Chapter Text
Mark was determined to be the best patient Reghabi had ever seen. Not that he had much of a choice—after what happened with Petey, she'd sent him to a well-prepped Devon’s for a week (no Ricken, thank God; he didn’t know what Mark was doing, but he’d agreed to take Eleanor to his parents’ for a while). If, after a week of monitoring and medication, the effects were still severe, there was nothing more that could be done for him.
Getting back to the house was a blur. Devon set him up in Eleanor’s room (insisting he took the real bed, this time) with a glass of water on the bedside table.
“Thanks,” Mark said, covers up to his chin. “Sorry for, uh, putting you out.”
“Don’t get too comfortable,” she replied. “I’ll be back in two hours to shove some food down your throat.”
Mark groaned.
“Yeah, I know. Love you too,” she said, and shut the door.
Cautiously—because he knew he wasn’t about to sleep—he started to sort through what he could remember. And then it all fell apart.
He thought of the way Petey had looked at him in the diner, of how he’d felt nothing for him. Wanted to go back, to kiss him, to scream it’s me! I’m here! and tell him he finally got his stupid joke. He thought of Gemma, fuck, his wife, beautiful and unharmed and alive, thought of her candle burning between them, of you know, I never, like…Ms. Casey and I never felt that way—’Ms. Casey,’ Jesus Christ, who was he? He remembered seeing her in the morgue, burnt all over, finality incarnate. Remembered Petey, God, that was Petey who had died alone in that parking lot, eyes wide and pleading for a version of Mark that wasn’t there.
And there was so much more. Little things, like Mark secretly, guiltily agreeing that Ms. Casey was strange. Meeting June at the funeral; not having known Petey well enough to see him in the way her eyes narrowed and her arms hung at her sides.
He wished his innie was there so he could choke him to death. Wished he could thank his outie for trying and break his nose for doing it wrong. But it didn’t matter anymore, he realized, because they were both just him. And, sure, he could kill himself, but one simple fact—one matter of unfinished business—still loomed over his head: Gemma was in there. And he could doom himself any day of the week, but he could never, ever do the same to her.
Mark woke up in Kier Eagan’s replica bed: confused, thoroughly weirded out, and wishing he could go home. Whatever that even means, he thought.
“Hello?” He said. “Anyone?”
No response. When had he fallen asleep?
“Do I leave now? Or is there– is there more?”
“Mark?”
He looked up. There was a woman standing in the doorway—Devon, he remembered. His sister. He had a sister. What was she doing in Perpetuity? Hell, what was he doing there? Petey had promised not to make him refiner of the quarter anymore. His palms were sweating, he realized. And then he looked back up, and it wasn’t Devon anymore—who was Devon?—it was Woe, and she was shaking him lightly.
“Is it over?” Mark said. “Sorry, I must have–” He tried to get up, but she stopped him.
“Woah there, slugger,” she said, “not sure you’re ready for that just yet.” And that was weird, right? They weren’t supposed to speak, were they?
And then it was over, and Devon was Devon again. Mark froze.
She frowned. “You feeling okay?”
Mark scrubbed a hand down his face. “Jesus Christ.”
“Still not all here, huh?” Devon asked. He shook his head. “She said it would probably be like that.” She put a sandwich—where had that come from?—on the bedside table. “You were talking in your sleep. Something about a waffle party?”
Mark laughed, low and dry. “God, you do not want to know.” He took his hand off his face; looked at her, then at the sandwich. He started eating.
“Weird Lumon shit?”
“God, yeah,” he said, mouth full. “Like, I knew they were weird—both of me did. I mean, the goats!” That got an eyebrow raise out of Devon, but she didn’t interrupt. “But it’s like this feedback loop: I remember something from Lumon, and then I get to look at it with, like, the context of the whole world. And I think, what the fuck was he doing in there? And then I think about the world in the context of Lumon, and I’m like—oh, that was really weird, what they were doing to us. Like, even for other companies.” He met Devon’s eyes. “Does that make sense?”
