Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"Mark!"

He had vividly recalled how Helly's voice echoed from the hall in which his back was facing. Her voice: just as he remembered. Crimson; the flashing blood from the corpse of memory, illuminated the halls, flashing from white to red, then back again.

Mark was trying his hardest; finding the willpower to not turn around, because to do that would be to give in. He would have to face her and the look in her eyes. Why did she have to arrive now? Why not later: when he was shielded by his lack of consciousness? When Helly could see his outie embracing his wife? Would his outie Mark be embracing his wife? He also vividly recalled the conversation in the cabin. Ms. Cobel, standing there. His (outie's?) sister, standing there.

He saw the look in his outie's eyes, even through the pixelated screen of that crappy camera. Mark S. recognised it in his own look at Helly R. And, despite the need to turn around, Mark needed his wife. Perhaps his outie would understand when they 'reintegrated' that he loved her too -- united in soul. If that was even true. Damn it, Mark would have rather been stuck beneath the pale fluorescent lighting of MDR for another month, unknowing of the familiar stranger that pounded against the door's window in front of him. That would've given him time; numbers could be scary, yes, but love seemed far, far worse.

Helly had called for Mark S. Not the Mark who would meet Gemma at the other end of that door. Even if reintegration was a hoax, perhaps a part of him would be carried within his outie. That idea, whereby he was silently begging for, rang throughout his mind as he took a few steps towards the door. Helly would understand; if she hid, and hid well, he'd come back for her. Mark Scout would understand when he switched. He'd feel the same burning ache in the bottom of his chest, and he'd know -- he has to know -- that he'll come for Helly. Please. Mark's wife, Gemma: she had nice eyes. She longed for her husband, too.

God, Mark Scout better be telling the truth.

The door opened. The severed man did not face what lay behind him as he lunged through the door frame, willing it to go away; willing to someday come back.

Mark Scout met his wife on the other side of that boundary.

"Mark!"

Gemma embraced him. Half-weeping, they held one another -- his innie had done it.

Alas, something must've changed, for he found himself drained of something: what, he did not know. He ignored it for the most part.

However, as the warmth attempted with its hardest efforts to fill this odd void left behind after the switch, he spared a glance to the door's window. Helena Eagan: this was the woman Mark S. had spoken of, demanded to stay with. She stood there, her face not one of envy or malice. She didn't look cruel. Helly. She merely watched, smiling, staring. And it was certainly odd, Mark found, still deep within the feeling of love to his wife, that he felt pity for the woman. That, and this weird, burning ache.

Can love transcend severance? He had believed so in search of Gemma, but did the pendulum truly swing both ways?

For now, Mark showed not a slither of care. He turned to Gemma. His wife. Thank God. For a long, aching moment, they finally revelled in their reunion. Two years had passed; two years following the police's words and that damned last conversation. Gemma was alive, and in his arms. Soon enough (and the result that Mark secretly hoped for, as he partly loathed the strange feeling in his chest), Helly simply turned the corner. If he remembered well enough, he might have even noticed how she wiped her eye down, and whispered something too distant to hear. He turned back to Gemma. And yet, the next course of action protruded through his thoughts faster than he'd hoped.

The action in question: escape.

Chapter Text

The stairs seemed longer than the last time Mark had found himself travelling down them. It must have been on the first day following the severance procedure.
Mr. Milchick would reassure him, "This is simply the usual experience of newly severed workers. Try walking through again."
It only happened once. Even now, moving down a narrow stairwell, Mark wondered if that was the only taste of freedom his innie had felt in that year: only a taste of the breeze of an entire world, unbeknownst to the empty halls of whatever office he'd been assigned to. He hadn't even known. Mark walked home as he would any other day. He'd fucked up, inserting that thing into his own mind. It only took him a few months to give up the denial-ridden search for his wife and, in turn, sign up for the chip. He'd written 'widowed' in his form.

