Chapter Text
It was almost midnight and Mark Scout was sat in his front room, illuminated by harsh light emitting from his old television set. It was flashing a dancing graphic of the Kier Public News mascot, which was thanking him for tuning in and letting him know that regular programming would resume at 7 am. His eyes were glazed over, fixed on this vapid animation with a vacant expression on his face. Condensation dripped down the neck of the bottle he’d been nursing, pooling in the limp grip of his hand as the last warm dregs of alcohol settled in his stomach. The air was heavy with his loneliness.
Mark gave no thought to moving, to getting up off of the couch and going to bed. He didn’t give much thought to anything at all, these days. If he dwelled on his situation for too long—this new, post-Lumon reality he found himself in—he’d be forced to reckon with the truth that it was his own choices that had led him to where he was tonight. So instead, he drank. And tried to forget.
It was getting harder and harder lately, though. To not think about the events that had unfolded, his broken reintegration, the people he’d loved and lost, to not think about her. Repressing his emotions, denial in general, was a game Mark knew all too well how to play, though somewhere along the way the rules had changed and no one had had the courtesy to let him know. He thought he knew grief, but the kind he was experiencing recently was entirely foreign to him, and he was at a loss with how to handle it.
He was mulling this over when, without warning, he was interrupted by three almighty bangs, one, two, three. His front door shook and the sound reverberated throughout his house, piercing the silence of the night.
Mark threw his head back against his couch and sighed, squeezing his eyes shut in frustration. It was probably another journalist. They’d been stalking and harassing him for weeks, all desperate to finally be the one to break Mark Scout and quote him in their thinkpiece on the upcoming anniversary of the so-called “innie rebellion” and the ongoing federal investigation into Lumon.
They could get fucked then.
Mark really didn’t feel like unpacking the ethics of “innie rights”, or how he felt about how Jame Eagan was still a free man, pulling the strings of his empire from atop a throne built by broken minds. And he really didn’t want to answer any questions as to why his beloved wife, who he so valiantly rescued, was now living with her parents on the other side of the country.
Yeah, Mark really didn’t feel like talking.
He sank deeper into the couch, hoping whoever it was would give up and leave him alone. But, like with everything else in his life it seemed, he was out of luck. The banging resumed and got louder and louder, the stranger’s fists raining down on his front door like thunder rolling in from the sea. It was incessant, continuous. Violent.
Relenting, Mark pulled himself to his feet to go tell whoever it was to fuck off in person. His hand twisted around the cold handle and he threw the door wide open.
“Look, whatever it is, I’m not—”
Mark froze in his tracks, jaw dropping open mid-sentence. This was no journalist.
She was wearing a chequered gray coat over tight black jeans and her red hair hung loose, tucked under a dark green beanie. Her face lit up at the sight of him and Mark hated her for it, for she was quite possibly the last person in the entire world he wanted to see right now. He blinked once, twice, and then slammed the door shut in her face.
Only, she was too quick for him. Of course she was. Her hands flew up to catch the wall of wood that barreled towards her and she stopped it in its tracks before the lock could catch and click shut.
“Hey!” she exclaimed, pushing it back open so they could see one another clearly. Mark let her, caught off guard by her strength.
“Go away, Helena,” he groaned.
“Try again.”
Mark’s eyes widened. Surely not? He took a closer look, letting his gaze linger a little longer. Yes, there was something off about her. He knew what Helena looked like, he had seen her before—her hand in his, walking away from the Severed Floor for the final time; that brief moment at court when their paths had crossed on the day they’d given their witness testimonies; on the news alerts for her name he’d set up on his phone (which he swore were for informational purposes only); and there was that one time at Zufu, where she’d unnerved him for reasons he still couldn’t admit to himself.
And every night, he saw her in his dreams.
On his doorstep, she differed from all these other versions of her he’s come to know, a new layer painted onto the wild and vibrant canvas that was Helena Eagan. Her hair, which was always styled to perfection in neatly arranged curls, hung flat and limp on her shoulders, unkept and slightly frizzy. In the absence of her usual foundation and blush, her pale face glowed under the moonlight, and yet she had never looked more alive. And she wasn’t wearing one of her typical sharp, designer outfits. A green beanie? This wasn’t Helena.
“Helly?”
“Bingo,” she grinned at him.
“Oh, okay.”
She looked at him expectantly, like she was waiting for something—for what, he couldn’t tell. A flash of recognition? A hug and a “wow, Helly, it’s so good to finally meet you”? Whatever she wanted, he couldn’t give it to her. No. Not tonight. Helly, the Helly, turning up to his house unannounced, it was an earthquake that rocked his already unsteady foundations and unsettled Mark to his core. He dealt with this situation the only way he knew how.
“Go away, Helly,” he said dryly.
