her now. All those times I painted her face, and I can’t even remember the color of her eyes.”

It wasn’t uncommon for Helena to fall apart after interacting with her father. He had a tendency to trigger decades of repressed and unprocessed emotions. Mark was always there, though. To carry her through to the other side.

“Come with me,” was all he had to say. He pulled her out of bed and guided her into the bathroom, positioning themselves in front of the mirror. He stood behind her, resting his chin on her shoulder, arms wrapped around her waist. 

“What do you see?” he asked her reflection.

“Mark, I don’t understand what this has to do with anything.”

“What do you see?” he asked again.

“You and me. So?”

“Helly,” Mark gently pushed her forward, closer to the mirror, pressing his cheek to hers. “Look. Your eyes, they’re bright green. I’ve only met your father a handful of times, but I seem to recall them being dark brown.”

Helena’s breath hitched, as she realised where Mark was going with this. It had never even occurred to her. She’d spent her entire life crushed under the weight of the Eagan legacy, that she’d forgotten she was half Riggs too. 

“I’ll never get to meet your mother,” he said, kissing her on the cheek. “But I know her. I look into her eyes every day. Through yours.”

Helena felt his words stitch something back together within her, healing a part of herself that she didn’t even know was broken. She turned and wrapped her arms around him. 

“Thank you,” she whispered, with a quick kiss, resting her forehead on his. They stood there, for a while, holding each other. Until she spoke again.

“What my father said tonight, about us… have you thought about it before?” she asked, apprehensive for Mark’s response.

Mark’s heart skipped a beat. Of course he had. He loved Helena more than life itself, the thought of channeling that love into a tiny human being was something he thought about more often than he cared to admit. But he’d never raised the subject with her. Whilst their marriage had worked out, it was rushed, and he never wanted to pressure her into anything she wasn’t ready for.

“Uh, to be honest, yeah. I have,” he said, with a small, reassuring smile on his face. 

“It wouldn’t be so bad, right?”

“No. It wouldn’t be so bad at all. Is it - is it something you want?”

“I… I think so. Thinking about my mother this evening, I miss it. That maternal relationship. I think I want that again. And I want to do it with you… have a family of our own… would you like that?”

“God, Helly. Of course,” he breathed, his chest swelling. Every day he thought he couldn’t love her more. And every day she proved him wrong.

“Yeah?” 

“Yeah,”

“Ok,”

“Ok,”

And then they were laughing. Mark squeezed Helena even tighter, lifting her feet off of the floor, eliciting a burst of giggles from her. They basked in their shared elation, individual dreams now spoken into existence, crystallising into a golden future in front of them.

“You want to go make a baby?”

“Let’s go make a baby.”

--

The beginning was exhilarating. Mark and Helena fell into bed and into each other, over and over again - the sex had always been good, but now there was this extra layer, a new electrifying dynamic, that made it so much more fun .

Nothing happened during those first few months. At first, the couple weren’t worried, instead just enjoying this new honeymoon-like period. “These things don’t always happen straight away”, they told themselves. But the months continued to fall away and Helena’s period continued to come like clockwork. It wasn’t working.

As the sex became less spontaneous and more calculated, clouded by calendars and ovulation kits, gradually, the passion waned. The excitement dissipated into monotony and one day it stopped being fun. Just another job to get to. A chore to check off a to do list.

They unintentionally started avoiding each other. Helena left the house before sunrise to go swimming and Mark returned late in the evening, staying at the university to review papers he could have graded at home. The only time they spent together was those few days in which she was ovulating, the exchanges now silent and mechanical. 

As it became increasingly apparent that this wasn’t going to come easily to them, Mark became more unsure of himself. The thought that the fault lay with him spiralled in his head. Whilst age didn’t affect men’s fertility like that of women, it still had an impact, and at the end of the day, there was no escaping the fact that he was just that much older than Helena. ‘Surely that was the most obvious reason why this wasn’t happening?’, he constantly asked himself. 

Around a year after they first started trying, Mark arranged to see a doctor, who confirmed his worst fear. Although, it wasn’t his age - it was just him. He couldn’t have children. Something about his sperm count, so low it was pretty much an impossibility for it to take. Mark sat there in a daze, completely numb, as the doctor explained the biology behind it, dissociating as he watched the future he envisioned with Helena disintegrate behind his eyes. 

When Mark got home from the doctors, Helena was curled up on the couch. She was staring blankly at the TV, unengaged with whatever show was on. Her artwork gathered dust in her studio upstairs, untouched for months. 

Mark walked past her and went straight to bed, pretending to be asleep when she came upstairs hours later. He couldn’t bear to look at her, knowing that he was the cause of her hurt. He’d always sworn he would move heaven and hell to give this woman, who already had everything, the world. But now, they’d now reached an impasse, something that was physically beyond his reach. He didn’t know what to do.

Helena wilted away with the days. Mark ached as she grew smaller, retreating into herself, trying not to let on how badly she wanted it. But Mark saw through her facade. Fuck, he wanted it too.

Eventually, the distance was unbearable. Mark reflected on the end of his marriage to Gemma, a distant memory by that point. How they’d naturally and effortlessly grown apart. This was different. He and Helena hadn’t drifted in opposite directions, but rather, a wedge had been forced between the two of them. Mark could see Helena on the other side, as clear as day, but he couldn’t reach her. Overcoming the barrier felt insurmountable, the heavy weight of infertility keeping him from his wife. 

Mark hadn’t told Helena about the appointment; they didn’t tell each other much at all anymore. It hurt too much - knowing that he was the reason why she was so sad. He could barely acknowledge the reality of the situation to himself, the thought of having that conversation with her was unfathomable. Mark was terrified it would break her.

But when, on an insignificant Thursday evening, she told him that her period had started, (right on time), he knew he had to come clean. 

“I’m sorry… you did what?” Helena asked, slightly bewildered. 

“I just told you,” Mark said, a slight edge to his voice. Somewhat resenting her for making him repeat this ugly truth. “It’s my fault. I can’t give you children.”

The words tasted like ash in his mouth.

Helena sank back into her chair. They were sitting in the kitchen - it was at this time they usually ate dinner, but neither one of them had made a move to cook. It had been a while since they’d lived together in their home.

“Fuck, Mark. You should have told me.” 

“Yeah well, forgive me for not immediately running to tell you about my results. God forbid I need a few days to process it,” he said, bitterly.

Helena did not take to his tone. 

“I should have been there with you,” she said, sharply. “I should have also been tested. We’re meant to be in this together.” Her voice was cold, similar as to when she spoke to her father, or the board. Mark hated it. 

“Really? That’s news to me. I don’t know where the hell you’ve been lately.”

“Don’t be such a fucking hypocrite,” she snapped back at him. “As if you’ve been around. All those late nights at the university, as if your job even warrants those hours.”

Deep down, Mark knew they were taking the pain from their infertility struggles and lashing out at each other. And he would have backed down, reigned it in, if it weren’t for the fact that this was the first time in a very long time he’d felt close to his wife. Fighting was infinitely preferable to the empty distance that had been between them as of late. 

So, he leaned into the argument. Turned up the heat. 

“And what are you doing? You spend all your free time at that goddamn pool! Did you forget to tell me you’re training for the Olympics?”

“Fuck you, Mark! You have no idea what this has been like for me.”

“ I have no idea? Oh do, please enlighten me Helena, on how hard this has been for you. Because it’s been such a fucking walk in the park for me. A fucking breeze .”

Both of them were standing now, voices raised. Each knew that the other had a mean streak - it had been part of their initial attraction. But when before it had been flirtatious, now, it was acidic. 

“You’re such an asshole, Mark. You think it’s been easy? Figuring out my cycle to schedule some shitty, underwhelming sex with you? Only for it to be for nothing ? And then having to work twelve hour days at Lumon, but I can’t focus on anything because there’s blood in-between my thighs and all I can think about is that I’ve failed, again. I’m exhausted .”

“I don’t know about any of that! Because you don’t talk to me!”

“You’ve never asked, not fucking once!”

“You think you’re the only one who’s having a hard time? Have you considered what this has been like for me?”

“Oh, shut up Mark. I don’t care. I’m sick of listening to you. I don’t even know why I wanted a baby with you in the first place!” she shouted at him.

“Well, I guess congratulations are in order then,” Mark shouted right back at her. “Because you’re never going to get one”.

The anguish of their fight on top of months of strain between them obscured all rational thought, and those careless words spilled out into the open. Mark and Helena stood in silence, breathing heavily, staring at each other. Not knowing how to come back from this. If they ever would.

I don’t even know why I wanted a baby with you in the first place .

You’re never going to get one .

Two consecutive stabs to the heart, that would eventually prove to be lethal. 

“And that’s probably for the best,” Helena whispered. She turned on her heel and stormed out of the room. Seconds later, the front door slammed. 

And Mark was alone.

--

Mark’s anger disappeared when Helena did, and all he was left with was sadness. Regret seeped into his bones. He knew that she didn’t deserve what he said to her. Helena, his Helly, didn’t deserve any of this. She was staying on the Eagan estate, a testament as to how upset she was with him, because she hated staying with her father. Mark yearned for her to return, but he knew her well enough that he should leave her be, she would come home in her own time. When she was ready.

If he’d found the metaphorical distance between them in the months leading up to their fall out hard, then her actual absence in the present was utterly agonizing. Consequently, when Mark heard a knock at the door a week after their fight, he flew off of the couch to answer it. So desperate he was to see his wife that he didn’t even consider that she had a key to her own home, and therefore, no need to knock. He flung open the door, ready to sweep Helena into his arms and shower her with a litany of apologies - and was immediately stopped in his tracks.

Jame Eagan stood on his porch.

Helena’s father had never once, in their three years of marriage, visited their home. Mark was floored.

“Mr. Eagan,” he greeted him. It came out like a question - what are you doing here ? Then, fear washed away his confusion.

“Is Helena ok?” he asked, worried that something so awful could have happened to her it would have warranted Jame to come see Mark in person.

“Yes. Quite well, in fact,” Jame replied frankly. When Mark didn’t reply, still stunned at the sight of Jame Eagan on his doorstep, he continued.

“Aren’t you going to invite me in?”

Mark wordlessly stepped aside, allowing Jame to enter his and Helena’s home. They ended up in the kitchen, and Mark recalled the last time he’d sat in there with someone, his blow up with Helena, and thought how he’d rather take his wife who was furious with him over her weird and sinister father any day. 

“I shan’t waste any of our time,” Jame began. “I called on you today to leave you with this.”

He deposited a thick, brown, unsealed envelope on the kitchen table. Mark picked it up hesitantly, and peered inside. He promptly let out a laugh when he saw what it contained - a small stack of legal papers, the heading of the first document screaming in big, bold lettering:

NOTICE OF ISSUE - UNCONTESTED DIVORCE . 

“Sorry,” Mark said, shaking his head, still laughing. “This is a joke, right?”

“Quite the contrary. You’re to sign the papers.”

Mark’s laughter died on his lips and his eyebrows furrowed in confusion. 

“Don’t be ridiculous. Helena and I aren’t getting divorced.”

“You will. You must.”

“No. Absolutely no fucking way. And don’t even try to tell me that she sent you here, I know that’s bullshit,” Mark retorted, becoming increasingly frustrated with Jame. 

“She does not know that I am here. I came of my own accord, to finally put a stop to this madness. Because this,” Jame made a vague gesture at Mark. “This is madness. You’re nothing. A nobody. I loathe how you’ve sunk your impoverished claws into my daughter’s sweet, porcelain skin. But even you must concede, it is time to end it.”

Mark groaned. He had enough to work through with Helena at the moment, he did not need Jame’s typical nonsense on top of it. Irritated that he’d even let Jame into the house in the first place, Mark lost his temper. 

“Believe it or not, I bite my tongue when I’m around you. For Helena’s sake. But god, you’re a fucking psychopath. Yeah, I get it, you hate me, that’s fine I don’t care. But that doesn’t give you the right to serve me with unsolicited divorce papers. I don’t give a fuck if you’re one of the richest men in the world. I love Helena and I will never leave her.”

Jame didn’t react, his face remained neutral at Mark’s outburst. 

“You love her, yes. But you are not right for her.”

“You’re wrong. I make her happy.”

“Do you?”

“Yes,” although his voice wavered slightly. Does he? An image of Helena curled up into herself on the couch, an evening spent by herself because he’d worked late, again. Her face hollow and dejected because they weren’t any closer to having the baby they both so desperately wanted. That had been her reality for months on end. 

He certainly hadn’t been making her happy lately. 

“I know my daughter does not love me. It’s only natural, I suppose - I never loved her.”

Mark raised his eyebrows at Jame’s blatant cruelty towards his daughter. 

“So, what does it say about your marriage, that she would rather stay with me than be with you?”

Mark didn’t respond. He had nothing to say to that - he’d been asking himself the same question all week.