“Not even a little bit,” she said. “But don’t get too down on yourself. You have time to workshop it.”
He laughed. “Well, thank God for that, I guess.”
It went surprisingly okay, considering. Devon, Mark knew, was a saint: feeding him every two hours (though not without plenty of comparisons to Eleanor), bringing him back when his mind sent him hurtling through time, and listening to him recount whatever escapades he’d just relived. By the third day—when the pills ran out and Mark could finally eat at human intervals—it almost felt normal.
They were standing over Devon’s laptop at her kitchen island, jotting down notes as they tried to locate the rest of MDR’s outies. Dylan had been pretty easy (a disused LinkedIn profile had come up on the first page of results for dylan g* “lumon”). Irving was slightly more difficult, but his name was uncommon enough that when they saw it on a decade-old local news write-up of a gallery opening, they were fairly sure they had their man.
Helly, though, was a different beast entirely. Even after hours of searching and countless shots at "R" surnames, it was as if she didn't exist. Something about the whole situation was nagging at Mark, but try as he might, he couldn’t crack what he was missing.
The sun was hanging low in the sky, they were both getting hungry, and Mark’s grip on reality was starting to slip—nothing like those first couple of days, thankfully, but him being tired didn’t help. He knew they’d have to stop for the night, but it was Devon who called it.
“Well,” she said, shutting the laptop, “maybe she doesn’t want to be found. I mean, you said her outie’s, like, a total bitch, right?”
Mark just looked up at her, eyes bleary and overwhelmed.
She sighed. “We’ll try again in the morning. Okay? But you clearly need some sleep.” She went to open the fridge, then paused. “Maybe we can start with Petey tomorrow. Like a warm-up.”
Mark froze. “What?”
She turned to look at him. She was tense, Mark saw, but her voice stayed level—like she wanted to give him the chance to play it off. “Petey. I hear you calling out for him, sometimes. He’s one of your work friends, right?”
He looked down at his hands. Imagined himself picking at the skin of his palm, but couldn’t bring himself to do it. “Yeah. He was.”
“So, what? He quit? Got fired?”
He took a deep breath in, still not looking at her. “Um…sort of. Not really. He did the same thing as me.”
“What, reintegrating? ” He looked up to see Devon staring at him, mouth half-open. He nodded. “Oh, cool, great. So you were going to tell me this when, exactly?”
“Yeah. Sorry. I didn’t, um. I didn’t want you to worry? So I didn’t say anything. But it’s looking like it’s okay now, so there’s nothing to worry about anyway?”
“Mark, what the fuck are you talking about?”
He exhaled, pushing the heels of his palms into his eyes. “Do you remember that businessman? The one from your yard?”
“Vaguely?”
Mark grimaced. “Okay, well. You were in labor, so that’s actually fair.” He opened his eyes, keeping them locked on the counter in front of him. “So, that was Petey. He was Reghabi’s first-ever reintegration patient. And it, um.” He took a deep, shaky breath. “Well, it killed him. I watched him die.” He looked up, expecting the worst, and got it: Devon was staring at him like he was a deer with a broken leg.
“And you knew him? Inside?”
Mark laughed. “Yeah, we–” and then he couldn’t speak anymore; didn’t trust his voice. He looked down at his shoes, gripping the edge of the counter in both hands. Focused on blinking until he felt he could move again.
And there was Devon’s voice again, closer this time. “Mark, if–”
“No, ha.” He turned around, avoiding her eyes, and headed for the stairs. “You’re right. It’s been a long day. We’ll find Helly tomorrow.”
“Mark,” he heard her say, but he was already gone.
The next day’s search was another bust, and Mark and Devon found themselves migrating to the living room—which wasn’t really giving up, Mark thought guiltily, just taking a break—at around hour 4. They turned on the TV, and for a second, it almost felt like real life: like when, once in a blue moon, Ricken’s retreats and Gemma’s conferences would sync up, and Devon would gleefully tell Mark to haul his lonely ass over to her place for the night.
