Here is a Severance fic that's mainly just me (and also Mark) trying to get a grip on who Helena is.


Title: Anthropology
Fandom: Severance
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 3,200
Summary: Mark tries to understand Helly's outie.
Warnings: Allusions to consent issues. Severance spoilers up to episode 2.04, 'Woe's Hollow'.



“You really like milk, huh?” Mark asks.

“No.” Helly braces her hand on the kitchenette counter and downs another glass. “I’m pretty sure I’m lactose intolerant. I figure the least I can do for Irving is try to make my outie shit herself.”

Her outie. Mark’s been thinking about her a lot, since they got Helly back: since they realised Helly hadn’t actually been there. Trying to understand her, trying to make sense of what happened.

“What... impression do you have of her?” Mark asks. “Of your outie?”

Helly raises her eyebrows pretty much through the ceiling. “What impression do I have? Not a very fucking good one, Mark.”

“She didn’t have to sleep with me,” Mark says, and then, “Sorry. We don’t have to talk about this. I’ve just – I’ve just been thinking about it.”

Helly shrugs, leaning back against the counter. “Go ahead. Maybe it’ll help me figure out how the fuck I’m supposed to feel about it.”

“It’s not like she had to do it,” Mark says. “To make me think she was you, I mean. I’m not – I’m not saying you’re not totally different people, it’s just... why wouldn’t you be you, you know?”

“I get it,” Helly says. “I mean, pretty sure I’d spot a stranger in your body from the other end of the corridor, but I get that I can’t hold you to the same standards.”

Is that an insult? If it is, he probably deserves it. He’s been tearing himself to pieces over it: he should have known, he should have known she wasn’t Helly, he’s an idiot, he should have known. “I just need to know why she did that.”

“She’s an evil bitch, and she wanted to hurt us,” Helly says. “Mystery solved.”

They lapse into an uncomfortable silence. Mark starts cleaning the used vessels and cutlery of the day, just for something to do with his hands.

She’s probably right. It doesn’t seem likely that her outie wanted that night; maybe she feels the same way Mark does when she thinks back to it, sick and dizzy and tight-chested. It’d make more sense for it to be some kind of attack.

It’s pointless to obsess over this, anyway. He’ll never be able to meet Helly’s outie. Or...

He’ll never be able to meet Helly’s outie again, he guesses. Technically, he’s already met her. He doesn’t like thinking about it.

It’s over now, in any case, and he’s glad it is. He hates the idea of Helly trapped nowhere, somewhere just left of existence, while some stranger looks back at him out of her eyes.

She hadn’t felt like a stranger, though. She’d felt a lot like Helly. He hasn’t said that aloud; he doesn’t know if Helly would ever forgive him for it.

Maybe she was just trying to sound like the Helly they knew; maybe her outie is completely different in her own life. It still bothers him, though.

I didn’t like who I was on the outside. I was ashamed.

Yeah, it’s probably how Helly feels: the real Helly, his Helly. It’s the right thing to say if you’re trying to pose as her. But he can’t stop wondering if there’s more to it.

He’s still thinking about it as he walks back to his desk.

Helly’s outie couldn’t have heard her innie saying she was ashamed of her. Helly’s said it herself: the first thing she knew after the Overtime Contingency ended was being held face-down in ice-cold water. If Helly’s outie wanted to say anything about her opinion of herself on the outside, she’d have needed to think it up herself.

I didn’t like who I was on the outside. Whose words were those?

Maybe he’s just trying to find something genuine in her, something real, so he can feel better about that night in the tent. He wants a reason he can pin to that memory: this is why that happened to me. He doesn’t want that person to be a total stranger to him.

He’s only ever heard her say one real thing, in her own words, when she wasn’t pretending to be anyone else. I am a person. You are not.

It’s a starting point for understanding her, he guesses. But it doesn’t feel like a good one, and there’s nowhere else to go.

