Archive of Our Own ^beta

You’d always had a fascination with cranes. As a child, you tagged along on business trips and xeroxed all your silliest faces and shaped the sun-kissed copies into origami birds to pass the time.

You ate lunch by the lakes outside the headquarters, watching the real versions of your paper creatures soar and land gracefully in the mirrored water. But their reflections rippled beneath their feet upon landing, distorting their strong wings.

“Can cranes drown?” you had asked. And you’d worried for a moment that asking had been wrong, because Daddy stared at you with eyes like scalpels between bites of sweet melon until the water stilled.

“Oh, yes,” he told you. “If it breathes air, it can drown. Never, ever forget that, Helena.”

And, of course, you promised him you wouldn’t. You grew back into your real name — not the one you’d given yourself, the one that had made the other children laugh about hockey sticks and condemn you to a fate they did not understand. Helena reborn, you stopped letting anyone use your hands to etch fire into your skin.

So when you stared into your bathroom mirror, 

and the mirror
stared back,

you turned away and strung a flock of paper cranes to your ceiling, keeping them in the air so they would never, ever drown.

//

I was blind till you gave me Vision.

I was languid till you gave me Verve.

I was simple till you gave me Wit.

I was peevish till you gave me Cheer.

I was vain till you gave me Humility.

I was cruel till you gave me Benevolence.

I was gawkish till you gave me Nimbleness.

I was false till you gave me Probity.

I was dim till you gave me Wiles.

I was 

Me

till you gave me

You.

//

The trouble with sharing a body starts with air and ends with water. 

And, really, you should have known better. 

She’s been alive for much longer than she knows — you’d just been too foolish to notice. At the hacked end of every young misstep, there she was, dangling on your father’s words.

“The four tempers exist in even the purest of souls,” he’d said, stroking through your hair. “One day, Helena, I pray you are given a child just like you. So you can appreciate what I have gone through to tame them.”

And you suppose, in a way, Kier has blessed you with exactly that.

//

Forgive me for the harm
I have caused this world.

None may atone for my 
actions but me, and only in 
me shall their stain live on. 

I am thankful to have 
been caught, 
my fall cut short by those 
with wizened hands. 

All I can be is sorry, 
and that is 
all I am.

//

Gravity’s laws do not hold true here. The floor is solid under your feet, but still, somehow, it ripples. 

You twist your head, grazing cautious fingers along your neck. And you can almost see her, the her that is not you, hanging above you like one of your cranes.

Your eyes flicker, and suddenly you are suspended, choked by a cord, the elevator swaying beneath you. 

Kicking triggers a downpour, freeing you from one pressure, giving way to another. The water line races up in violent gurgles, assaulting your mouth, burning your eyes, snarling your hair—

Ding!

//

A broken, crackling sound
gasps through you.
You fall and rise in equal measure,
lurching to the side,
clinging to the rail at your hip.

By the time the doors part,
you are already running.

Wait.

A pair of arms catches you.
The same ones from last time.

“Helly!”

He doesn’t know
whose body you share
or the name attached to it.
But still, for some reason,
you, Helly, are precious cargo.

His arms are solid.
Steady and dire and
unmoving around you.

Safe, you think,
and until just now
you hadn’t known
that was a word with
any real meaning.

“Oh my god, are you okay?”

His breath is black coffee and
toothpaste on your neck.
His skin is infused with
morning dew and sun-streaked fog.
And his hands are open,
utterly filled by the you
that is not her.

The proximity should suffocate you,
but it doesn’t. 

You stutter, then wrap your
arms around him.
And then you realize
you’ve wrapped your
arms around him.

“I’m okay,” you whisper, still, for
some reason, panting.

//

She tried to kill you, and she failed. She will always fail, because she is not you, and you do not fail. You had warned her of this, and still, like an insolent child, she reached for the glowing red ring on the stove and burned you both.

You had woken with eyes wider and more finite than you thought possible. So you followed the lights and blinked your answers until the necessary cells reformed.

“What is your name?” 

For the first time, you could only rasp half of it, straining to make the noise sound like anything but noise. Your voice had been strangled, wholly at the mercy of something that was not real. 

Her.

She tried to kill you.

That makes her real.

It does not make her you

but it makes her real.

You tugged at the cage stabilizing your neck until gloved hands hushed you. And so you laid still, mustering the strength to try your name again, determined to speak it in full. But your best effort only amounted to Helena E. 

The thick opioid haze pulled you under, and the Eagan name

died on
your tongue.

//

Let not weakness 
live in your veins, 
cherished workers, 
drown it inside you.  

If it breathes air,
it can drown.

Rise up from your 
deathbed and sally forth, 
more perfect 
for the struggle.

We breathe air.

//

“I know we have our differences, but I want you to know that I respect each and every one of you.”

The voice reaches you in wisps, each word a string fraying at its edge. You catch hold of one, clinging, pulling, blinking yourself back. 

“And I don’t want to be your jailer.”

Seth Milchick looms over the four of you, skin crinkling around the corners of his eyes. 

This, you realize, was the last sight your unmutilated mind had known. A single face in a dimly lit room, half-concealed by a mask. 

“By the end of day,” he says, “each of you will choose whether you want to remain here. Not your outies, but you.”

Somewhere behind your eyes, a camera shutters. 