“Wow,” she said, slightly taken aback. “Mark undersold it when he said you were a dick. You’re not even a little bit curious to meet me?”
Mark shook his head and stood up straight, as if he could erect a barrier with his chest and stop Helly from burrowing her way even further into his subconsciousness than she already was.
“Not at all.”
“You don’t want to know why I’m here?”
“Nope.”
“I’m here to save my Mark.”
“Great. Didn’t ask.”
Helly’s initial excitement waned and her face clouded over with irritation. She cocked her head and stepped forward, her toes now brushing the threshold of his home. “Well, I’m not leaving here without him.”
“And how are you going to do that?”
“I don’t know. I’ll figure it out.”
“Wow. You’re so smart.”
“What’s your problem? Why are you so angry with me?”
“I’m not angry with you,” he lied.
Because that was it, wasn’t it? He was angry at her. But he couldn’t tell her that. How could he, when he could barely even acknowledge the truth of it to himself?
That every time he closed his eyes, he saw her. Teasing him, playfully throwing scraps of paper over felt green desk dividers. He felt her fingers interlaced with his as they were walking—no, running—through endless white hallways. And there she was again, saturated in pink, in orange, in blue, you’re easy to pretend to care about, I care who you are with me, I’m nervous, me too.
Or how he would see her in the corner of his eye while he was grocery shopping, or waiting at a red light, or doing literally anything, anytime, at any place. And he didn’t really know what to do with the sharp drop in his stomach when he turned to look at her and it was someone else instead.
And he certainly couldn’t tell her how he sighed her name the last time he came inside of his wife. How she packed her bags with his come still warm on her inner thighs. That it was Helly’s fault that Gemma was gone.
So, yes, he was angry with her. He just couldn’t tell her that.
“I’m not angry,” he repeated. “I just don’t know you.”
“Okay! So, let me in then,” she urged, her eyes lit up in desperation. “Get to know me.” Helly took her hands off of the door and pressed her palms into her chest in her plea for Mark to listen to her.
He seized the opportunity. “No.”
Mark slammed the door shut in her face, successfully, this time. Helly immediately started slamming her fists against it again, with a ferocity that had been absent from the first time.
“Hey!” she yelled. “I was talking to you!”
“I’m done talking!” he yelled right back.
She carried on shouting at him but her words were muffled behind the wood. Mark sighed and rubbed his hand over his face, letting her cries wash over him in waves. He was too fucking tired for this.
It was not as if she could keep this up forever, he thought. Surely Helly would grow bored and tired of standing outside in the freezing cold at this late hour, trying to get through to him, and she would leave eventually. All he had to do was ignore her and go to bed.
With that, Mark turned his back to the havoc she was wreaking on his front porch and marched upstairs. She was banging on his front door when he slipped his t-shirt and sweatpants off, still yelling when he brushed his teeth and washed his face, and going strong when he crawled into bed in his boxers.
He just had to wait her out.
Mark closed his eyes and willed sleep to come. Not that he'd been sleeping well this year anyway, even without the commotion Helly was causing downstairs.
She kept at it for much longer than he anticipated, Mark was almost impressed. At least he didn’t have any neighbours anymore. The rest of the street, Lumon employees like himself, had either quit or been made redundant after the innie rebellion. He’d only stayed because he’d had nowhere else to go. And Mrs Selvig, or Cobel, or whoever the fuck, was a distant memory at this point, her house sitting empty next to his.
It had almost been an hour of Helly banging and kicking at his front door, shouting expletives, when she finally, finally stopped. Thank god. Mark revelled in the silence, relieved that she was gone. Because he really did not want to think about her anymore than he already did, nor contemplate the reasons why he couldn’t stop thinking about her in the first place. Mark’s thoughts spiralled during this period of respite, which was brief, of course, lasting all of thirty seconds until a tremendous, ear-splitting crash erupted from his front room.
Surely she hadn’t?
Mark jumped out of bed and flew downstairs, towards the scene of the crime.
Literally.
The temperature in his front room plummeted as cold air cascaded inside through the broken window. His heavy metal shovel, which typically lived on his driveway to deal with the snow, now lay innocuously on the rug in the center of the room. Helly, who had hurled it through his window, stood outside stunned. Like she couldn’t quite believe what she had done, as if she was an innocent bystander to this scene and not the sole perpetrator.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Mark shouted, his voice snapping Helly out of her daze.
“I told you! I’m not leaving here without Mark!”
“I am Mark! And I was perfectly fine until you showed up and started trashing the place!”
“Well, I want my Mark!”
Not taking no for an answer, Helly proceeded with her seemingly impossible mission to rescue Mark S from Mark Scout. She took off her gray coat, revealing a thin white tank top underneath, and placed it over the windowsill, using the thick material to shield herself from the broken glass. She threw one leg over the side and started climbing into Mark’s house.