-
The elevator ride has felt a little... weird, the last few days. Maybe Mark’s been feeling a little weird in general: headaches, moments when time seems to skip a couple of seconds ahead. Moments when it feels like he’s forgotten something, like something important is hovering just out of his reach. Seeing Ms Casey in Helly’s face.

He’s really been noticing it on the elevator rides, though. He knows the exact point his consciousness switches, through two years of routine. It’s started to feel like he’s somehow experiencing something between leaving work and coming back. Nothing concrete: a series of dark flashes and cut-off sounds and incoherent half-thoughts, and then he comes to in the elevator the next morning with a headache.

He’s wondering, as the elevator rises, whether it’ll happen again. Trying to sharpen his focus, to prepare himself to make sense of it somehow.

His consciousness cuts out.

For four seconds, he has a perfectly clear, lucid impression of standing outdoors, under a pale blue sky. The air is cold; his breath is visible in front of him. He’s wearing heavy clothes, he thinks for an instant, before revising the description in his head: warm clothes.

He’s standing by a car, looking back at a building that somehow manages to simultaneously look both low and looming. A part of his mind, even though he’s never seen it before, knows that it’s the Lumon offices.

He finds himself gasping in the elevator.

What was that? Was that real? Was that a dream; is that what dreams are like?

But how would he have slept?

-
When he gets into the elevator that evening, he’s psychologically braced himself. He knows what to do if it happens again.

He’s prepared for disappointment, for the possibility that nothing will happen. But he catches another glimpse of the outside world.

He’s not as distinctly outside as last time. He’s sitting in a darkened room, looking at a screen – a television. But he’s definitely somewhere he’s not supposed to be.

There was knowledge he shouldn’t have had in his mind last time: he recognised the Lumon building. His outie’s knowledge, right? He scrambles through whatever he can find in his head, looking for an explanation for what’s happening to him.

He wakes in the elevator with a word in his mind: reintegration.

-
The knowledge that he’s reintegrating feels like a loose thread, one he can tug on to make things unravel. He tries to resist at first, a little afraid; he doesn’t know what that means for his existence. But he can’t keep himself from turning the thought around in his head, hunting through his mind for hints of his outie.

One morning, he looks up as Helly comes into the office and thinks, with perfect clarity, Helena Eagan.

Irving said she was an Eagan. He hadn’t known if that was true. But he knows now, because his outie knows: this is Helena Eagan.

She made a scene at some kind of fancy event, claiming to be her innie, and she tried to cover it up afterwards. But Mark’s outie knew it had to be real, because his own innie took him over at the same time. He’s wondered if they work together on the severed floor.

He guesses now he has his answer.

“You okay?” Helly asks.

“I’m—” He swallows, tries to clear his head. “I’m fine.”

-
It’s a while before he’s able to reliably experience both sides of his life as both Mark Scout and Mark S. Once he’s feeling stable enough to know he won’t drop one set of memories halfway through a conversation, though, he starts lingering outside the office before and after work. Watching to see if he can spot one of his colleagues on the outside. Helly’s technically supposed to arrive later than him and leave earlier, but, if she’s an Eagan, she might have other business here; she might—

There she is: Helly, heading towards the Lumon building. His heart clenches to see her in an unfamiliar setting, in unfamiliar clothes.

No. Helena. Helena Eagan.

He shouldn’t do this, he tells himself, as he grabs for his car door handle. He climbs out. He shouldn’t do this. He’s walking towards her. He shouldn’t do this.

He catches hold of her wrist. “I need to talk to you.”

Her eyes widen when they meet his, and he’s disconcerted when it hits him: she remembers sleeping with him, even if she probably thinks this version of him doesn’t have that memory. All she says, though, is, “I need to get to work.”

“I need to talk to you,” he says, urgently.

For a moment, they hold each other’s gaze. Mark has to close his eyes after a few seconds; he can feel his memory trying to drag him back into that tent.

“You leave the office at twenty-five past, right?” she asks. “I’ll wait outside for you.”

-
He finds Helena waiting by his car after work, which is a little unsettling. He doesn’t think she saw him get out of it earlier, but apparently she knows which car is his.