“I know you have been trying to conceive,” Jame said. “Thank Kier it never took. The thought of your blood tainting the Eagan legacy sickens me. And this is why you will sign the papers. You’ve wasted enough of her time as it is. It’s time you let her go”.

Mark’s chest caved in on itself. These were the thoughts he had been repressing ever since the doctor told him the news that he would never be able to have children - that he should let Helena go, so she could fulfill her dream with someone else. Now here Jame was, in his kitchen, shining a spotlight onto the idea and voicing all the insecurities that Mark had been running from. 

Mark buried his head in his hands. He hated Jame, but maybe he was telling the truth, for once. He loved Helena so much, he would do anything for her. Maybe that meant letting her go - even though that would shatter him. 

He didn’t see Jame’s lip twitch, the smallest smirk at finally breaking the man that had taken his daughter away from him. Satisfied with his visit, Jame stood and started to make his way out of the house. Before he left, he turned and left Mark with one final comment:

“If you really love Helena, you will set her free.”

--

He didn’t sleep at all that night. Helena had never felt so far away, and he had never missed her more. But perhaps this was something he should get used to, he thought. She still hadn’t come home. And even if she did - he still wouldn’t be able to give her the life that she dreamt of. 

Mark could barely function the following day. He went through the motions, in a zombie-like state, but he wasn’t present, not really. All he could think about was Helena and their future together. And how that might look like. Eventually, Mark cut his losses and cancelled his last classes for the day, and headed home early.

Relief flooded his veins when he saw Helena’s car in its usual spot. He almost forgot to switch off the car engine, did forget to shut the car door, as he fell out of the vehicle and stumbled across the driveway and into the house. 

She was home. 

“Helly, honey,” he called as soon as he unlocked the front door. He ran inside and the first thing he saw was the back of her head on the couch in the living room. The sight of her red hair thawed the block of ice that had sat on his chest ever since she left. He rushed towards her. 

Mark’s heart cracked when he saw her face. 

Her face was red and puffy and tears silently streamed down her cheeks. He could tell she’d been crying for hours. 

“Helly, what happened?”

Helena looked up at him. Her eyes were bloodshot and there was snot lingering on her upper lip. She was still beautiful.

“It’s ok, I signed them,” she croaked. Her chest heaved as she tried to suppress her sobs.

“What? What are you talking about?”

“The papers. I saw them in the kitchen.”

Mark had never had a brain aneurysm before, but he was pretty sure this was exactly what it felt like. 

“I didn’t - those weren’t - I’m not -” Mark stammered, unable to get the words out. He couldn’t believe he had been so stupid to leave Jame’s envelope out in the open where she could have come across them. But how could she think he would want a divorce?

“It’s fine, you don’t have to explain anything,” Helena stood up and wiped the tears from her eyes with her hands. “I get it, truly.” 

“Helly…”

She was pacing the room now, biting her fingernails and no longer able to look at him. Mark was frozen firmly in place, feet planted on the floor. He wanted to reach out, to touch her, to hold her, but he was afraid. And he didn’t know if he was allowed to anymore.

“I’ll have someone come get my stuff,” Helena said. “And, it’ll be easier if we just do the rest through lawyers. Please.”

Mark wanted to scream. He wanted so badly to tell her no, she was wrong, those papers hadn’t come from him, she was his wife and he loved her and he would die for her and please, please, please don’t leave me. 

But his voice was gone. Because he still couldn’t shake Jame Eagan’s voice in his head:

If you really love Helena, you will set her free.

That was what stopped him from setting her straight. Let her believe he wanted the divorce, Mark thought. Although it would hurt her (and it would definitely kill him), it was in her best interests. Without him holding Helena back, she could find another loving husband who would be able to give her the children she deserved. She was young enough she could still have it all. Even if it wouldn’t be with him. 

“Ok,” Mark whispered. “We can go through lawyers.”

And this was how Mark Scout’s and Helena Eagan’s marriage came to an end. 

Chapter Text

Mark and Helena kept their word - the rest was done through lawyers. They never saw or spoke to each other again after that ill-fated afternoon, when she’d come home to divorce papers on the kitchen table and he’d come home to wet ink on the pages. It was too painful to look into the eyes of the person you loved most in the world and face the fact that it was over. 

Mark remembered almost nothing of the administrative process. The weeks and months that followed were a blur as men in suits drafted papers that carved their marriage into fragmented pieces. 

He learned the hard way that divorcing a billionaire was far more complicated than divorcing a Russian literature professor. There were reams of paperwork to go through. Fortunately, Helena made it easy. It wasn’t an ugly fight, in fact, it wasn’t a fight at all. Mark’s lawyers were astonished at the generous separation package Helena’s lawyers had written up for him. She offered Mark half of the assets she’d accumulated during their marriage, and if that hadn’t already set him up for life, the monthly alimony payment she proposed certainly would have. 

Mark didn’t want any of it.

He just wanted his wife.

His lawyer reminded him multiple times that since there was no pre-nup in place, he was legally entitled to all of it. But Mark wouldn’t take a penny from Helena. The idea alone left a bitter taste in his mouth. It felt hollow, shallow, like they were putting a price on their marriage, when in reality, its value was incalculable. 

Eventually, after much back and forth, Mark’s lawyer had him sign a disclaimer stating yes, he was aware he was entitled to Helena’s assets and alimony, and yes, he was waiving his right to all of it, and no, he would not sue the lawyers in the future for professional negligence if he decided he wanted to make a claim. 

Despite his best efforts, Mark did not walk away from the marriage with nothing. Helena relinquished all equity in the house, so it was his to keep, whether he liked it or not. Mark put it up for sale immediately. The thought of living there alone, without her, was unconscionable. It would have suffocated him. 

Devon and Ricken were devastated to learn of the divorce. Mark gave his sister some half-hearted reasoning, attributing it to the fact that they couldn’t have kids, and left it at that. Nevertheless, Devon remained skeptical about what had truly occurred behind closed doors. Still, she tried to be there for both of them, although Helena never returned any of her calls. 

She was helping Mark with the movers the first time he had a nervous breakdown. It was when he saw strangers dismantle Helena’s art studio that he fell to the floor, unaware that the broken wail he heard in the distance was coming from his own throat.

“Oh, Mark,” Devon sighed. She joined him on the floor, knees digging into the hardwood. The soft rug Helena had come home with was already packed away, ready to be taken to storage. 

Devon wrapped her arms around her brother, pressing his face into her chest as his body shook with sobs. 

“I don’t think I can do this, Devon,” Mark wept.

“I know,” was all she could say. 

“You don’t get it,” Mark replied. “I’m not whole. Without her, I’m just half. Half of nothing.” 

It wasn’t a clean break. Without Helena to hold it together, Mark’s life lay in tatters around him. He didn’t think there was anything left to salvage. He didn’t tell Devon that he didn’t know if he would survive this. That he didn’t know if he even wanted to. 

Devon held him tightly that day, and the days that followed, tethering him to reality. As he cried in his sister’s arms, all he could think of was Helena’s red, tear-stained face from when he last saw her, and he prayed that someone was looking after her the way that Devon was looking after him. 

But he knew no one was. Which was a whole other kind of hurt in itself. Knowing he’d failed his wife so terribly.

It went without saying that Mark would move in with Devon. “Just until he gets back on his feet”, she’d told Ricken, who had wholeheartedly welcomed Mark into his home with open arms and meaningless platitudes. Devon thought that if he were with her, with family, he could start to heal. But Mark only sank further into his depression. 

The drinking problem he’d developed after Gemma left returned with the force of a thousand hurricanes. Mark was unable to navigate his anguish sober. His past addiction looked like child’s play compared to the self-harm he was committing through the bottle now. He never stopped long enough to feel hungover, existing in a constant state of inebriation because he couldn’t endure it. He carried a sorrow so heavy, it could only be grief. 

So, he drank. Numbed his emotions. It was the only way he knew how to cope. Devon cleaned up the empty bottles, washed the vomit from his clothes, and forced him into the shower when the smell became too much to bear. Mark would wake her and Ricken in the night, either with crashes as he stumbled through the house looking for his next drink, or by drunkenly crying out Helly’s name, confused as to why he wasn’t with his wife. 

It hadn’t even been a month before Ganz University let him go. “Untenable”, that’s how they’d described the situation to him. It turns out you can’t cancel half of your classes or turn up tumultuously drunk to the rest. Unsurprisingly, the loss of his job didn’t come close to the loss of his wife, so Mark didn’t care too much either way when they told him under no circumstance was he to set foot on the premises again. 

Devon disagreed. She loved her brother dearly, but her patience had run thin. 

“Ten years, Mark!” she’d scolded him. He was lying down on the bed in her spare room, drunk. Again. “Ten years you’ve given to that place. Everything you’ve worked for, built, gone .”

“S’lready gone…” he slurred. 

“You have got to pull yourself together! You can’t keep going on like this.”

Mark ignored her. 

“Mark!”

Silence.

“ Mark! ”

Still, no response.

“That’s it, I’ve had enough,” Devon announced, smacking him on the leg. She pulled his duffel bag out from under the bed and started packing his belongings, dirty clothes and all. 

“I won’t have it anymore. Either you quit drinking, or you get out of my house.”

Less than an hour later, Mark checked into Kier’s shittiest motel, duffle bag in one hand, a bottle of whiskey in the other. He stayed there for weeks, drinking and burning through his savings. It never crossed his mind, the thought of getting a job and acting as a functioning member of society. He was quite content to waste away. 

Mark couldn’t have said what month it was, let alone what day, when he heard a knock at the door. It was noon, so he was relatively lucid. He started his days with beer, something light and easy, to nurse the hangover he woke up with. The hard alcohol wouldn’t make an appearance until late afternoon. 

He opened the door, irritated at being disturbed. 

A stranger in a suit stood opposite him. 

“Good afternoon, Mr. Scout,” the man said with a smile. It looked disingenuous. 

Mark’s brows furrowed in confusion.

“What do you want?” he asked bluntly.

“My name’s Seth Milchick. I work at Lumon Industries.” There was a melodious cadence to his voice. 

Instantly, Mark’s heart dropped to his stomach. He was assaulted with the memory of Jame standing on his doorstep, and the fear that something so bad had happened to his wife, her company had sent someone to speak to him.

“Is Helena okay?” he asked, unable to help himself. She was always at the forefront of his mind.

“I’m sure she is,” Milchick replied. “I apologize if I caused any alarm. My visit has nothing to do with Helena or your relationship. My condolences, by the way. We were all quite sorry at Lumon to learn of your separation.”

Mark’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. No one at Lumon had given a fuck about him during his entire marriage to Helena. All of the employees had kept a wide distance from him, wary of being associated with the man Jame so publicly detested. Not that he or Helena had cared. 

“Okay…why are you here, then?”

“We have an exciting new opportunity at Lumon and we think you’d be the perfect candidate,” Milchick said, still smiling. Everything he said sounded sanitised, robotic, like he was reading from a script that had been signed off by marketing, legal, and PR departments.

“I’m sorry,” Mark said dryly. “Are you an idiot? Look at me.” 

He gestured to himself. He’d lost weight from barely eating, but he was still bloated, the copious amounts of alcohol he’d drunk causing swelling and inflammation to his body. His eyes were black, and he hadn’t had a haircut or shaved in weeks. 

Mark then opened the door wider so Milchick could see inside his motel room. It was a dump. Bottles, dirty clothes, and empty take-out containers littered every surface, christening the air with a musty and rotten stench that Mark no longer noticed. The curtains had remained shut and his sheets unchanged for his entire stay. It was the model living space for a baby-faced eighteen year old college student, living away from home for the first time, or a depressed forty something year old alcoholic, mourning the loss of his wife. 

Milchick took this all in. 

“The candidate for this brand new position is required to undergo the procedure colloquially known as ‘severance’,” Milchick explained. “Your sorry state of affairs is exactly why we think you are the perfect person for this role. It requires a certain sort of individual to go ahead and ‘switch off’, as they say, for eight hours a day.”

Mark was well aware of severance. Lumon had officially launched it shortly after he’d met Helena. She’d always had her reservations, privately concerned about the ethical implications and unknown long-term consequences of the procedure. She’d often vented to Mark about it. 

Beyond that, it had never really concerned him. Still, he was curious.

“What’s the position?” he asked.

“There is a role in our corporate archives division, which we think you would be a natural at, considering your academic experience. Unfortunately, it requires the handling of quite sensitive material. Therefore, to safeguard Lumon’s interests, the individual must be severed to prevent any potential data breaches. You would be compensated quite generously, of course. In addition to an above market-rate salary, there are the pension and health care schemes, and the company housing and car.”

Mark considered it. Corporate archives, that sounded simple enough. And it’s not as if he would be doing the job himself, anyway. 

The real selling point, though, was the concept of switching off, literally, for eight hours a day. It sounded too good to be true. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of it already. Ever since Helena had walked out of his life for good, he’d been seeking various ways to escape, to numb her loss. So far, only alcohol had cut it. And he knew he was pushing his luck with that. He couldn’t continue at the current pace he was going. Something had to give.