“Stop, you’re going to hurt yourself,” Mark scolded. Before he knew it, he’d crossed the room to help her. It was pure instinct to reach out to her, to place one hand on her waist to steady her, and grasp her own hand with his other, to support her weight. He carefully guided Helly through the broken window, protecting her from the jagged glass lining the edge of the frame and ensuring she didn’t step onto any of the shards on the floor.
She leaned into him and Mark tried to ignore the smell of her shampoo as her hair tickled his nose, and the warmth of her soft skin where his fingertips accidentally brushed the sliver of exposed skin at her waist, just below her white tank top (which was doing absolutely nothing, by the way, to hide her body and the effects of the cold weather underneath it). With Helly in his arms, Mark’s heart raced, stomach flipping into somersaults. It was definitely because a stranger was breaking into his home, he told himself. Not for any other reason.
“This is trespassing, by the way,” he said, as he helped her climb into his house. “I’m calling the police.”
“Do it,” she challenged. “I’ll tell them you kidnapped me.”
Mark was momentarily speechless. Had Helly not spent her entire life on the Severed Floor up until now? Where the fuck did she get this audacity from? He ripped his hands off of her as if he’d been burned, not trusting himself to touch her for a moment longer, and took several steps back, putting much needed distance between them.
“What the hell is wrong with you?”
“What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with you!”
“Nothing is wrong with me! I’m trying to move on with my life. Jeez, you should try it sometime.”
“And therein lies the problem. You have no right to move on! None whatsoever. Not when my Mark is still there. He deserves to live.”
“I have every right! The two of you ruined my life, so forgive me if I don’t want anything to do with you.”
“We don’t want anything to do with you either! I just want my Mark! Give him back!”
They stood face to face in the center of the room, the shovel lying in-between them, a border dividing innie and outie. Helly’s cheeks were flushed pink from the cold and her hands were clenched into fists by her sides, her stance determined and on the offensive. Meanwhile, Mark had hunched into himself, cowering slightly and crossing his arms over his naked chest, trying to preserve some semblance of dignity.
“Get lost, Helly,” he told her. “Your Mark is gone.”
“He’s not.”
“He is.”
“He’s not.”
“He is. And you need to get it into your head that he is never coming back.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“I do. So fuck off and leave me alone.”
“No. Not without Mark.”
Mark was aghast. This was the woman he’d been severed with? And they’d fallen in love down there, rather than killed each other? It was unfathomable. She was utterly aggravating and oh, he loathed her. Something coiled tighter and tighter within him, on the precipice of snapping. And Mark was afraid of what he might do when that happened.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” he said, burying his face in his hands. They were going around in circles. “I am Mark, and I don’t want you here! I don’t want you!”
“I don’t want you either! God, I fucking hate you!”
“Oh good, the feeling’s mutual, honey.”
Helly’s eyes shimmered. Her frustration was palpable with every movement she made, her grief for Mark S the biggest thing in the room.
“I wish you were dead,” she said, her voice quivering as she held back tears. “You can rot in hell with Helena.”
Her words cut through Mark. He hadn’t even questioned how Helly was roaming free on the outside, but was this why? Was Helena gone for good? The thought that the woman who had shyly approached him at that Chinese restaurant, biting her lip at the suggestion she finally take him home to meet dad already, the thought that she could have vanished forever—Mark surprised himself with how sick that made him feel. It wasn’t fair, not to her. She didn’t deserve to disappear. So, Mark retaliated. He lashed out right back at Helly, choosing to hit her where it hurt.
“That’s too bad,” he retorted. “She’s too busy rotting with Mark S.”
The slap shouldn’t have come as a surprise, not really. Mark didn’t even see it coming, he blinked and the next thing he knew, her warm palm was on his cheek and then his skin was on fire, the slap echoing across the room. Mark raised his hand and brushed his face, his fingers lingering where she had touched him.
He needed her to leave. Before he did something he was going to regret.
”Get out of my house.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“I don’t want to.”
Their argument had come to a standstill, an impossible deadlock with neither party willing to back down or compromise. Mark thought he might burn from the red hot fury that was radiating in waves off of Helly. If she wasn’t going to leave, then he would have to, for if they stayed in the same room together for much longer, one of them wasn’t making it out of there alive.
“Have it your way, then. Make yourself at fucking home.”
Mark stormed out of the room, refusing to give Helly the satisfaction of looking back at her. He marched up the stairs and went right back to bed, slamming his bedroom door in the process. He lay under the covers, vibrating with anger. How dare she. How dare she come to his home, disturb his peace, and make such unreasonable, unfair demands of him?
When he closed his eyes, he tried to remember Gemma’s face. But all he could see was red.