She’s tied her hair up since leaving the office. It makes her look very different, somehow, from the colleague he said goodbye to just twenty minutes ago.

It was difficult to be around Helly at work, knowing what was coming afterwards. In a way, this feels like a worse betrayal than when he slept with Helena in her body. He’s intentionally planning to spend time with her outie.

Just to talk, though. Just to talk.

He attempts a smile. If this conversation is going to get anywhere, it’s probably best not to kick it off with an air of active hostility. “Hey.”

“Is this about what happened in the tent?” she asks.

Not even waiting for him to introduce himself. He guesses it’s been on her mind as well. “I mean, it’s not just that. I—”

Shit. Wait. Fuck.

He thought he’d be expected to introduce himself, because, as far as she knows, he’s never met her before. Eight seconds into their conversation, and his cover is already well and truly blown.

“Interesting,” Helena says. He’s expecting the next words out of her mouth to be caught you, or, Jesus, an order to a concealed Lumon hitman or something. But instead she says, “It’d be best if we don’t stay out here. Let’s talk at your home.”

-
They’re both silent as he drives her to his house. He wonders if she’s thinking he might try to hurt her, after what she did to him and Helly and Irving. He wonders if he’s going to try to hurt her.

But she was the one who suggested this. Because she’s confident she’s not in danger? Or because she’s prepared to take that risk?

She takes a seat when they’re at his house and gestures to another, inviting him to sit down, like she’s the one who lives here. He does. This all feels like some kind of weird, vivid dream.

Honestly, that’s kind of how everything has felt since he started reintegrating.

“This isn’t the Overtime Contingency, is it?” she asks. “You’ve done something more permanent.”

He hesitates. Just for a couple of seconds, but long enough to lose the opportunity; he won’t be able to claim convincingly that it’s the Overtime Contingency now.

“How does it feel?” Helena asks.

That’s not the question he was expecting. “Are you... considering it?”

“I already share a body with someone who wants to kill me,” Helena says. “I don’t think it’ll help if I share a mind with her as well.”

It makes sense. Reintegration definitely hasn’t been great for Mark’s self-esteem, on either side, and that was never his strong point in the first place. If Helena reintegrated, at least that would be some kind of assurance that Helly could keep existing in some form: that their workplace couldn’t just decide to switch her off. But it’d also be the end of Helly as he’s come to know her. “I can’t really recommend it.”

“Why did you want to speak to me?” she asks.

It’s a good question. “I just – I want to know more about you, I guess. You... did some things I don’t really understand.”

“I had sex with you,” she says.

He wasn’t prepared to hear it put so bluntly. “Yeah. Uh, what the fuck was that?”

She hasn’t broken eye contact with him since they sat down. It’s unnerving. “I was being Helly.”

“But you didn’t have to,” he says. “It wasn’t like we’d – like we’d done that before. Uh, did you think you had to? It was something you didn’t want?”

“What would you suggest was my reason?” she asks, her tone perfectly neutral.

“Helly – your innie, I mean—” She looks so different right now: the tied-up hair, the way she’s holding herself. It’s hard to remember that he’s looking at Helly’s face. “She thought you just wanted to hurt us.”

“Us?” Helena echoes. “You and her?”

“I – I guess. Is something weird about that?”

“I didn’t have any plans to revive Helly,” Helena says. “I didn’t expect her to ever exist again. There wouldn’t be any point in trying to hurt her.”

The words make something inside Mark go cold. I didn’t expect her to ever exist again. Helly gone, just like that, forever. Replaced by this other person wearing her skin. They wouldn’t even have known to miss her.

“So... you’d just have been trying to hurt me,” he says, slowly.

Helena unfurls one hand in a gesture that feels like a shrug. “I suppose.”

He looks at her for a long moment. Every time he starts to think he can see Helly in her, some new contradiction comes along to distort it: something Helly wouldn’t do or say, some gesture or expression or inflection of her voice.

“I don’t think you were just trying to hurt me,” he says.