Severance, though. The highest form of escapism. Far more efficient than alcohol, and his body would thank him for it too. For eight hours a day, forty hours a week, he could switch off his grief. It wouldn’t necessarily heal him, but he wasn’t looking to heal. And if he were asleep for another eight hours a day, and drunk for the remainder, then he might just be able to survive her absence. It was the perfect solution. 

There was also something comforting in the fact that he would be working at Lumon, where Helena was. He would be close to his wife, without the pain of knowing it. The idea soothed him. 

In the end, it was a no brainer. Plus, he really needed a fucking place to live. Milchick told him he could have some time to think about it, but Mark committed to the job on the spot, much to the former's delight. 

Less than two weeks later, Mark was severed and settled into his new home. The house was cold and had no personality, but Mark didn’t care. It was a roof over his head, and Devon was finally speaking to him again, thrilled that he was getting his life back on track.

He still drank, but not as much as before. Mark felt a bit sorry for the alter-ego he had created, someone who would spend his entire life in a basement reviewing Lumon’s archives. He thought the least he could do was tone down the hangovers for the poor guy. 

Mark didn’t acknowledge the other reason - that he might, one day, run into a certain someone at Lumon Headquarters. He didn’t want to look like a pathetic mess. Just in case he saw her.

He never did, though. And so it went. Mark went back and forth from his house and Lumon, with the odd detour to Devon and Ricken’s every now and then. His heart still ached. He still mourned her absence just as much as he’d done on his first day without her. But he was coping better, at least. That had to count for something. 

It was almost two years later when Mark woke up in the elevator one evening, with a throbbing bruise on his head, a Pip’s gift card waiting for him in his car, and a very, very strange feeling inside his chest. He felt different, but couldn’t pinpoint why, exactly. He mulled over the strange sensations, and in the end, attributed them to his head injury. That was probably why he was feeling weird. 

What Mark didn’t realise, however, was that as the bruise on his head faded, that peculiar feeling only grew stronger as the days passed.

It was peace. That was what he was feeling. Mark was just oblivious to it because he had been depressed for so long. 

--

Meanwhile, Helena was coping with the divorce just as well as Mark was. Which is to say, she wasn’t coping at all.

Love, true love, the kind you see in the movies, loud and passionate and soft and reliable, she’d spent her entire life believing that this love didn’t exist. Then, she’d been swept away by a stranger at one unremarkable university fundraiser and found herself basking in oceans of it ever since.  

Helena knew what they’d had was real. Mark had shown her that it was possible to love and be loved, and she would always be thankful to him for that. But she’d been stupid to believe that it would have been forever. Everyone left eventually. Why would Mark be any different?

It really shouldn’t have come as a surprise to her to see the divorce papers waiting at home. If anything, she should have expected it. The months leading up to it had been utterly miserable. Mark had done everything for Helena, rescued her from herself and her family. All she wanted was to give him a baby in return and complete their little family unit. But she couldn’t do it. Once a month, she had no choice but to look at her husband and tell him that her period had come again, and she had to watch the hope dwindle in his eyes a little more, every single time.

So, she avoided him. Helena couldn’t deal with the shame.

Then, she’d found out that Mark had been tested, without her. She’d been so angry that he’d done it alone, that he hadn’t confided in her. It verified all of the insecurities that had been simmering under the surface, that they weren’t a true partnership anymore. It put the spotlight on the disconnect that had formed between them, that perhaps their relationship wasn’t working. In doing it by himself, it felt like he was giving up on her. 

The papers had still been a shock, though. Her whole world collapsed in those pages, and she’d been falling ever since.  

She hadn’t just lost her husband. She’d lost Devon and Ricken too, her family, all of their friends, her community. Although Devon and other mutual friends had reached out to her a lot at the beginning, Helena felt undeserving, unworthy of their concern. It was Mark’s sister, Mark’s friends, not hers. 

Helena retreated into the isolation of the Eagan estate and had to confront the fact that she was alone once more. It was much harder compared to her life before Mark. Now that she knew what she was missing, love and connection and friendship, she was acutely aware of its absence. 

Her heartbreak manifested in various ways. She’d always struggled with eating, but it got much worse after the divorce. It stemmed back to her early childhood, ever since she’d found her mother’s body hanging from the ceiling, which had cracked her chest wide open. The chasm never closed. When she was eleven, she discovered that starving herself numbed the emptiness inside of her. That if she was hungry, then she didn’t have to call it loneliness. 

Helena stopped swimming too. The passion was gone. It reminded her too much of the mornings she’d slipped out of bed as Mark slept beside her, the pool a refuge from the infertility that had tormented their marriage. Besides, she didn’t have the strength. Her eating disorder had taken that from her too. 

Whilst she didn’t draw or paint like she used to (it’s not as if Jame would allow her to build a studio anyway), she held onto her art. It was quieter now, private. She kept it to herself. Behind her locked bedroom door, curled up in an empty bed, drawing from memory the face of the only man she had ever loved, in a small sketchbook she kept cherished under her pillow. 

Helena kept tabs on Mark. At the start of every quarter, Drummond gave her an update as to how he was doing. She knew that he had moved in with Devon initially, after the divorce, but that she had kicked him out not long afterwards due to his drinking. That he had lost his job because of it, and spent several months wasting away in a motel. 

Whilst it broke her heart all over again, to hear about his self-destructive behaviour, there was a sick comfort in it too - in knowing that they were both in the same place, even though they weren’t there together. 

But what hurt more was learning what came next. 

Drummond told her how Mark had got another job, teaching History in a small community college in a town a few hours outside of Kier. He’d moved there and was renting a lovely little apartment next to the college. 

“He’s started dating again too,” Drummond told her around a year after the divorce. “A few women, here and there. He seems particularly taken with the latest one, though. She spends most nights with him.”

Helena was crushed. 

“I’m sorry,” Drummond said. “He’s moved on. I suggest you do the same.”

One day, it occurred to Helena that she should kill herself, just like her mother had. There was something comforting in the thought that she would be her mother’s daughter right at the very end. I don’t even have a baby to leave behind , she thought, so it wouldn’t be so bad at all . It wasn’t lost to her that if she did have a baby, she wouldn’t be contemplating this at all. 

She never got around to it, though. Like everything else in her life, she lacked the energy to go through with it. Instead, she moved through life apathetically and listlessly, much to her father’s delight. 

Naturally, Jame had been ecstatic to learn of the divorce. It was a strange sight, to Helena, to witness her father express joy. He wasted no time at all, lining up potential suitors for her, thrilled that he could now utilise her to pursue his own agenda. She’d had dinner with countless eminent men, including the White House Chief of Staff, a Rockefeller, and even a European Prince.

Every dinner ended the same. The man always declined dessert, shook Jame’s hand with a polite smile on his face, and told him, essentially, “thanks, but no thanks - she’s a lovely girl, but this isn’t going to work out.”

Helena was beautiful, there was never any question about that. However, the longer she went without swimming, the more her muscles withered away. The fullness in her hips and breasts had disappeared when she stopped eating. She was all pale skin and bone, face gaunt and eyes hollow. 

Perhaps the suitors would have looked past this had Helena shown an ounce of enthusiasm towards any of them. Instead, she sat at the table, silent, eyes glazed over, staring into space. Waiting for it to be over. Jame had finally got what he wanted - a passive, compliant daughter, obeying his every whim. But she was lifeless. 

“ Wake up!” Jame spat into her face one evening. Helena didn’t even flinch. The chief executive of a Fortune 50 company had just respectfully declined Jame’s offer to wed his daughter. 

“It’s been almost two years,” he snarled. “When you first came home, I thought you’d snapped out of it. Come to your senses. But for all intents and purposes, Scout may well be in this house.”

Helena broke a little inside at the mention of Mark’s name. Two years since she’d seen her husband. She’d hoped the agony of the divorce would have eased with time, but it hadn’t. She still ached. 

“Tonight was your last chance.”

Helena’s eyes snapped up to look at her father. Like prey, caught in a trap. A new threat on the horizon.

“You’ve sabotaged every single match, even though it is your duty to serve Kier, to reproduce and continue the Eagan legacy. And yet you disappoint me at every turn. You leave me no choice but to find another way to utilize you.”

Helena felt sick at the implication, her mind instinctively conjuring up the various horrors her father could have in store for her. 

“You’ll be severed next week,” Jame told her. 

Oh.

“I suppose I don’t get a choice in the matter?” Helena asked quietly. 

“You don’t get to make choices, Helena.”

And that was that, nothing further to discuss. She would do as she was told.

Severance. That wasn’t so bad, Helena thought. If anything, she was relieved. It could be much worse. One of the arrangements could have ended up in marriage, and she’d be forced to spend her nights sleeping with a man who wasn’t Mark. The thought gave her chills. 

Working on the Severed Floor, however, as part of a PR campaign for Lumon. That she could live with. If anything, it was a positive - spending eight hours a day outside of her body was an enticing thought. It would give her some respite from her misery and loneliness. Some space from missing Mark. 

When Helena looked back on this moment years later, she couldn’t believe she had ever been so naive, that she had so vastly underestimated how cruel her father could be. Of course it was never going to be “just severance”. His actual intentions with her were far worse than anything she could have possibly conceived. 

The following week, Jame and Drummond stood behind a one-way mirror, watching a nurse prepare Helena for surgery. 

“Have you told her the real reason why she’s getting severed?” Drummond asked in his deep voice. 

“Of course not,” Jame replied, not taking his eyes off of his daughter. “She never would have gone willingly if she knew.”

Behind the mirror, Helena closed her eyes as the scalpel made the first incision at the back of her skull. 

“And now, she never will.”

Chapter Text

Mark S. woke up on top of a mountain. 

He gasped, startled to gain consciousness somewhere other than the elevator, and cold air hit his lungs. It felt like he’d been plunged into icy cold water, the way the shock ignited his nervous system. 

Mark had no idea where he was. He assumed it was somewhere in America, although he wouldn’t put it past Lumon to ship him off to Siberia with no explanation. He spun around, looking at his brand new surroundings without taking them in.

He was looking for Helly. It stood to reason that she may very well have been put here by Lumon too. His base instincts zeroed in on finding and protecting her, even though she didn’t want anything to do with him right now. 

A week had passed since the OTC. Five days, forty whole hours, during which Helly had barely looked at or spoken to him. Their easy banter from before, and that kiss, her kiss, felt like a distant memory. Like it had happened to two completely different people. Which it had, Mark supposed. The realization that their outies were once married had changed them. 

It had easily been the worst week of his entire existence. But what could he do? Helly was visibly uncomfortable with the news. The least Mark could do was respect her wishes and give her the space she had asked for. 

He heard Irving first - a speck in the distance, stranded on a frozen lake. Mark had guided him off the ice and was helping his friend navigate the mountain when - 

“Mark!”

Her voice, not so far away. Irving must have found her. Mark sighed in relief - whatever the fuck was going on, he knew they would be okay. Because they would be together. 

Not even a sunrise could be as beautiful as Helly and her red hair rising behind the crest of the mountain. The sight of her warmed the chill in Mark’s body. Although their relationship had been strained since the OTC, their faces softened once they locked eyes, finding a familiar comfort in each other in this unknown. 

Mark jogged the remaining distance to his friends. 

“Did you wake up on the ice too?” Irving asked him. 

“Yeah,” Mark replied. “What about you?” he turned to Helly, his hand instinctively reaching to her, just for a second. 

“On the cliff,” she said.

They were interrupted by a shout as Dylan fell out of the bushes next to them. 

“Is it you?” he yelled. 

“Of course it’s us!” Helly yelled right back at him. 

“Holy shit!” Dylan exclaimed. “Out-fucking-side!”

And the macrodata refiners were reunited once more. 

An out of place television set caught their attention. On it, a pre-recorded video of Mr. Milchick welcomed them to their Outdoor Retreat Team Building Occurrence, or ‘ORTBO’ for short, and he instructed them to follow their doppelgangers to Scissor Cave. 

And off they went. The four of them hiked for hours, first along the cliff edge, and then deeper into the forest. Heavy, thick clouds passed overhead, and the sun felt so very far away. Despite their heavy fur coats, icy winds cut through them, the outdoors a much harsher environment compared to the regulated temperatures on the Severed Floor. 

Mark smiled to himself as the snow crunched underneath his feet, relishing in this brand new experience. All he wanted to do was talk to Helly about it, to share in this adventure together. But she’d kept close to Dylan, and was still avoiding him. Perhaps she could feel it subconsciously, he wondered. Whatever his outie had done to hurt her. 

Soon, the team reached Scissor Cave and with it, the Fourth Appendix. They learned the truth about Dieter Eagan, Kier’s twin brother, and that they were to follow in his footsteps and journey to Woe’s Hollow.

Deeper into the wilderness they marched. Eventually, Irving and Dylan started to lag behind, tiring from the trek. Mark and Helly stopped to rest whilst they waited for their friends to catch up. 

