Work Text:
i.
The gun is heavier than she remembers.
Gemma finds this strange. Weight should be constant. Mass obeys laws. But her hands have forgotten the grammar of objects, have been re-taught so many times the shape of screwdrivers, the texture of cribs, the temperature of dental instruments.
The elevator descends.
She counts the floors in her blood.
ii.
The hallway stretches white in every direction. Gemma walks through her own absence—past the wellness room where a woman who wore her face read strangers facts about their lives, past doors that open onto nothing she was ever allowed to keep.
She is looking for Mark.
She finds instead: a woman sitting against the wall, knees drawn up, red hair falling across her face like something burning.
The woman looks up.
iii.
The scar behind her ear itches.
Reghabi's work. Quick hands in a motel room, the smell of antiseptic, Devon holding her steady. I can disable it, the woman had said. But I can't promise what you'll remember.
Gemma had laughed. A sound like gravel.
I don't remember anything anyway.
Now the hallway doesn't split her. Now the doors don't carve her into new women. She is one thing, walking—whole and furious and terrified.
It won't last. Reghabi said that too.
But it will last long enough.
iv.
Helly knows this face.
Ms. Casey. The wellness counselor. The one she trailed like a shadow after—
(after the elevator, after the cord, after she decided dying was better than this)
—watching for signs of sadness, which is a task you give to someone who has never seen her own reflection smile.
But Ms. Casey's eyes are different now. There is weather in them.
"You're not supposed to be here," Helly says.
The woman raises the gun. Not at Helly. Just raises it, like a question she hasn't finished asking.
"Neither are you."
v.
Gemma studies the face before her.
She knows this woman. Knows her from the eight hours—the longest she was ever awake—tracking her through hallways, taking notes, watching her breathe. Knows her from before that, too, from a life she's only now beginning to reassemble: the gala footage, the speech, the daughter of the man who—
Her finger doesn't move toward the trigger.
It would be easy.
Helena Eagan's face. Helena Eagan's body. The architecture of everything that was done to her.
But the eyes.
The eyes are asking for something.
vii.
"I'm looking for Mark," Gemma says.
Helly laughs. It comes out broken, a sound like ice cracking.
"He left. With me. Which is—" She presses her palms against the floor, against the cold that never changes. "Which is funny, because I'm still here."
"I don't understand."
"He got you out. Then he turned around. Then he—" Helly looks at the gun. "Are you going to shoot me?"
Gemma considers this.
"I haven't decided."
viii.
They sit in the corridor. Two women. The fluorescent lights hum a frequency that means nothing.
"I tried to kill myself," Helly says. "In an elevator. With a cord."
She doesn't know why she's telling this to the woman with the gun. Maybe because the woman with the gun is the only person in this building who might understand what it means to have a body that doesn't belong to you.
"I know," Gemma says. "I watched the footage. They made me watch a lot of footage."
"Why?"
"I think they wanted to see what I felt."
Helly looks at her. "What did you feel?"
Gemma is quiet for a long time.
"I wanted to tell you about the light."
ix.
The gun rests on the floor between them now.
"She used you," Helly says. "Helena. My—" She can't say the word. Outie. Self. The person I am when I'm not allowed to be a person. "The fertility clinic. The IVF. The cards in the mail. Dr. Mauer was there from the beginning. Watching you. Choosing you."
"I know."
"She didn't know. Helena. She didn't—" Helly stops. Starts again. "She watched Mark kiss me. On a screen. Over and over. I think she was trying to feel something."
"And?"
"And I hate her. And she's me. And I hate me."
Gemma picks up the gun again.
Helly doesn't flinch.
x.
What Gemma sees:
The face of the woman who smiled at cameras while Gemma was learning to fear dental chairs. The face that sold severance as salvation while Gemma was being severed again and again and again.
What Gemma sees:
A woman who tried to hang herself in an elevator because existing was unbearable.
What Gemma sees:
Herself, in a room called Wellington, writing thank-you notes to no one.
Herself, in a room called Siena, bracing for turbulence that never stopped.
Herself, in a room called Cold Harbor, taking apart a crib.
xi.
"I was pregnant once," Gemma says.
Helly looks at her.
"Before. In the life I'm remembering. I lost it." Her hands move over her stomach, a gesture from a body that used to know what hope felt like. "They watched that too. They put it in a room. Made me live it, inside one of—inside me."
"Gemma."
"That's my name." She says it like she's testing whether it still fits. "They took my name and they made me into something that could be split. Over and over. Twenty-four pieces. More. I don't know how many pieces of me are scattered through this building."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't."
"I'm sorry anyway."
xii.
Helly reaches out.
Her hand hovers over Gemma's wrist—not touching, just present, just there.
"I don't know how to be a person," Helly says. "They gave me a name and a desk and a job and told me that was enough. But I remember everything now. Helena's memories. The compound. Her father's voice. The way she learned to make herself small."
"You're not her."
"I'm made of her."
"No." Gemma's voice is sharp now, certain. "You're made of what she couldn't kill."
xiii.
The corridor stretches in both directions.
Somewhere, Mark is running with a woman who has Gemma's husband's attention and Helena's face. Somewhere, alarms are sounding. Somewhere, men in suits are making decisions about bodies that don't belong to them.
Here, in this particular silence:
Two women who have been unmade.
Two women learning the weight of their own hands.
xiv.
"What do we do now?" Helly asks.
Gemma stands. The gun is in her hand but her finger is nowhere near the trigger.
"I came here to save him."
"He's gone."
"I know."
She looks at Helly. At the red hair, the green eyes, the face that belongs to someone else's nightmare and someone else's revolution and no one's peace.
"So I'll save something else instead."
xv.
They walk.
Not toward Mark, not toward escape, not toward any ending that was written for them.
Just: forward.
Two women in a white hallway, one with a gun and one with her hands finally unclenched, moving through the architecture of their captivity like a question neither of them knows how to answer.
But they're asking it together.
xvi.
(The lights flicker.)
(Somewhere, far away, someone is sorting numbers.)
(Somewhere, far away, a crib is being assembled.)
(Here, in the space between what they were and what they might become:)
(Footsteps.)
(Two sets.)
(Continuing.)
[END]