But she wasn’t one to let things lie. “So, you guys were pretty close, then?”
Mark turned his head; stared at her blankly.
“You and Petey. You were close?”
His head jerked, shaking “no” like it was a reflex. He turned back toward the TV. “Could we not talk about this right now? It’s just been, like, a lot lately.”
“Hey, look, if you need some time, I totally get it. I’m just trying to get the full picture, here.”
Mark clapped his hands together, opening his mouth. Tried to make the words come out. “I just don’t want you to think I was, like...I don’t even know.”
“Like what?”
He looked back up at her; steeled himself. “Devon, I moved on in there.” He paused, searching her face. “Like, really moved on.”
She frowned. “With…”
He sighed. “Yes, fuck. With Petey. Sorry.”
“Mark, that’s okay. You know that’s okay, right?” She shifted, moving closer to him. “You think I don’t want you to be happy? That’s all I want. Hell, that's why I set you up with Alexa.”
He snorted. “Oh, yeah. Because that went so well.”
“I mean, your words. But the point stands. You’re allowed to let yourself have things, you know.”
“I know.” He stared into his lap. “Or, like, I know you feel that way. But it was different.” How could he even put it? “It was more. And so soon after the– I mean, I didn’t even know there was anything to move on from. It was like–” he choked up; collected himself. “Like she never even–”
“Mark. Hey, Mark.” She bundled his hands in hers, leaning in until he was forced to meet her eyes. “That wasn’t you. You weren’t there.”
Something in his face must have shifted. Mark watched her realize her mistake.
He cut her off before she could speak. “It’s okay,” he said. “But it was. I was. I know it’s probably easy to forget that I’m, uh, both of them now.” He exhaled—a little too sharp. “And forever, I guess.”
For a moment, Devon looked distraught—then, decisive. “Okay, fine. Maybe it was you. But you weren’t you.” She kept going, steamrolling his attempts to argue. “You weren't out here, either. Not all the way. Not since you started at Lumon. But you are now. No more sequestering parts of yourself, right? No more only having half the story.” She cupped his face in both hands, just like she used to do when they were kids: see?, she’d tell her school friends, pinching his cheeks, he’s just a baby!. “You’re my brother, Mark. They both were, too, but you especially are. And I’ll always love you—whoever you are, as long as we’re around.”
Mark wiped at his eyes. “Jesus,” he said, “that baby really did a number on you, huh?”
She smiled, shoving him lightly into the couch as she stood up. “Whatever, dude. I’m ordering dinner. My choice.”
Mark closed his eyes, tipped his head back. Listened to the room: the whirring of the central heat, the roof creaking in the wind, the murmur of the evening news. Your choice, he thought. That sounds nice.
A few hours (and two pizzas) later, Devon caved.
“Can you tell me about him?”
Mark jerked like he’d been shot, wine glass straining under his grip. “I–”
“Because I knew Gemma, right, and I loved– I love her. And when you’re ready, I want to hear what she’s like, um, in there.” She ran a hand through her hair. “But I can’t imagine Lumon lets you talk about that kind of thing. And it’s not like anyone out here knows to ask.”
“I, uh…” he tapped the glass, one-two-three one-two-three. “It’s hard to explain, I guess.”
“Try me? Please?”
He looked up at the ceiling, then at her. His eyes shone. “Um…” His voice was soft, teetering between laughing at himself and crying. “He was the first voice I ever heard. The first face I ever saw." He cleared his throat. “I know that isn’t something that really…translates to out here, but it still makes it…I don’t know. It’s just a whole other thing. Logically, I know I only knew him for two years—and also logically, I know I’m way older than that—but I can’t, like, square it. I don’t feel like I’ve ever lived without him.”
Devon smiled. “So you were, like…adult childhood sweethearts, or whatever?”