Mark admired their surroundings. It was beyond beautiful. The way the sunlight reflected in the icicles, the red robins that fluttered between tree branches, how Helly’s nose tinged pink from the cold. 

“You okay?” he asked, breaking the silence. 

“Yeah,” she said, speaking to him for the first time in hours. “I just wish we knew where we were going.” 

Out of the corner of his eye, Mark saw that Irving had almost caught up to them, and was staring at Helly, unusually so. He didn’t think too much of it, until not long later, when Irving asked him what he and Helly had been talking about. 

“I don’t trust her,” Irving explained. “I think she might be lying about what her outie saw.”

“Why would you think that?” Mark scoffed. 

Sure, Helly hadn’t told Irving and Dylan everything about the OTC, but it was unfair to accuse her of lying. Besides, Mark hadn’t told Irving everything his outie had seen either. Their marriage was no one else’s business. He’d kept it quiet, because he wanted to respect Helly’s privacy and because it was something that was precious to him. So, he had no desire to entertain Irving’s suspicions. 

The snow fell heavier around them. 

“Night gardeners? Hm?” Irving questioned. “It’s clear you do not have an objective perspective due to your feelings for her-”

“My feelings for her have nothing to do with anything, okay?” Mark snapped, not even denying the fact. 

They were stopped short by a dead seal obstructing their path. His argument with Irving about Helly turned into an argument over whether or not they should eat the animal, which Mark fortunately won. They carried on, in silence after that. 

--

After a long day of hiking and a grandiose speech from Milchick at the Woe’s Hollow waterfall, the team finally made it to their campsite. Four tents, illuminated in MDR blue, surrounded a fire. They settled in as the sun set and the temperature dropped even further. Mark admired Helly who was hunched over in the snow, delicately crafting a little snow seal with her tiny fingers. The image tugged at his heartstrings. 

She took her creation into Irving’s tent, but wasn’t in there for long, her face crestfallen on her exit. Mark sighed. Irving must have given her a hard time too. He stood to go and console her, but she shut herself in her own tent before he had the chance. 

Later, they sat around the campfire, listening to Milchick read the rest of the Fourth Appendix, a grotesque story featuring a puss filled eye socket and a bloody scalp. Milchick was introducing the next chapter when Helly surprised them all and broke out into laughter. 

“You guys,” she chuckled, gesturing with her hands. “He melted, right? He turned into the forest because he masterbated.”

Mark grinned. Her laughter was infectious, utter music to his ears. It was the first time since the OTC that he’d seen her genuinely happy and he couldn’t help it, he started laughing too. 

“I mean, seriously, that’s actually the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. Right? He jerked off in front of his brother, and he got punished for it.”

Mark was laughing loudly now and even Dylan started to join in. 

“What, you can’t say that,” Mark snickered. 

“He just said it!” Helly exclaimed. 

The two of them stole looks at each other, repressing smiles as Milchick reprimanded them, but Mark didn’t care. It was worth it. It felt so nice to be silly with her, to forget about everything they had gone through lately and act like their normal selves again. 

“Hey, what do you think his dick turned into?” Helly joked and Mark broke out into laughter all over again. 

“It isn’t funny,” Irving said solemnly. 

“I don’t know, it’s pretty funny.” 

“It’s not.” 

“Okay,” Mark conceded, accepting that nothing was going to fix Irving’s bad mood.

“And stop making goo-goo eyes at her.”

“I’m not!”

Mark looked at Helly. Screw Irving. Screw him for trying to ruin this moment. There had obviously been tension between himself and Helly ever since the OTC. So what if some dumb Lumon campfire story broke some of it and provided them with a distraction. 

“Just tell us, Helly,” Irving goaded. He really wasn’t letting this go. 

“Tell you what?” she asked. The smile on her face started to dim. 

“Just tell us about him.”

“Who?”

“The night gardener.”

“Oh, Irv, come on,” Mark interrupted. 

The interrogation began. 

“Did he have a flashlight? Hm? What was he wearing? What color was his shirt?”

Helly shrank further into herself as Irving bombarded her with questions. 

“Did he have on a vest? A luminescent vest? Tell us exactly what he was wear-”

“Irving, that’s enough,” Mark said sharply. Irving had been picking on Helly all day and he was sick of it. He wasn’t going to tolerate it for a second longer. 

“Enough?” 

“Yeah,” 

“Using your pupils to make love to her whilst she’s obviously lying to you?”

“Hey! Shut up!” Mark snapped. 

“Yeah, fuck you Irv,” Dylan chimed in. 

“So it’s three against one now, huh?”

“It’s okay,” Helly said quietly, cutting through the noise. “We all know Irving’s upset because he can’t ever see Burt again. And he’s really lonely.” 

Helly’s voice quivered when she said lonely . Silence descended on the camp. 

“Fuck you all!” Irving bellowed. He picked up a torch and stormed into the night. 

--

Mark watched the campfire diminish to flaming embers. Helly and Dylan were in their respective tents and Irving had marched off to god knows where. He replayed the day’s events over and over in his head, wondering how it all went wrong. 

Ultimately, the cold got the better of him. He was making his way to his own tent when he saw Helly’s shadow through the polyester. Mark could tell from her silhouette that she was sitting, curled with her knees underneath her chin at the end of her bed, and he just couldn’t bear it. The thought of her sitting there, upset and alone, was too much. He had to do something.

Tentatively, he poked his head into her tent.

“Probably a carrot,” Mark said, testing the waters. 

“What?”

“Dieter’s penis.”

Although she was upset, the corner of her mouth twitched, ever so slightly. Dick jokes, that seemed to be the way forward with Helly, Mark noted. Good to know. 

“Yeah, or some other root vegetable,” she said, raising her eyebrows at him. Mark relaxed. Olive branch: accepted. He took it as an invitation and stepped into her tent, zipping the door shut behind him and kneeling to sit in front of her. 

“That was mean of me. To say that to Irving.” Helly said softly.

“Uh, I mean, he kind of deserved it.” Mark replied. “And I can make goo-goo eyes at anyone I want.”

Mark knew he was pushing his luck here. She hated the fact that they had been married on the outside, she certainly wouldn’t want him making goo-goo eyes at her. But all he wanted to do was make her smile.

Luckily, she softened at his words. They held each other’s gaze, present in the moment. This was the closest they had been since their initial hug after the OTC. Mark could feel her breath on his skin and count each individual eyelash on her face. He savoured every part of her.

“Are you okay?”

She didn’t answer him at first. Then, she whispered,

“No. I’m not.” 

Mark shifted closer.

“Hey, hey,” he said, consoling her. “Don’t listen to Irv. You’re right, he’s just upset about Burt-”

“It’s not that.” Helly interrupted him.

Mark frowned. 

“Then what is it?” he asked. When a moment passed and she didn’t answer, he acknowledged the elephant in the room.

“Is it… is it us?”

Her face crumpled and the dam broke. 

“I’m just sad, Mark! I’ve been really sad ever since the OTC.”

Her words devastated Mark and he hung his head in sorrow. He knew it - she hated that they were once married, had known each other intimately, and she was now imprisoned in Lumon with the man who had broken her heart in another life. God, her psyche hated being trapped with him so much, she’d tried to kill herself. No wonder she wanted nothing to do with him. 

She undoubtedly regretted their kiss, too. 

“You’re a really wonderful person, Mark. And I’m not,” 

What? 

Mark’s head shot up, completely taken aback. 

“We had something special out there,” Helly continued. “But my outie ruined it. And it just sucks , Mark. To know that we had each other, in another life, but we lost it because of her.”

Mark’s jaw was on the floor. 

“What on earth are you talking about?” He asked. Helly had been blaming herself, her outie, this entire time for their outies’ divorce? He could have laughed at the absurdity of it. Mark couldn’t envision a world in which she was at fault. It simply wasn’t possible. 

“Yeah, your outie has been… difficult, at times,” he said, recalling the ‘you are not a person’ tape. Helly raised her eyebrows, yeah, ya think? 

“But you, Helly,” he said tenderly. “You are…magnificent. And I refuse to believe that you are anything less than that out there.”

Helly shook her head. Tears started to form in her eyes, which were as round as saucers.

“I’m really not,” she said. “And she really isn’t. You weren’t there, Mark. You didn’t see it.”

Mark leaned in closer, cupping her hands in his, grateful when she didn’t pull away.

“Tell me,” he implored. He couldn’t help her if he didn’t understand. “What didn’t I see?”

He could see it flickering in her eyes, an inner turmoil tearing her apart inside. Something had happened to her out there, and it made him feel sick. That whatever it was, was so bad that she felt she couldn’t confide in him. 

“Please, Helly. I promise, you can tell me anything.”

For a second, it looked like she would. Helly leaned forward, lips parted slightly, like there was something on the tip of her tongue. But only for a second. Whatever confidence she had, crumbled. She slipped her hands out from under his. 

“Nevermind. It was nothing.”

“Helly?”

She turned her back to him and started unpacking her bag. 

“You should go, Mark. Please.”

“Are you sure?”

He waited for a moment, hoping she would change her mind. 

“Okay. I’ll see you in the morning,” he whispered, when she didn’t respond. 

“Sleep well, Helly.”

And he left her alone. 

--

Mark tossed and turned in his sleeping bag all night. He couldn’t enjoy the opportunity to sleep, so worried he was about Helly and what had happened to her during the OTC. At some point he must surrendered to exhaustion, because the next thing he knew, another day had arrived. 

“Hey, have you seen Irv?” Dylan asked him as he stepped outside. “He didn’t come back last night.”

“No, I haven’t seen him.”

Mark then turned to Helly’s tent. It was unzipped and he could see that it was empty.

“Helly? Helly?!”

There was no answer. Both Irving and Helly were nowhere to be seen. A dark, foreboding feeling coiled in Mark’s chest. 

“Mark! Dylan!” Milchick approached the campsite. “What’s happened?”

“Helly and Irv are missing!” 

“What the fuck is going on?” 

The three of them looked around, helpless and confused. Where could they have gone? 

The answer came from a shout in the distance. 

“Mr. Milchick!”

And then, more faintly. 

“Help!”

Mark’s heart dropped to the pit of his stomach. 

“No!” 

It was Helly, crying out in distress.

Mark, Dylan, and Milchick took off in a sprint, towards the direction of the voices. They came to the peak of Woe’s Hollow, and at the bottom of the waterfall, they found their friends. Mark dissociated for a moment, unable to comprehend what he was seeing.

Irving had Helly in a headlock, hand viciously gripping her hair as he dragged her closer and closer to the edge of the water. Helly was kicking and screaming, desperately clawing at Irving’s hold, but to no avail. He was much stronger than her. She didn’t stand a chance. 

“Mr. Milchick!” Irving shouted, over and over again.

“Mark!” Helly shrieked. 

“Helly!” 

They were only a few feet from the water now.

“Turn her back, Mr. Milchick!”

“Help!” 

Irving gave Helly a heavy shove, and she cried as her hands and knees hit the hard rock below.

“What are you doing, man?”

“Turn her back!” 

Irving was back on her, pushing Helly over the edge.

“Irv, what the fuck!?” 

“She’s an outie!” 

And with that, Irving gripped the back of Helly’s head and forcefully plunged her, face first, into the water. Mark’s heart shattered. He was hurting her . Immediately, he took off running again, as fast as he could to the clearing below. The only thought that crossed his mind was that this was it, this was the reason why he was put onto this earth - to rescue Helly.

“Irving, stop it!” Mark registered the horror in his voice as he ran.

As he stumbled through brambles and thickets, branches scratching his face, Mark decided he would kill Irving if he had to. Irving was his friend and he loved him like a brother. But there was no doubt about it. He would put a rock through his skull if that’s what it took to get him off of Helly.

Irving wrenched Helly out of the water and she gasped for breath, her wet bangs smothering her face. 

“She’s been an outie the whole time! Ever since she came back!” Irving screamed. He then savagely pushed Helly back under, her face crashing into the icy blue depths.

Mark was only halfway down the rock face, slipping and sliding over the ice and wet snow. His body was shaking with frustration and fear. He was going as fast as he could, but it wasn’t fast enough. 

“Irving, you stop now!” shouted Milchick.

Helly cried out in pain as Irving pulled her back up a second time. 

“She’s a fucking mole!”

“What are you doing?” 

Mark, Dylan, and Milchick continued to plead with Irving, but he was too far gone. There was no reasoning with him now. 

“I’m gonna kill her, Mr. Milchick!” 

Irving violently dunked Helly back into the river and held her there, much longer this time. The sound of Helly thrashing underwater as Irving drowned her petrified Mark. He’d gotten closer, but was still not close enough. 

Irving then ripped Helly back out again.

“She’s not Helly! She’s an Eagan! Turn her back, Mr. Milchick! Turn her back!” and then back into the river she went, her thrashing becoming weaker and weaker the longer she was submerged. 