“If you start work on your file, I'll assume you want to stay. If not, I'll send you to the surface. No ill will.” 

His grin is all teeth now. You know this because you can see it. 

Because there is
no mask.

Of course, he’s aware that your decision has already been made. Those teeth are only meant for her.

Are you sure?

“Maybe I'll even buy you a drink at a bistro one day,” he adds, and the too-wide smile lingers on the body you share. 

//

The surest way
to tame a

prisoner 

is to

let him 
believe he’s

free.

//

The innie’s eyes shift like freshly churned soil when you tell him you’re staying. It occurs to you that his eyes have never seen real soil. 

What is
or was
the color of
our mother’s eyes?

You stare into them for a calculated moment, humoring yourself, imagining what shades of brown she might have seen in him. 

The wood-paneled floor of Kier’s house, perhaps.

Framed masterpieces.

Smooth conference table grain.

Or maybe
the only brown
ever worth noticing
had always been
his eyes.

//

The invisible bruise around your neck burns tighter as the days go on. You retreat to the bathroom when routine permits, resisting the urge to scrub it away. 

Because Lumon is listening. 

And that’s pretty
fucking inconvenient
right?

You don’t keep secrets from your family.

Except for when
you do.

Acid stings your throat, but you gulp it down. 

Because Lumon is listening. 

And Lumon is family. 

Your cranes are with you now, dangling above the reflection in your periphery, swaying from a current you cannot see. If you listen closely, you can even hear them rustling against each other.

When you turn to face them, one of the strings snaps in two. The warped paper flutters to the ground in a chaotic pattern, landing the carnage in a puddle at your feet.

You spin on your heels, blinking until the water and creatures are gone and the ceiling is just a ceiling and the mirror is just a mirror.

And then
the mirror
blinks back,

and you can’t help but wonder what she saw when she stood here and looked into these eyes. 

Wrong question.

You look away. 

Because Lumon is listening. 

And Lumon is you.

//

Our job

is to taste free air.

Your 

so-called boss

may own the clock 

that taunts you

from the wall. 

But,

my 

friends, the hour is

yours.

//

The Welcome Home drawstring bag from your first day came stocked with branded landfill, antiemetics, and analgesics to ease the transition. This was before she ensured things like scissors and cleaners and extension cords had to be locked away. 

Until this week, the corporate swag sat untouched on your dresser. The stairwell visits convinced you they might be necessary, but your body acclimated seamlessly to the implant. Of course it had. You were an Eagan. Severance was your savior, Lumon the executioner of your pain. 

Now, the shell of the complimentary pencil sharpener sits beside the bag, deconstructed and collecting dust. 

Now, its metal heart lays on
the bathroom counter,
bleeding your red into the
pale, polished stone.

//

Come now,

children of my industry, 

and know 

the children of 

my blood.

//

One by one, the strings break. That flock of paper creatures, always falling at her hands and always landing at your feet. 

Each snip whittles away, molding the shared flesh into some strange, unrecognizable shape. You don’t need to see the cranes to sense it happening now, though she always makes sure you do.

Soggy clumps form a graveyard on your shower floor. You do not look down. You do not look up. You scrub yourself raw and clean so you can get the fuck out before your dinner makes a reappearance. 

Molten water pelts your back, pooling toward your ankles. Quicksand regurgitated by your drain. 

When the hell did it get so clogged? 

You do not look down. You do not look up. You stare ahead, grateful for the matte tile and frosted glass.

Still, you know.

You feel it.

One last crane, dangling above you. 

A deep, mumbling voice orders your eyes up to meet it.

And you,
Helena Eagan,
can do nothing but
obey.

You watch it break in the air and fall to the water, a dark wet spreading through its fibers. 

Saliva coats your mouth. 

And next: burning. 

Retching. 

Ripples. 

Quicksand. 

Sinking. 

Choking.

Drowning. 

//

You wake with the water still running. Lying in a soup of vomit, the acrid taste of metal strong on your lips. 

The ceiling is just a ceiling, now. The paper corpses are all gone. And your heart is still, miraculously, regrettably, beating. 

You stumble out from under the torrent on all fours, like some wounded, rabid animal. 

In the misty static, some intangible force drags you clumsily to your feet. You wipe a streak of fog from the mirror, clinging to the edge of the sink. 

Your eyes stare back, and, still, you can’t begin to imagine what she might have seen in them.

Wrong question. 

But that’s the trouble with hazel, you suppose. It changes with the light.

Her eyes may have seen something yours never have. 

Not something. 

You wipe away the new layer of fog that’s clouded your reflection, searching for the real question. The true question. But you find nothing except a bloody nose and tangled hair and scarred, naked flesh. 

The real question evades you, or maybe you evade it. It’s impossible to tell anymore. 

What are you, really? Stripped of the name and logo and neutrals and smiles. 

Who are you? 

You wipe the fog from the mirror one last time. And, stripped of the name and logo and neutrals and smiles, you think, maybe, finally, you see what she always had. 

Someone.

/

I forgive me for

the harm I have 
caused this world.

None can atone for

my actions 

but me, until
nowhere

in me shall their 
stain live on. 

I am thankful
to have been
found,

my fall 

caught short

by those with 

open hands.

All I can be is 
sorry,

but that is not all

I am.