Mark laughed: because it was funny, because it wasn’t. “Yeah. I guess we kind of were.” He went silent, refilling their glasses to stall for time.
“I always–” he started, then considered his wording. “After Gemma, sometimes I wished I’d never seen her– like that. Or I’d see people on the news, people with missing kids, and I’d think, fuck, those kids are dead for sure, but at least everyone lets them act like they aren’t. But now…I mean, God, when he just stopped showing up–”
“It was worse,” Devon guessed, tentative.
Mark considered that. He thought about the weeks after Gemma died: her body, her parents, her funeral. Her clothes still on the floor, her coffee still on the desk—lukewarm, then cold, then white with mold. He’d left it there when he moved.
“No,” he said, and he meant it. “Just different.”
“Mm. Yeah.” Devon took a long drink, smacking her lips as it went down. “So. When did you guys start, um…”
“I don’t know. Time is…it’s hard, in there. As you can probably imagine. But it didn't take long.” Not long enough, he thought.
Devon nodded.
“We were best friends. And then, you know.”
And she couldn’t, not really, but Mark did. He knew that talking to Petey had felt like doubles tennis—every shared grin a point scored against the other two refiners, game-set-match, undefeated and undefeatable. Knew the thrill that went through him when he realized they had been finishing each other's sentences for weeks; the thrum in his veins whenever Petey reached over to hand him a pen without looking. They understood each other, then, and it kept Mark happy enough to believe in the mysterious, important Work for almost two years.
Devon hummed, bringing him back to the present. “Yeah.”
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and started to idly play with his hands. What could he tell her? “He was…a good leader. Better than me. He cared about people. I mean, God, the shit he had to put up with my first week. I tried—really tried, you know, to be like that for Helly, but I don’t think I did a very good job.”
Devon snorted. “Well, you have to cut yourself a little slack. There are only so many ways you can say,”—and here, she gestured broadly, wine sloshing at the sides of her glass—”hey, welcome to Hell; feel free to chill the fuck out at your earliest convenience!”
Mark cracked a smile. “Yeah. I guess not, huh? And none of them ever really worked on me, either. Obviously I was right to freak out, but it took me a while to realize Petey knew that. And by that point, I was already… man, you would’ve hated me. Throwing myself on every sword in sight.”
“Sounds familiar.”
“Thanks.”
“No problem.”
He paused. Tapped on his glass some more. “I told you about the break room?” he asked, and she nodded. “I think– I think that was what started it. Not right away, but there was a shift. The third time I went.”
Devon’s eyebrows shot up, like she hadn’t considered how many times Mark had been subjected to that. He didn’t think he’d ever be able to tell her.
“It…I must have pissed him off pretty bad,” he laughed. “Milchick, I mean. They kept me in there for a whole week. I started to forget who I was—or, you know, what little there was to forget at that point.”
“Jesus, Mark.”
“That’s not the point.” He didn’t tell her the rest: the ruler snapped over his knuckles, again and again. Cobel giving him a change of clothes on his way in so his outie wouldn’t notice if he pissed himself. The way his joints cracked all week, both inside Lumon and out, and how he always came home with migraines so piercing that his innie would stumble near-sleepless out of the elevator the next morning.
He breathed in. “The point is, Petey took care of me.” And he couldn’t really tell Devon about that, either. Not about him sobbing on the floor of the supply closet; not about Petey holding him, face pressed into Mark’s hair, whispering I promise you, kid, it won’t be like this forever. “He loved me. I think…I think he reintegrated because of me.”
Devon furrowed her eyebrows. “How?”