At long last, Mark made it to the bottom of the waterfall. He was seconds away from tackling Irving to the ground. Killing him, if he had to. 

Above them, Milchick reached into his pocket and pulled out a handheld radio.

“It’s Milchick,” he said into the machine. “Initiate LULLABY on Bailiff. Now !”. 

Irving’s eyes rolled back into his head and his body went slack. He released his grip on Helly as he fell unconscious and tumbled to the ground. 

But it was too late. 

He’d held Helly underwater for too long. 

Disorientated and oxygen deprived, Helly slipped into the river, fully submerged. Her limbs floundered as she tried to grab purchase onto something, anything, but the heavy weight of her black fur coat and metal belt buckle dragged her down. 

The water stilled as the fight left her body. 

Mark didn’t think twice. He finally made it to the bank of the river and he threw himself in after Helly, barely registering the freezing temperatures. He wrapped his arms around her and hauled her out of the water. His legs scrambled as he dragged their bodies up the slab of rock, getting her as far away from the edge as he could. 

Mark cradled Helly in his arms. She was completely frozen through, her skin was as white as snow and her lips were pale blue. Her eyes were closed and she wasn’t moving. 

She wasn’t breathing. 

“Helly?” Mark choked. 

He blinked and for a second there was an extension cord wrapped tightly around her neck. No, this wasn’t happening, not again. He felt powerless, he didn’t know what to do. If only he could give his life for hers, he’d do it in a second if it meant she would just wake up .

“Helly, please,” he begged, pushing her hair off of her face. Mark pulled her closer. He needed to warm her up, but he didn’t know how. He was soaking wet too. 

Then - 

A shudder. A dribble of water spluttered from her mouth. The faintest sign of life, and it was the most glorious thing Mark had ever seen. Helly started choking and Mark gently tilted her onto her side. Her stomach convulsed and all of her muscles seized, then all of a sudden, she was throwing up heaps of dirty river water and bile. 

“Oh thank God,”

Mark kept one arm wrapped around her waist, holding her up as they allowed gravity to expel the rest from her system. With his other arm, he used his hand to give her long, firm strokes up and down her back, soothing her trembling body. He pressed a kiss to her forehead. 

“You’ve got it honey, come on now,” he murmured softly. “Let it all out,”

She had one hand braced on the ground, the other clutched the arm Mark had around her waist so tightly it cut the circulation to his fingers.  

“M-m-Mark,” she whimpered. Her body spasmed and she threw up more water. 

“That’s it, you’re doing so good baby,” 

Helly heaved again and again, until there was nothing left to give. She took a deep breath of fresh air, oxygen hitting her lungs, and collapsed backwards, into Mark. 

He settled her in-between his legs, her back pressed along his torso, arms wrapped tightly around her. Both of them were shaking, trying to generate some warmth. 

“You’re okay, I’ve got you. You’re safe. I’ll keep you safe,” Mark murmured, his mouth brushing her ear. 

“He’s right, Mark,” she managed to form the sentence between chattering teeth.  

“What?” He could barely process what she was saying. “You’re an outie?”

“No,” she said. “I’m an Eagan.”

And then the world went dark. 

Chapter Text

Once again, Mark gasped for breath as he came into consciousness. This time, there was no mountain—he was back inside the Lumon elevator he knew all too well. And even though he was wearing his standard suit and tie, he still felt heavy, wet fur clinging to his skin, and the icy chill of Woe’s Hollow, settled deep in his bones. 

He still felt Helly in his arms. She was shaking. 

“HELLY!?” 

Mark fell through the doors as they opened and charged through the Severed Floor. He weaved through the indiscriminate white hallways towards MDR, the sound of his heavy footfall drowned out by his desperate cries for Helly. 

Inside MDR, Dylan was sitting at his desk, alone. Mark stumbled as he came to a stop, going weak at the knees at the sight of Helly’s empty chair. Not only was Irving missing, so was his desk, but Mark couldn’t process that right now. He was incapable of holding any emotion other than worry for Helly, her whereabouts and her wellbeing. 

“Where’s—

“She’s in the break room,” Dylan said, preempting his question. 

Mark turned on his heel and took off again, not hanging around long enough to question why she would be there in the first place. The confirmation of her presence on the Severed Floor was not enough; he needed to see her, to touch her skin, to prove to himself that she was real and that she was safe. 

He finally made it to the break room, and there she was, alive. So, so alive. He could have wept from relief. 

“Helly?”

She looked so small, curled up on the couch, with her knees tucked under her chin and arms wrapped around her legs. 

“You’re here,” she said, her voice cracking in disbelief. 

Mark crashed into her. “Helly, Helly, Helly, Helly,” he murmured over and over again, showering her with kisses on her forehead, her cheeks, her eyes, her lips. 

Back in each other’s embrace, they both started shivering, as if they were still soaking wet and covered in snow, their minds not caught up to their bodies. Mark tried to generate some warmth, rubbing her arms and her back with an intensity as if her life still depended on it. 

Although Mark couldn’t keep his hands off of her, Helly didn’t seem to mind. She sank into his touch, surrendering to him, finally accepting everything he had to offer. Without thinking, just following a base instinct that was tucked away deep inside of her, somewhere beyond the chip, Helly climbed into Mark’s lap, winding her limbs around his body. Her skirt rose as her legs bracketed his thighs, and she wrapped her arms around his neck. Mark pressed her closer, tangling his fingers in her hair and caressing her back with steady, firm strokes. 

“Are you okay?” He whispered. 

“I’m okay,” she mumbled, her lips brushing his neck. 

“Oh my god. I thought you were dead.”

“I’m alive. I’m alive.”

Mark wasn’t sure if she was trying to convince him or convince herself. 

“I am so, so sorry, Helly,” he said, the words laced with his pain. “I can’t believe Irving did that to you. I’m sorry I didn’t protect you.”

Helly lifted her head out of his neck and their eyes met. 

“You did, though. You saved me,” she said, with a soft smile on her lips. “Besides, he was half right.” She dropped her gaze. “I'm an Eagan.”

For the first time, Mark had the opportunity to digest this news. So many things clicked into place at once. Her behaviour after the OTC, the silence, the distance, the awkwardness. She wasn’t embarrassed that they were divorced. She was embarrassed that she was an Eagan. 

“Oh honey, that explains so much,” he said, the hands that had been stroking her back settled on her waist. “Are you okay?”

“That’s it? You don’t have anything else to say?” 

Helly couldn’t believe it. Mark should be outraged. He should be furious. She was the reason why he was imprisoned in this inhumane place, where he was deprived of basic human necessities and subject to psychological abuse. And on top of that, she’d kept her identity a secret from him. She was an Eagan, so why was he looking up at her right now as if she’d hung the moon in the night sky just for him?

Mark shrugged. “What do you want me to say?”

“You should be upset!”

“Why should I be upset? It’s not your fault.”

“But out there, I’m not Helly. I’m Helena Eagan, Mark.”

Mark ignored how his heatstrings tugged towards the sound of her outie’s full name. It sounded like a song he had heard a very long time ago, calling back to him. 

“You are Helly. I don’t care who you are out there. I care who you are with me.” 

Mark just wasn’t understanding, Helly thought. He should care; god, it was her fault he got severed in the first place. Ricken had told him so on the outside. She’d caused him so much pain; how could he not care who she was out there?

“But out there, she’s not good,” she tried explaining. “She said I wasn’t a person.”

Mark lifted his hands from her waist and cradled her head, dragging his thumbs across her cheekbones. 

“You are a person, Helly.” Mark said. “You’re my person.”

Helly shook her head, her eyes watering.  

“How are you not getting it? You say I’m your person… and you’re mine as well. But I don’t understand how this could ever work, when there’s a part of you out there who hates me.”

“Hate you?” Mark laughed—him, hate her? “Utterly impossible.”

“Need I remind you, we’re divorced,” Helly said, her voice trembling. “She has a fucked up life; it would have made him miserable. No wonder we didn’t stay married.”

“Listen to me,” Mark said assuringly. “Now, I don’t know much about my outie. But I promise you, he does not hate you. I know his life was immeasurably better when he had her in it. Just like mine is, now that I have you.”

“But you can’t know that.” Helly said, exasperated with Mark’s kindness. A tear rolled down her cheek and onto his thumb. 

“I do, honey, I do,” Mark said. He covered her hand with his and placed her palm on top of his heart. “I feel it here. In my soul.”

Helly’s fingers curled into his shirt and she fell forward, burying her head into his chest. The trauma of everything that had occurred since the OTC reached its breaking point, and it was Mark’s unconditional acceptance of who she truly was, both here and on the outside, that tipped her over the edge. 

“I was just, so, so, ashamed,” she wept, everything she had internalised flooding out into the open with her tears. The make-up Helena had painted on that morning smudged on her ex-husband’s white shirt. “I woke up, and Jame Eagan was there. It was terrible. And I found those drawings of you and I was so relieved that you were somehow in my life. But then you said we’re divorced and I thought your outie must have left her because she’s awful. And I was scared that if you knew the truth, you would leave me too.”

Mark’s chest constricted tightly at Helly’s words. It made him so sad to think that she had been dealing with this all on her own. 

“Fuck, Helly,” he exhaled. “I thought it was finding out that our outies used to be married is what made you uncomfortable.”

Helly lifted her head from Mark’s chest at his words and sat back to look at him properly. 

“God no,” she said. “Finding out we loved each other on the outside, at least for a little while? That was like a dream come true.”

They stared at each other earnestly, as all their hesitation and confusion, doubts and insecurities, melted away. Mark wiped the tear tracks from Helly’s cheeks and pulled her closer, resting his forehead on hers. Here they were, together on the same page, at last. 

“And there I was thinking you didn’t want me,” he laughed. 

“Of course I want you,” she said, her eyes shining. Like it was the most obvious thing in the world. 

And with that, Mark could not restrain himself any longer. He surged forward and crashed his lips into hers, and it felt like coming home.

This wasn’t the soft, tentative kiss they shared before the OTC. It was hard, desperate—two people at long last taking everything they wanted after denying themselves for so long. 

Helly ran her tongue over Mark’s bottom lip, and he groaned and pushed his face into hers so hard that their noses scrunched together in the most gratifying collision. 

“I need you,” Helly breathed. 

Mark’s hands scrambled underneath her skirt, whilst Helly lifted her hips to help him tear away her pantyhose and underwear. She fumbled with his belt buckle and pulled him free, their lips pressed together the entire time. 

Their movements were seamless, muscle memory taking them down a path they had walked hundreds of times before. Mark was suddenly struck with an overwhelming fury at his outie, that he’d not only let the most wonderful woman in the world slip away, but that he’d so cruelly cut her from his memories, leaving him with an emptiness that had only started to thaw when he asked a stranger on a conference room table, “who are you?”.

But then Helly sank down on him and all rage at his outie dissipated into sheer, unimaginable, ecstasy. 

“I missed you so much,” Helly gasped. 

Even though he had just seen her, had barely spent a waking moment without her ever since they first met, he missed her too. More than anything, he told her. 

It didn’t make sense, this aching inside of him, to long for her this deeply. For a split second, Mark wondered if the roaring in his chest wasn’t just his own emotions, but his outie’s too. As if the other version of himself recognised his wife, somewhere beyond severance, and was fighting with everything he had to break past the chip, and be present in this moment, with the woman who used to be his wife, too. 

—

They made no move to untangle themselves afterwards. Helly, still curled up on Mark’s lap, tucked her head under his chin, their bodies rising and falling together, as they found their breath again and came down from their respective highs. In Mark’s arms, Helly softly chuckled to herself.

“I‘m glad that was funny for you,” Mark teased, tightening his arms around her waist. 

“No, not that,” Helly said, slapping his arm. “I was just thinking we were lucky that Milchick didn’t interrupt us.”

“Oh shit,” Mark said. He’d given Milchick zero thought since the ORTBO. To be honest, he’d completely forgotten about anything and everything in his life other than Helly. Mark crashed back down to reality at the mention of their middle manager’s name, capable of rational thought again now that he knew Helly was safe.

“Hey, why were you in the break room this morning anyway?” He asked.

“Milchick said I needed space to ‘calm down’ after the ORTBO.” Helly rolled her eyes. “I didn’t need space. I just needed you.”

Mark laced his fingers with hers, heart swelling at her words. 

“I needed you too, honey.”

The physical affection, the pet names, the tenderness, it all came so easily to them now. Mark planted a quick peck to her lips—no hesitation or urgency with this kiss, just a natural, simple expression of his love for her. 

“Hey, do you ever wonder why we’re both here?” Helly asked. “Like, if we have all that history together on the outside, why did Lumon put us in the same department? Do our outies even know they work with each other?”

“I think about that all the time,” Mark admitted. “But I have no answers. I can barely comprehend the fact that there’s a version of me out there that’s fucked this up before. I would rather die than let you go.”