Oddly, the numbness that forgetting bought, even if it meant the mere use of half his days, was kinder than that of the blunt truth that plagued his conscious moments. There seemed more steps, though perhaps that was just due to Gemma standing next to him. The value of that time had not be understated, as time slowed as they made their way down. Time hadn't been slow like this since, well, before.

Would Devon still be waiting? They'd have to make it across the parking lot, through the main building... they were practically screwed.

Still, they walked. Because perhaps, to spend this time here, for even just a minute longer, would make up for the two years of loss. It didn't, but it made good progress. Silence came as a comfortable one. Luckily enough, the blaring alarms within Lumon's building seemed constrained to the inside of those hollow halls. Therefore, accompanied by the muffled anxiety that came with every twitch of his grip as he held Gemma's hand, the walk downstairs was almost peaceful. She helped, and she always had, had he cared to know in those days previous.

The end of the stairwell had arrived.

”Fuck. I love you,” Mark paused, “I, uh, should’ve been the first to say it that day.”

Gemma smiled — he’d missed that. There was something about half-ripped paper that couldn’t replicate the smile lines and affection. “I love you too. God, Mark, when do we plan to get out of here?”

Mark laughed. Then, suddenly, the door to the exit lurched forward. Devon stood there.

”Oh, thank fuck!” She exclaimed. “We thought you’d been killed or something…”

Her visible sigh of relief only became more apparent as she saw Gemma.

”You’re going to be telling us everything when we get back. Okay?”

“Okay.”

There was not a soul to stand at the exit to the Lumon building. It was… odd: odd that such silence was present during an escape. The woods, yonder from the industrial box of a workplace, were whistling gently beneath the push of the wind. Suddenly, the real magnitude of their actions caught up with them, and they made their way straight out of the door without restraint.

Fresh air hit Gemma hard. This air did not smell of the poignance of documents and cleaning products. It was clean.

”Are you ready?” Mark asked gently, glancing at his wife.

Gemma smiled — not Ms. Casey, or another member of her plethora of innies, but Gemma Scout.

”Yes. I’m ready to leave.”

Devon’s car still looked the same as Gemma had last left it, spare a few trinkets and a baby’s sling in the very back.

She stared at it, and Devon met her gaze.

”Her name’s Eleanor.” Devon said, the excited glimmer in her eyes present as ever.

”My God. Can I, well…”

”Yes: you can meet her.” She grinned.

They drove. There was no delay in their departure. Lumon was left behind, the alarms distant now.

Chapter Text

“No—!” Jame Eagan screamed in the solitude of the monitoring room, his face illuminated only by the damned view he’d been infuriated to watch.

All he could do was watch.

As a man took his wife home; as he reached out a bloodied hand to her; as the entirety of two years of experimenting for a new procedure was lost. His legacy was crumbling as his eyes stared at the empty Cold Harbour experimentation room.

”Fuck you!” His raspy voice cursed.

He slammed his hand down on the table with a heavy thud, and the computer quivered.

On another monitor, he watched the green CCTV footage of Helly R., bargaining with Mark. This was what he meant when he told her she had Eagan’s spirit. This was what the lineage would require. At the very least, they could use Mark. If Jame Eagan could do nothing else, he could continue the line of Lumon’s industry, with the innie of his daughter.

Alas, she let him go. She did not struggle against Mark’s decision, or pull him back into the depths of the fiery pit of Lumon. No: she let him go.

Two versions of his daughter, and yet neither had Kier within them. What a waste of two consciousnesses.

He stood up. The red lights were flickering outside his room.

“Let not weakness live in your veins.”

He would not, in fact. For his mother and grandfather, and Kier himself had done the same. He would find Mark and his wife. And he would make sure the legacy is maintained. For that is to the surname he is indebted to.

How far would the memory of those he did not remember run through his veins? What was preserving legacy, if not simply the ongoing attempt to live through long-dead flesh; to taste through a rotten tongue, and breathe through disintegrated lungs?