“When I met him out here,” and that hurt, he thought; hurt the same way it did to think about seeing Gemma in Wellness without ever seeing her, “he played me a recording of the break room. But it was me in there. I think he snuck it out somehow—scratched the writing off the tape, maybe, or unspooled the ribbon. Which is so– God, so stupid. Like, it doesn’t make any sense. What did he think was going to happen? That his outie would hear my voice and think, ‘oh, well, if Mark is in trouble, I’d better get in there!’ I mean, if it worked like that, Gemma wouldn’t–” but he couldn’t finish that thought, could he? “But it makes sense for him. That he would believe that. It just also makes me want to kill myself.” He looked up at her. “Kidding, kidding.”
“I mean, maybe that is what happened,” Devon said. “He did come and find you, right?”
Mark smiled thinly. “I guess so. We used to joke about that. At least, I thought they were jokes.” He cleared his throat. “When he stopped coming to work, he left me a map of the severed floor. Totally against protocol. I was furious.”
“Why?”
“I thought he didn’t trust me, you know? And he was right not to. I was such a kiss-ass—looking back on it, I want to believe I would’ve helped him, but...I don't know.” But he had trusted him, even when Mark didn't know him. Mark didn't even know where to begin with that.
He took a deep breath. "And then he left, and I didn’t have anything to lose anymore.” For a split second, he was at Lumon again: holding Helly’s legs in the elevator, hoping to God she was still alive. “At least, for a little while.”
She paused, trying to read his face. “Did you and Helly ever– you said she kissed you, but. Did you feel…?”
“I…did, I think. I really did. Or maybe I do?” he said. “Or, you know. I could have. God, it was nice. Really nice. Now, there’s…I mean, Jesus, Dev, there’s Gemma. But even if there weren’t, I would’ve needed some more time.”
“Yeah.”
“Otherwise, I would’ve been like I was with Alexa.”
“A total disaster?”
Mark laughed. “Hey. Your words.” He leaned back on the couch, reaching for the remote. “Enough of this shit. I’m finding us some Cheers reruns.”
“Sweet.” Devon got up, taking the empty bottle with her. “I’ll get the ice cream.”
He flipped through the channels, eyes glazing over, until he saw a flash of red hair on the screen. Hang on. He knew that smile.
Before Mark knew it, he was back at Lumon, the pull sharper than it had been in days. It was recent: after the OTC, after the Board had granted him his family back. Mark, of course, didn’t register this; all he knew was that he was in the corner of some hallway, flyer in hand, and Helly was looking at him expectantly.
He felt Ms. Casey's drawing wrinkle between his fingers. Should he kiss her? He should, right?
He took a cautious step forward. Nothing. Something was weird about her, he thought, but he didn’t know what. Why wasn’t she making fun of him for this?
He frowned. Come to think of it, when was the last time she made any joke?
Yeah, he thought, something was definitely–
“Mark?”
Off.
“Helly.”
“Mark.” And he blinked, and it was Devon again, standing in front of the TV.
“Move,” he said, and the back of his neck felt hot. “Devon, move over.”
She took a step to the side. “Are you–”
“Jesus. Jesus Christ.”
Devon turned to look at the TV, eyes narrowed. “What? The Eagan photo op?”
“It’s Helly,” he said, getting up off the couch to point. “That’s Helly.” He couldn’t feel his hands.
Her eyebrows shot up. “Oh, wow,” she said. “Okay. Wow. You’re sure?”
It was a ribbon-cutting ceremony, he saw. He watched her walk into place on the steps of some building, scissors in hand. An older man—Jame, he realized, from Perpetuity—had his hand on her shoulder. Mark’s stomach rolled.
“Yeah,” he said, “that’s her.”
He bent down until he was eye level with not-Helly. Remembered: I am a person. You are not. Remembered: he said there were no microphones in here. And then it all clicked into place: why would Lumon have ever let her come back? He hadn’t seen Helly in weeks, he realized. Lumon had taken her—Like Gemma, like Petey—and had been letting him walk around with her reanimated corpse. Anger burned through him, white-hot and invigorating. He felt like he could kill someone. He felt like he could do anything.
Devon looked at him, then back at the screen. “Well,” she said. “I guess we found her.”