Helly visibly softened, her cheeks tinging pink at this bold declaration. “Come on, Mark. You really think you fucked up? I’m telling you, even if it wasn’t her family’s cruelty that ended it, Helena would have had something to do with the divorce. She could have worked too many hours or something.”

“Or maybe I worked too many hours,” Mark countered. “Or I was a deadbeat husband who didn’t wash the dishes and left the toilet seat up all the time. Or maybe you wanted kids and I didn’t. It could have just as easily been my fault.”

“You think you don’t want kids out there?”

Mark looked at her and knew straight away that no, that wasn’t it. The idea of having a baby with Helly stirred feelings deep inside of him, but not fear or resistance. It felt like desire. It felt like hope, yearning, sadness, a hundred other emotions, and above all, love, all coalesced into one messy whole.

“Maybe it wasn’t kids then,” he admitted. 

“We need to stop fighting to take the blame. It’s not doing us any good,” she said. 

“Okay,” Mark said. He smiled, sensing a new game to play. “Yeah, now that I think about it, you’re right. It probably was your outie’s fault.”

“Oh yeah?” Helly’s eyes lit up—she was ready to play. 

“Yeah. I’m getting real commitment issue vibes from Helena. I don’t think she was ready for marriage.”

“No, no, you were right in the first place. I think your outie did fuck up. He probably only married her for her money. What’s a woman to do?”

“Not sleep around, that’s for certain. I think that was what did our marriage in, your outie’s string of clandestine affairs.”

“Hey, cut her some slack. Her husband was probably gay.” She leaned in to whisper into his ear. “He couldn’t satisfy her needs.”

“Oh, so you’re unsatisfied?” Mark protested. “Sure didn’t sound like it earlier.”

“Shut up,” Helly smiled, refusing to rise to the bait. 

They kissed again, slowly, indulging in this new pleasure and rejoicing at this return to their easy back and forth with each other.  

“At this rate, it was probably a mutual fuck up,” Mark said as he pulled away from her lips, putting their banter to one side and speaking with sincerity. 

“Knowing us, you’re probably right,” Helly agreed. 

“Maybe they regret it,” Mark mused. “Maybe we miss each other out there.” 

Of all their speculation, this felt the most true. 

They let the thought settle into the space between them. A quiet comfort, that perhaps there was still some hope for them yet. Not just on the Severed Floor, but on the outside too. That both versions of themselves could make it through to the other side of this horror show together. And maybe, just maybe, that house with the big windows, with car wash coupons on the kitchen table, was somewhere out there, waiting for them to come home. 

“Come on, Mark S.” Helly said, reluctantly lifting her hips off of his lap and picking up her discarded pantyhose from the floor. “As much as I would like to, we can’t stay here forever.”

“Wow, Helly R. And to think there was a time that you would have chopped your fingers off to leave.”

Helly gave him a pointed look. “Helly E. didn’t really give me much choice.”

“Hey,” Mark said, as he guided her out into the hallway with his hand on the small of her back, pressing another kiss to her cheek. “How about Helly S.?”

Helly beamed. “I think I could get used to that.”

They walked back to MDR hand in hand, a little sore, and a little tired, but content and at peace. They knew they’d been married on the outside, but for reasons still beyond them, it didn’t work out. But so what? They had each other now, on the Severed Floor. And that counted for something. 

Chapter Text

Mark stumbled into the main living space where the book reading was taking place. Fifty pairs of eyes landed on him, dumbstruck and confused. 

“Mark?” His sister, still holding a baby, stood up, eyebrows furrowed and her face full of concern.

“Where is she?” He yelled, looking back and forth between Ricken and his sister, holding the photograph in front of him. 

“Where’s HELLY?!”

--

Mark hated Ricken’s book. The You You Are was three hundred and four pages of poorly written, pseudo-psychological bullshit, which offended Mark and the former academic that he was. He was only attending Ricken’s event this evening because Devon had asked him to come, and she wouldn’t take no for an answer. 

It was just as tedious and mind-numbing as he’d expected it to be. Mark had been fighting to keep his eyes open as Ricken droned on and on, leaning back from Rebeck who was increasingly violating his personal space, when all of a sudden, he blinked and found himself standing halfway across the room. 

Disorientated and unsteady on his feet, he swayed at this abrupt change in location and physiology. A second ago, he had been half asleep. Now, his body was on high alert, on the precipice of a fight or flight response to a threat he was wholly unaware of. Mark’s muscles were taut, his heart pounded furiously behind his ribs, and the hair on his skin stood on end as unexplainable waves of fear and anxiety surged through him. 

Every single person in the room was staring at him, as if he were about to break. Or, as if he was already broken. It was his sister who broke the silence. 

“She’s not here,” she said quietly. She looked frightened. 

“What?” Mark was completely lost. He spun his head around, searching the room as if someone else could be responsible for this disturbance. “Who’s not here?”

Devon’s eyes flickered towards his hands and it was only then that Mark realised he was holding something. 

Oh fuck. 

It was a photo from his wedding day. Their wedding day. The Mark in the frame had his arms wrapped around Helena and god, she looked radiant, whilst Devon and Ricken smiled proudly next to them. He remembered so vividly how right it had felt, even though they’d only known each other for a few months, to profess his love to her in front of the people that mattered the most and vow to be there for her, till death do they part. 

The photo took Mark’s breath away and he momentarily forgot about the audience watching him. He hadn’t seen it in years. After the divorce, he’d put all the images he had of her in a box and filed that away in the basement of his new house. He’d never built up the courage to look at them again. To see the two of them together, so happy and so in love—it was too painful, to face what he had lost. 

Why was he holding this? And why couldn’t he remember where he’d got it from?

“She’s… she’s not here,” Devon said again. 

“Devon, I know she’s not here. Trust me, I fucking know that,” Mark said, becoming agitated once he realised what she was trying to tell him. Devon tended to avoid saying Helena’s name; it was a sensitive subject that invariably triggered anger, frustration, sadness, and heartbreak. Always, always heartbreak. 

“What… what’s happening?” Mark asked, distress etched into the edge of his voice. He wondered if he’d finally lost it—the depression, the grief, his drinking problem, the corporate brain surgery, all of it leading him here, to an all but inevitable mental breakdown at his sister’s house. Because why else did he have a huge gap in his memory this evening?

“Babe, why don’t you carry on with the reading?” Devon said to Ricken, in an attempt to take control of the situation. She handed Eleanor over to a friend and headed towards Mark, taking a hold of his arm once she reached him. 

“Yes, of course!” Ricken exclaimed. “All, please excuse my dear brother. It can be a turbulent journey, unlocking the you you are, as you will soon come to learn yourselves. Let me bring you back to Chapter 2, in which…”

Ricken’s voice faded away as Devon led Mark away from the party and into Eleanor’s room, sitting them down on her ridiculous race car bed. They sat in silence for a long while, Mark mesmerised by Helena’s frozen image and Devon hesitant to break the spell he was under. He stared intensely at the photo in his lap, gripping the frame so tightly in one hand his knuckles went white. With his other hand, Mark gently traced the outline of Helena’s face back and forth, a tragic effort to feel his wife’s skin under his fingertips again. 

“What was all that about then?” Devon eventually probed. 

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t remember anything.” He was unable to take his eyes away from the image. Helena was looking up at him, smiling. 

“Not even what you said?”

“I said something?”

“You asked, ‘where’s Helly?’ Kinda yelled it, actually.”

“I did?”

“Yeah.”

Mark reluctantly tore his gaze away from Helena so he could look at his sister. Tears welled in his eyes and his voice trembled as he asked her, “Am I losing it?” 

“Oh Mark,” Devon wrapped her arm around her brother and pulled him close, pressing a soft kiss to the unkept mop of hair on his head. “I don’t know. It’s been two years and you’re still hurting. I wish you would talk to me; I worry about you so much.”

“What’s there to talk about? Our marriage is over. It’s always going to hurt.”

Before Devon could respond, they were interrupted by Ricken, who slipped in through the door with Eleanor cooing in his arms. 

“What an evening, right?” he said jovially, lifting some of the heaviness in the room. He sat down on the other side of Mark. “I wrapped it up a little early, so our guests are seeing themselves out. Eleanor was worried about her uncle; she wanted to come and see how he was doing.”

Mark reached out to hold Eleanor’s tiny hand and she gripped his fingers firmly in return. He smiled a little at this. His niece had been the only person to bring him any genuine happiness since the divorce. Mark thought back to just before she’d been born, when Devon had sat him down and told him that they’d like to name their girl ‘Eleanor', after Ricken’s mother, and would that be okay with him? She’d been worried the name was too similar to ‘Helena’, but Mark had insisted it was fine. She’d only ever been ‘Helly’ to him.

“Thank you, Eleanor,” Mark said, playing along. “You don’t have to worry about your uncle. He’s just a little crazy.”

“You’re not crazy,” Ricken said. “You’re just sad.”

Mark shook his head. “Trust me, I’m going insane. I don’t remember anything from this evening. Not even shouting her name.”

“Really?” Ricken exclaimed. “How bizarre.” He contemplated this for a moment, catching up to Mark and Devon and then overtaking them as he came to a revelation. “Holy shit. Wow. Mark, that must have been your innie!”

“You think that was his innie?” Devon asked.

“I mean, yeah! Think about it, it’s the only thing that makes sense. Mark, outside you told me that my book changed your life, but let’s be real, I know you hate my book. And I also thought it was weird that you wanted to talk about your divorce. You never want to talk about it! What if there was a glitch, and your innie somehow hijacked you this evening?”

Mark considered it—Ricken might be onto something. It felt more plausible than his ‘insanity’ theory and it would explain everything. Not just his memory loss tonight, but perhaps also the unsettling events that had been unfolding around him lately. 

“You might be right,” Mark admitted. “Some weird shit has been going on.” He then opened up to Devon and Ricken about everything that had occurred with Petey, the strange man he sheltered in his basement who had later died outside of a convenience store, and his encounter with Reghabi at Ganz after hours (though he omitted the part in which the woman killed another man right in front of him). Devon and Ricken listened to all of this, stunned. 

“But guys, even if this is true, and it was my innie tonight,” Mark said. “How does he know who Helly is?”

The three of them fell silent as they dwelled on this million dollar question. The whole point of severance was that he had no idea what happened at work, and at work, he had no idea what happened on the outside. So why had his innie panicked when seeing a picture of his and Helena’s wedding day? And why had he called her Helly? Only Mark ever called her Helly. Was the chip broken in some way? Did his innie know about Helena after all? But if so, why had he freaked out? 

“Well, Helena works at Lumon, right?” Devon reasoned. “You probably know her as, like, your boss’ boss’ boss or something.”

“I don’t know, that doesn’t sound like Helly.” Mark closed his eyes and thought back to the last time he saw Helena. He remembered how her chest heaved with sobs, the tears streaking down her face. “The divorce was hard for her, too,” he acknowledged. “I don’t think she would want anything to do with me down there.”

“She might not even know,” Ricken said. “They might have actually gone ahead with it and sev—”

“Ricken!” Devon cut him off, glaring at him.

“What?” Mark asked.

The couple glared at each other for a moment, Mark trapped in a marital standoff. 

“We might as well tell him, Dev,” Ricken said sheepishly. 

Devon closed her eyes and sighed, giving in. “Look, it’s just a rumor, which is why we didn’t bring it up. We didn’t want to upset you. But, and this is according to Ricken’s contacts at the Kier Chronicle, there’s been speculation lately that Helena was going to be severed. Some sort of PR stunt.”

The idea took root and Mark’s world tilted sideways. Helena, severed? Could it be possible that he’s found her again, in another life, and had no idea? It was both terrifying and too good to be true. 

“You really think she could be severed?” he asked, hardly daring to believe it. “I don’t know if she’d go for that. She was always against the procedure.” 

“Come on, I’ve met Jame, remember?” Devon said. “I wouldn’t put it past him. It would be another fucked up way for him to control her.”

Mark winced as her words touched on the guilt he’d been carrying for the past two years. He hated himself for how he’d left Helena alone with her father. Back then, Mark had been so sure she would have moved on, had children of her own with anyone she wanted. But for some reason she still lived with her father, and it scared Mark to think of how vulnerable she was, alone on that estate. 

“Okay, let’s say that we’re right, and Helly is severed,” Mark said. “What does that mean?”

Mark heard his own voice from Petey’s tape recorder, foreign and broken, “forgive me for the harm I have caused in this world”. He saw Petey’s body crumple to the sidewalk, blood pouring from his face. The fierce look in Reghabi’s eyes when she told him that maybe his innie doesn’t love it, “maybe he dreams every day about clawing his way to the surface.” The unknown man who then confronted them, and the way his bones crunched under the weight of Reghabi’s aluminium baseball bat. And now, in his sister’s home, where he still felt the residual terror from his innie coursing through his veins. 

Amongst all this, somehow, was Helena. 

Mark turned to Devon with a look of pure dread on his face. 

“What if Helly is in danger?”