“I see,” Helena says. “You think you’re irresistible. You think I was overcome with desire for one of the innies who tried to destroy my father’s company.”

“N-no, I just – there has to be a reason, right? You’re not going to have sex with someone just out of spite.”

“No?” Helena asks.

“Not to spite me, anyway,” Mark concedes. “Helly, maybe, but not me. I don’t think you hate me personally enough for that.”

Helena raises her eyebrows. “What do you know about me?”

I know your innie would have folded her arms when she asked that, Mark thinks. You can’t. That’s the body language of the common people, and you need to be elegant. You don’t get to show anything real or honest, even in your gestures.

“You told me you didn’t like who you were on the outside,” he says.

She doesn’t say anything. He can’t read her expression.

“I need you to understand that this is not an offer,” he says. His heart is beating faster; he doesn’t want to ask this. “It’s just a question. It’s a genuine question. I’m just trying to understand.”

She nods, just slightly.

“Would you have sex with me again?” he asks. Here and now, he almost adds, but putting a time and place on it makes the prospect too real, makes it harder to avoid picturing it. “If you could?”

“That’s your question?” she asks. He can hear Helly in her incredulity.

“Please,” he says. “It’s not going to happen. I just need an honest answer.”

Helena considers him for a long moment.

“No,” she says at last. “You’d look at me differently.”

“But...” What? “But it’s already happened.”

She shakes her head. “That’s not what I mean. You wouldn’t be looking at me the way you looked at me before.”

“In the tent?” he asks, and then, “When you were Helly?”

“I have a question in return,” she says.

“I don’t – I don’t feel like you’ve really answered mine.”

“They told me Irving was dismissed,” she says. “Is it true?”

The mention of Irving knifes grief through him. He loses the thread of their conversation, drops whatever don’t just change the subject protest he was trying to form in his throat.

“Even you don’t believe a word they say, huh?” he asks.

She doesn’t say anything to that.

He sighs. “It’s true. He’s gone.”

Something strange flickers across Helena’s expression at that, and Mark remembers something, suddenly: Helly speaking gently to Irving, consolingly, her hand on his arm. But it wouldn’t have been Helly, at the time.

“Did you... not want that?” he asks.

She tosses her head back. Whatever he saw there a moment ago, it’s gone. “He tried to drown me.”

Mark knows evasion; he’s spent two years dodging questions about Gemma. “I mean, yeah, but that’s not what I asked. It really felt like you cared about him sometimes. About us, I guess.”

She stands up abruptly. He half-expects her to hit him. But she just strides towards the door, and he follows her without thinking.

“I was pretending to be someone else,” she says, pulling her coat on. “You shouldn’t read too much into it.”

He thinks about Helena when she was Helly. Giggling about masturbation around the campfire. Confiding that she didn’t like herself outside. Touching him in the same clumsy, eager way he was touching her, like she’d never known intimacy before and it was something she’d always craved.

“The person you were pretending to be seemed a lot more real than what I’m seeing here,” he says.

She walks out into the snow without looking back.

-
A part of Mark – it feels like there are so many fucking parts of Mark nowadays – is convinced that Lumon will come for him in the night. He gave away his reintegration to an Eagan, to the mole.

But morning comes, and no one’s arrested or fired or ritually murdered him. No one’s waiting to grab him when he walks into the Lumon building. Is that still coming, or has she not reported this to anyone yet?

When he opens his work locker the next morning, something about it jolts him. Something is different.

It takes him a moment to register it: a folded piece of paper lying awkwardly to the side, where it might fall if someone slotted it through the narrow gap between the frame and the door. He takes it out and opens it.

You treated me like a person when I was her.

He stares at it for a long moment.

He doesn’t know how to read it. A thank-you? An accusation? Maybe it’s an explanation, a follow-on from what she said when he asked if she’d sleep with him now: You wouldn’t be looking at me the way you looked at me before.

Even her handwriting looks different from Helly’s.

He writes a note on the other side. You were a person when you were her.

It’s not like he can actually deliver it; he doesn’t know which locker is hers. He guesses that response is just for him.