--

Ricken’s book reading was on Friday but it wasn’t until Sunday evening that Mark worked up the courage to reach out to Helena. He spent the whole weekend agonising over it, trying to convince himself that she was fine, he was overthinking things, and that he shouldn’t bother her or violate their unspoken ‘no contact’ post-divorce agreement. But his suspicion that something was wrong, that she could be in danger, gnawed away at him until he couldn’t stand it any longer. He had to know if she was okay. 

He thought that a text would be too casual, too informal, especially after all this time and for what he wanted to say. And what’s more, he ached to hear her voice. But seeking her out in person, well, he didn’t want to catch her off guard or overwhelm them both. He didn’t think he could trust himself in front of her anyway, to not succumb to his urge to fall at her feet and beg for her forgiveness and for her to come home. 

He decided to call her. 

Mark’s thumb trembled as it hovered over her name in his phone, yet to unpin her from the top of his ‘Favorites’ list. Clicking ‘call’ felt like jumping off a cliff. He fell, down, down, down, as he listened to the monotonous dial tone, an eternity passing as he waited for her to pick up. A thousand potential outcomes flickered through his head—she was overjoyed, or she was angry, or his number was blocked, or she was completely indifferent to hearing from him. It was this last scenario that he feared the most. 

The call went to voicemail and a polite machine asked him to leave a message after the tone. Mark was simultaneously crushed with disappointment and relief, and he hung up without saying anything. She was probably busy, he reasoned. She would call him back. 

--

She didn’t call.

After not hearing from her at all on Monday, he caved and called her once more on Tuesday, though again, he had no luck in getting through. It only fuelled his anxiety. On Wednesday, he decided to text her after all. Perhaps she was avoiding him because she didn’t know why he was calling. 

It took Mark hours to draft something he was happy with. He started with Hey, Helly, but this felt too familiar, too intimate. He addressed her as Helena instead, but deleted this too—she’d never been Helena to him. He settled on Hello:

Mark Scout [6:47 p.m.]: 

Hello,

I thought I’d leave a message to explain those missed calls. Some odd things have happened lately and I wanted to make sure you’re okay. Would be easier to explain over the phone, or in person—let me know if you’re around.

All my best, 

Mark. 

He was up half the night, checking and double checking his phone like a love sick teenager for a reply that never came. Mark waited until the clock ticked to a reasonable hour before messaging her again. Any apprehension he’d initially felt from the fear of contacting her for the first time since their divorce had now fallen away, overtaken by his fear for her safety. 

Mark Scout [8:04 a.m.]:

Good morning,

I hope you slept well. Have you seen my message from last night?

All my best,

Mark.

Again, there was no response. Mark tried to reason with himself, conjure up an innocent explanation for her radio silence—maybe she’d changed her number, or perhaps she was on a work trip. But deep down, he knew this wasn’t the case. 

On Friday, he sent her one final message after work. 

Mark Scout [5:34 p.m.]:

Please let me know if you’re okay. I’m worried about you.

--

After Helena didn’t reply to this message too, Mark resolved to seek her out in person, though frustratingly, this would have to wait until after the weekend. Lumon was sending him on a mandatory corporate retreat, a team building exercise for his innie and a ‘reward’ for his hard work this quarter. Mark wasn’t convinced, and with his growing distrust of Lumon, letting the corporation drag his body off to god knows where was the last thing he wanted. He entertained various excuses he could give in order to get out of it, but ultimately decided to go and play along in order to avoid arousing any suspicions. 

It was more jarring than the usual severance transition, waking up on a Sunday after sunset, in a moving car on the highway back to Kier. Despite the thick layers he didn’t remember putting on and the heat blasting from the car’s air vents, Mark was freezing, and for some reason, soaking wet. 

In the seat next to him, Milchick apologised for his discomfort and informed him that his innie, in his excitement exploring the outdoors, had accidentally slipped on a patch of black ice and fallen into a stream. He told the tale in such a rehearsed and considered manner that it unsettled Mark to his core. He didn’t buy one word of it. 

Milchick handed Mark his phone back, which he discreetly checked in the car, angling the screen away from prying eyes. He had several messages, almost all from Devon, innocent updates on Eleanor and a couple cute pictures to go with them. But nothing from Helena. 

--

It was late once Mark was dropped off at his house, exactly one week since he’d first called her. He didn’t hang around. As soon as Milchick and the Lumon chauffeur had turned the corner at the end of his road, disappearing out of sight, Mark jumped into his own car. Not even hanging around to change out of his icy damp clothes from the ORTBO, Mark sped towards the Eagan estate.

He’d only been a few times during his marriage to Helena, but he remembered the route like it was the back of his hand. It didn’t take him long to navigate the empty roads at this late hour, through Kier and then out of town, driving through snow covered fields and eventually reaching the perimeter of the Eagan estate. It was completely fenced off at all sides. Mark approached the checkpoint he and Helena used on the rare occasion they had to visit, which had two armed men guarding the post. One was older, seasoned, the other baby-faced and lighter on his feet. Mark didn’t recognise either. They stared at him as he pulled over and wound down his car window. 

“Hey,” Mark said casually. He regretted not changing out of the clothes he’d left the ORTBO in, or at least not stopping to dry his hair. He looked ridiculous. “I’m just stopping by on my way home,” he said, keeping it vague.

“Do you have an appointment?” The younger one asked. 

“Uh, yeah, sure. Ms. Eagan is expecting me.”

The guard consulted the computer in front of him. “I don’t have a record of that here, sir.”

“Oh shoot. There must have been a mistake. You mind letting me in anyway?”

“I can’t do that, sir.”

“Yeah, no, I get that, you have your job and you have to follow the rules. It’s just, and I hate to say this, but given that you’re new and all, I actually used to be married to Ms. Eagan. Helena. She’s my ex-wife. And, uh, she’s expecting me. We have some personal matters to discuss. So if you could just buzz me through, that would be great, thanks.”

The older guard pulled the other to the side, whispered in his ear, and then stepped out of the booth. He walked right up to the car window and knelt so he was level with Mark.

“I know exactly who you are, Mr. Scout,” he said sternly. “And you are not to set foot on this property—Mr. Eagan's orders.”

With that, Mark lost his patience. Every single hurdle he’d encountered in trying to track Helena down was just further confirmation to him that something was amiss, and it was making him go crazy. He needed to verify her well-being now, more than ever.  

“Okay, well, I’ve never given a shit about Jame Eagan,” Mark snapped. “So you can tell him, and his stupid orders, to get fucked. I’ll be stepping foot on his property whether he likes it or not. I need to see my wife, I need to know if she’s safe, or I swear to god, I will not be held responsible for my actions.”

The older guard rested his hand on the gun that sat in his belt.

“I strongly advise against that, Mr. Scout,” he said calmly. “You want to keep her safe? Turn around. Go home. And don’t come back.”

--

It killed Mark to leave the estate. He didn’t know if the guard was even telling the truth, but he couldn’t, wouldn’t risk it. The following morning he was torn as to whether he should go to work, all trust he’d once had in Lumon now obliterated, but realised he had no choice. If it was true, if he was severed with Helena, then he had to go. All he could do was hope that his love for her ran deeply enough to bleed through to his other self, and pray that his innie protected Helena better than he ever had. 

Although he came up out of the Severed Floor at 5:30 feeling strangely at peace, it did nothing to quell his fears. Mark remained determined to find Helena and get to the bottom of what was going on. He was heading back to the Eagan estate, strategizing as to how he could talk his way past the guards, when he drove past a fast food chain and it occurred to him. 

It was Monday. Both he and Helena hated cooking on Mondays, preferring to indulge in something easy and greasy to start the week. Towards the end of their marriage, they’d religiously ordered from Zufu, their favorite Chinese. Mark hadn’t been back since the divorce—Helena retained custody in the unofficial division of their assets. He’d got Pips. 

Could it be that she’d kept up this tradition?

He came up to an intersection and turned left instead of right, back into central Kier. His foot put more and more pressure onto the accelerator the closer he got to the restaurant, taking him above and beyond the speed limit as the miles between himself and Helena fell away.

Mark couldn’t believe his luck as he pulled into the half empty parking lot. There it was, her red Cadillac, covered in a light dusting of snow that glistened beneath a glowing street light. Just the sight of her car alone was enough to take his breath away.

Finally. He’d found her. 

He didn’t register getting out of his car, drifting towards the bright red dragons at the front of the  restaurant. Mark’s body operated on autopilot, reminiscent of the night he saw her for the first time, surrendering to the magnetic pull of his wife who was, after all this time, so, so close. He pushed the front door open and— 

Time stopped. 

Waitresses weaved through the place, juggling plates and shouting orders, laughter spilled from tables as friends dug into their meals together, children screamed for their parents. And in the center of it all, was her. 

She was hunched over next to the front counter, head bowed, nervously picking her fingernails, an air of melancholy clinging to her shadow. Suspended in silence, chaos danced around her, and she was like a Renaissance painting, the most beautiful sight Mark had ever seen. 

Helena turned around and what little color she had in her face vanished as soon as she set her eyes on him. 

“Hi.”

Chapter Text

“Hi,” Mark said. The word almost caught in his throat—he was so overwhelmed by the enormity of this moment, he found it nearly impossible to speak. 

Helena didn’t reply. Her expression was one of sheer disbelief, all color gone from her face. She stared at him as if he wasn’t real, as if he were a ghost of someone buried a long time ago. 

“Uh, it’s me,” Mark spoke again, just to break the silence that had settled between them. He cringed at how stupid he sounded. Of course she fucking knew who he was. 

“Hi,” Helena said, so quietly the word was almost inaudible, but Mark heard her all the same. The sound of her voice sank into his soul and something inside of him broke. The urgency that had driven him here slipped away as Mark became paralysed with love and with grief. He held her gaze for a long, long moment, unable to move or speak, not with their marriage and everything that came after it hanging heavy and unresolved in the air between them. 

Mark had dreamed of this moment innumerable times over the past two years. Knowing she was out there, somewhere, and that their paths could perhaps cross again—this fantasy had been the only lifeline that had kept him going in his darkest of moments. And though he was not a religious or spiritual man, on the nights when the drink hadn’t been enough to numb his anguish, he’d found himself with his knees on the ground and hands clasped together, pleading to a god he didn’t believe in to please, let me see her, just one more time. 

Now, his prayers had been answered. But after years of longing for this moment, rehearsing over and over again in his head everything he wanted to tell her, Mark found himself in a state of shock. After what felt like an entire lifetime, but couldn’t have been longer than thirty seconds, Helena was the first to speak again. 

“What are you doing here?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper. 

Mark took a deep breath and internally reassured himself that it was okay, he could do this. He could have a conversation with the woman who had once been his wife without dissolving into a complete emotional wreck. All he had to do was set aside the fear that had been simmering beneath his skin for the past week, and the heartbreak that had destroyed him for the past two years, and focus on her, right here, right now, one small step at a time. 

“Um, hoping to run into you, actually,” he said, answering her question honestly. 

“Oh.” Helena blinked. It seemed she didn’t know what to say to that. 

There was another moment of silence. God, Mark hated how stilted this was. Back in the day, he and Helena had moved through the world seamlessly as one, able to do anything as long as they did it together. Life with her had been so effortless. But now, even a basic conversation between them felt impossible. It was like they were two baby deer, learning how to walk for the first time. 

“Yeah,” Mark said, trying to find his feet. “Because you didn’t answer any of my calls. Or texts.”

Helena frowned. “What are you talking about?” 

“I’ve been trying to get in touch.” Mark pulled his phone out of his pocket and lamely waved it in front of her. 

Helena reached into her purse for hers and Mark was unprepared for the ache that came when he saw her worn leather phone case that he knew all too well. It still carried the scuff marks from where she’d dropped it on their bathroom floor, and familiar white dots were scattered across the cover. Anyone else would have thought it was part of the design, but Mark knew better—they were specks of paint that had come from when she’d get carried away in her studio. After all this time, some things hadn’t changed. 

“That’s strange,” Helena said, as she searched through her call log and inbox for missed messages from Mark. “There’s nothing here from you.”

Mark relaxed, just a little, upon learning that she hadn’t been avoiding him after all, and their mutual, initial shock at seeing each other for the first time began to subside. It was easier to anchor themselves with the mystery of Mark’s missed calls, a harmless subject to circle around instead of the elephant in the corner of the room.

“Did you change your number?”

“No, it’s still the same. Why, is everything okay?”

“That’s kind of what I wanted to ask you.”

“Oh.” Helena blushed. “Well, I am. Okay, that is.”

She didn’t look it. Though it had been an immense relief to finally find her, seeing her in person did little to quell Mark’s fears. She looked so different from the woman in his memories. Her skin was paper white, lips tinged blue, and dark shadows hung heavy underneath her eyes. He could see that she’d lost a fair amount of weight, which scared him because she hadn’t any to lose in the first place. And was it him, or was she shorter than he remembered? In his memories, Helena was larger than life. But here, standing in front of him, she looked so small. How could he not recall how tall his own wife was?

“Ma’am, your food.” A waiter interrupted them and handed Helena a small plastic bag. She thanked him quietly and turned back to Mark, shifting awkwardly on her feet. 

“Well, that’s me—”

“Do you want to sit?”

Twin smiles flashed on their faces after they spoke at the same time. Helena relaxed at Mark’s invitation, and some of the tension she was carrying in her shoulders visibly rolled away. 

“Sure,” she quickly agreed. She then turned back to the waiter. “I’ll be eating in after all. Oh, and could we also get the kung pao chicken with broccoli, egg fried rice and some soup dumplings on the side? Thank you.” Warmth bloomed in Mark’s chest as Helena ordered his usual. She still knew him. 

They headed to a private booth secluded in the back, away from the chaos of the rest of the restaurant. Without thinking, Mark reached out to touch the small of Helena’s back to guide her the way he used to. He was millimeters from grazing her coat but managed to stop himself just in time. His fingers curled into fists and he forced his hands to his sides, a reminder that no, this wasn’t a date. He couldn’t touch her. She wasn’t his wife anymore. 

“So, you haven’t got bored of Zufu yet?” Mark asked, making conversation as they settled into leather seats opposite one another. 

“Guess not,” Helena said with a shrug. “I like coming here. It’s nice. Makes me feel…normal.”

Mark could only nod—he understood exactly what she meant. They may have been apart for two years, but he still knew her, too. 

Helena reached into the plastic bag and pulled out the only item it contained, a tupperware which held four small vegetable spring rolls. She delicately portioned them evenly onto two plates and placidly slid one over to Mark.

“Oh no, they forgot your chow mein,” Mark said. It was her favorite, he’d never known her to order anything else from Zufu. “Let me go and get it for you.”

Mark stood up and was halfway out of the booth when Helena lifted her hand, gesturing for him to stop. “Thank you, but it’s okay. This is all I ordered”. 

“Oh,” Mark said, sitting back down. “You were gonna eat this with something else at home?”

Helena shifted in her seat and looked away from him. “No.”

Mark stared at the spring rolls on their plates. Even if she’d eaten all four, it would have barely constituted a snack. “But this isn’t enough Hel—Helena.” 

He’d almost called her Helly. The nickname had been on the tip of his tongue, but just as it was on the precipice of falling from his lips, he’d caught himself, unsure whether she’d even want to hear this old endearment again. But when Helena winced at the sound of her full name, Mark knew he’d got it wrong. 

“Yeah, well, I’m not really that hungry.”

“Are you sure you’re okay? You’re not sick?” 

“I’m sure,” she said, though she twisted her fingers together in her lap, an anxious tic of hers, and her chin trembled, ever so slightly. It was a microscopic movement, the tiniest quiver beneath her skin, but Mark picked up on it all the same. 

It was then that the waiter brought the rest of their food over, setting down three huge plates between them. Mark’s mouth watered at the crispy, golden-brown chicken and steaming egg fried rice, which filled the air between them with enticing aromas. For the first time in a long time, food looked appetizing to him, and Mark realised he was starving. 

Despite his own hunger, he dragged Helena’s plate towards him and pushed generous portions of his own order onto it. Her two spring rolls disappeared beneath heaps of chicken and broccoli, and rice overflowed onto the table. 

“Oh, stop, you don’t have to, really,” Helena weakly protested, as Mark put more food onto her plate. 

“Go on, humor me,” Mark insisted. “Never used to stop you before.”

Helena couldn’t help but smile at this. In another life, she’d constantly picked from Mark’s plate, much to his faux outrage at the time. Naturally slipping back into this old habit, even if just for an evening, was a familiar comfort to the both of them. 

The couple started to eat. Helena began with small, tentative bites, but it wasn’t long before she was digging in with enthusiasm. “Mmh. This is so good,” she murmured under her breath, now taking larger mouthfuls, devouring the food. It was so satisfying to Mark, to watch her not only eat, but enjoy it too. Deep down, he knew she needed this just as much as he did. 

Whilst Helena flawlessly picked up a stem of broccoli with her chopsticks, Mark clumsily used his fingers to push rice onto his own. Helena paused and raised an eyebrow at him, amusement sparkling in her eyes. 

“You always were so sophisticated.”

“You know me. I’m a very sophisticated man.”

Helena sniggered and Mark grinned. God, it felt so good to smile. 

They kept eating, stealing glances at one another in-between bites. Silence descended again, though this time it was comfortable, rather than that awkward stiltedness from their first interaction earlier. Mark was in no rush to ambush her with questions, not about severance, or if she was okay, or how his innie had known her name. None of that mattered in this moment. Right now, in front of him, she was safe. And Mark savoured every second of it. 

“So, uh, how have you been?” Helena asked.

Mark looked at her, debating how honestly he should answer her question. ‘Really fucking depressed, thanks’, would have been the truth. ‘Pretty sure I’ve permanently damaged my liver’ and ‘most nights I go to sleep and hope that I don’t wake up,’ if she wanted more detail. 

“Getting on, I guess.” Mark ended up shrugging. “Oh, Devon had just had a baby, a little girl,” he said, figuring his niece was probably a safer topic of conversation than the depression or alcoholism that had dominated his life since he last saw her. 

“Really?” Helena’s eyes lit up. “I didn’t know that.”

“Yeah, she’s a couple of weeks old. Very, very cute. Got us all wrapped around her tiny fingers. She’s called Eleanor.”

“Eleanor?” Helena smiled. “That’s a good name.”

“Ha, yeah. It’s beautiful.”

Helena blushed. “Well, tell Devon congratulations from me. She and Ricken are going to make wonderful parents.”

“Thanks, I will. And yeah, Dev’s already taken motherhood by storm. Ricken on the other hand… well, he’s getting there.”

Helena laughed. “Yeah, I bet. I can only imagine what he was like when Devon was in labor.”

“Oh my god, you should have seen him! You’d have thought he was the one giving birth. I actually almost missed the whole thing because I was at work, but luckily got there in time.”

“That’s such a relief, what with the journey you had to make and all. I’m glad.” 

This comment struck Mark as odd, but wanting to enjoy this normalcy between them for a little longer, he let it pass. “Yeah, me too,” he said. “Anyway, how about you, though? Still swimming and painting?”

“I don’t swim so much anymore,” Helena said, shuffling in her seat and looking away from Mark. “But I still make time for art.”

“Okay, that’s good,” Mark said, nodding. “What have you made lately?”

“So, you really came all the way out to Kier tonight to check in on me?” Helena asked, avoiding Mark’s question. “And why Zufu and not the estate?”

Mark didn’t push her, guessing she must have been done with the small talk and ready to know the real reason he was here. 

“I did come by the estate the other day, but the staff wouldn’t let me in,” he told her. “Caused a bit of a scene actually, surprised you didn’t hear about it.”

“Oh…” Helena said, taking this in. “I’m beginning to suspect that the reason why I didn’t hear about your house visit is the same reason I never received your calls.”

Two years had passed, yet Jame’s presence still haunted them just as strongly as it had during their marriage. 

“Yeah, which makes me all the more worried about you.”

“What’s going on, Mark?”

“I don’t know, it’s hard to explain. Some really weird things have been happening lately.”

“Like what?”

“Well, I was at Dev’s for Ricken’s book launch. It was a whole thing, he invited half of Kier. I didn’t want to go. It’s a really shit book.” 

Helena smiled at that. “You never did appreciate alternative literature.”

“Yeah, there’s alternative literature and then there’s…Ricken. I still can’t believe you used to go to his book club. Are you sure he didn’t make you go to that under duress?”

“Hey now, we had a lot of fun at Shelf Indulgence. You really missed out.”

“Sorry,” he said. “I had to prioritize my intelligence and sanity, for the sake of my profession if nothing else.”

“Wow. So what was it about Ricken’s new book that traumatised you so much?”

“It wasn’t his book. I’m… I’m missing a huge chunk of my memory from that evening. It was like I’d blacked out, but somehow worse than that. Dev was pretty scared. Hell, I was scared too.”

“Mark,” Helena said, processing the news. Her hands slid forward on the table, half reaching out to him. “That’s… very concerning. What did your doctor say?”

Mark shook his head. “I haven’t been to the doctors.”

“Don’t be stupid!” she immediately exclaimed. “You need to see someone, right away. God, what if it’s a tumor, or a stroke, what if you’re sick—”

“No, no, no, don’t worry, I’m not sick. At least, I’m pretty sure I’m not,” Mark tried to reassure her. “No, I spoke with Dev and Ricken afterwards, and, well, we think it was my innie.”

Helena paled. “Your innie?”

“Well, yeah,” Mark said, as if this were obvious. “We talked about it, and it makes sense.”

“You’re… severed?”

“You didn’t know?”

“No… I didn’t realise we’d rolled the procedure out to independent institutions. Our current policy is that only Lumon-afflilated organisations can offer severance to their employees. But we haven’t even implemented it at Myrtle yet, you know, the girls school, so for an academic at an out of town community college, sorry, I’m just confused—”

“Helena, what are you talking about? I work at Lumon.”

“What?” 

“Yeah. On the Severed Floor—you really didn’t know?”

Helena shook her head, looking at Mark with an incredulous expression on her face. “You’re not a history professor anymore?”

“Not for a long time.”

“And you still live in Kier?”

“Never left.”

“And you… you’re not…” But Helena’s sentence trailed off and her voice died in her throat. 

“It was about two years ago,” Mark said, stepping in. “Just after… well, you know. I got an offer to work in the corporate archives division. Got severed because of the sensitive material I’m apparently handling.”

“But there is no corporate archives division. At least, not to my knowledge.”

“There’s not?”

“No.”

“See, and that’s weird. You’re Helena Eagan, heir to the entire empire. You should know either that there is a corporate archives division, or if there isn’t, why Lumon is lying to me and telling me that there is. Jeez, you should know that I work for you in the first place.”

Helena was speechless.

“There’s just so much shady shit happening lately, which is why it was important for me to see you,” Mark continued. “Because the other night, when I blacked out…”

“What?”

“Well…apparently my innie knows who you are,” Mark said “He saw a picture of the two of us, from our wedding day, and he freaked out, wanted to know where you were. He even called you Helly. Which is why I’ve been so worried about you. I figured there must be a reason why my innie had such a visceral reaction to seeing you, and I wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

“I… I…”

“Helena, what’s going on?”

“When did you say this happened?”

“Not last Friday, but the Friday before.”

Mark watched as Helena calculated the dates in her head and he saw the moment she had a sudden flash of realization, though of what, he had absolutely no idea. Panic immediately followed, and it spread like wildfire across her face. She stared at Mark, horrified with whatever conclusion she’d come to. 

“I have to go,” she whispered. 

“Wait, please,” Mark said, but Helena was already on her feet and out of the booth. “Helena, wait,” he called, following her through the restaurant, hand reaching out to her but never close enough to touch her. 

She was fast. 

Within seconds they were outside, snow falling thick and heavy around them and blanketing their surroundings in a crisp white sheet. Helena glowed beneath the dim orange street light as she fumbled through her purse, searching for her car keys. 

“What’s going on?” Mark pleaded desperately, not feeling the wet snowflakes that melted on his jacket or the biting chill in the air. “Are you severed too?”

Helena’s fingers finally closed around the keys and she unlocked her car door. “I’m really sorry, but I have to go,” she said, sliding into the driver’s seat. 

“No, Helena, please,” Mark begged, but it was no use. She shut the door with a quiet thud, leaving him alone on the outside. 

“Do we know each other down there?” Mark said, raising his voice so she could hear him. He pressed his palm against the cold glass of her window, trying to stay close to her, or as if he could somehow stop her from driving away with his touch. “Have we been together this entire time?”

Helena’s eyes met his, scared and uncertain. “I don’t know, Mark! I don’t know. But I’m going to find out.”

And with that, the engine roared to life, headlights slicing through the heavy snowfall and illuminating the dark parking lot. Helena shifted the car into gear and pulled out of her spot, and then onto the main road, not once looking back at him. Mark's chest tightened and tears welled in the corner of his eyes. There was nothing he could do but watch the person he loved most in the world leave him. 

Again. 

He’d imagined this evening going any one of a hundred ways, but not once had he pictured it ending like this. Now, he had far more questions than he did answers, but one thing was unmistakable—something was definitely wrong, unfolding behind the scenes. And whatever it was, it felt dangerous. Though Mark was still in the dark as to what it could be, he had no doubts that Jame was the one behind it all. And the fact that Helena had been just as clueless as him only exacerbated his fear for her. He was more scared for her safety now than ever. 

But what could he do?

Hands trembling, Mark reached into his pocket and pulled out the second phone he was carrying, one which used to belong to a stranger. He dialled the only number it contained and raised it to his ear as the line began to ring.

“Is this Reghabi? Yeah, it’s me. I want to do it. I want to reintegrate.”