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"And what the fuck," Helly R’s rant seems to be dying down, not for lack of grievances but for lack of air. Her face is as red as her hair and Mark S. is struck by how vibrant the color is. "Is up with that kid?"
Irving clutches that kid to his chest, covering her other ear with an affronted gasp. She giggles in his arms and reaches over to grab Helly's finger pointed at her face. She wiggles her hand at an attempt at a handshake.
"Ah, right, Helly, this is Julie S." Mark S. had a similar reaction to Julie when he met her all those years ago that, honestly, he's never really gotten over. She had been even smaller then. "Julie S., meet Helly R."
"Hi!"
"What the fuck?"
"Helly, please," Irving finally breaks, almost begging. "Mind your language. Little ears are listening."
Julie giggles. It echoes throughout the room.
irving b.
Julie's presence is a sweet gift to the Macrodata Refining Department, but it took Irving some time to shake the feeling that perhaps this is not the best place to raise a child.
He had thought about expressing his concerns and immediately regretted the impulse. Who is he to doubt Lumon's judgement? He's sure that the time Julie spends with them is her play time or perhaps she is meant to be learning some kind of lesson from them that only she is privy to.
That is why he does his utmost to teach Julie the correct path. When they first met, he quickly realized that she was too young to read the handbook, but in the early days, he would read it to her. Kier's words soothed her and she was allowed to drift off to sleep and perhaps even dream of being embraced by Kier's grace.
(A part of him envies her, that she is able to sleep and dream without the stain of sin invading her dreams, but dreams are for the young.)
Mark S. claimed that she was too young to understand a single thing Irving read, she just liked his voice. That thought was nice too.
But if she was too young to learn Kier's words directly, then she would just have to learn them through their example.
And given the fact that the examples she had to learn from were Carol D., Dylan, Mark, Petey and now Helly, well, she has as much working for her as against her.
Well, that's really not at all fair to Mark. He can be quite caring towards the girl when he thinks no one is watching. And he's been trying his best to be a good department head. He's not perfect - no one save Kier is perfect - but he's trying and his heart is in the right place. In some ways, that example is more valuable than perfection. It is something that Julie is able to achieve one day.
But for now, all she needs to do - all she can do, really - is take in the world she has been born in. To explore, to learn, to grow, to run (but not too far), to be held.
This child does not know woe or malice or dread. Perhaps there is too much frolic in her, but surely Kier could not begrudge a child her happiness.
Perhaps that is her purpose here.
"But where did she come from?" Helly asks. This is a child who is unbalanced, her desperation and malice drive her forward. Perhaps that is why Julie came to them so young. Severance was supposed to cleanse them of the filth staining their souls from the lives their outies have lived, but still those tempers linger. Irving himself recognizes the dread and malice within him, but here in Lumon, he is able to receive Kier's teachings with clear eyes. He hopes his outie can feel the echoes of those teachings in his own soul. He hopes he is living a good life.
"I assume that she is the child of another employee on the severed floor." Irving says. That is what they had all agreed upon at any rate. "Someone whose outie cannot provide childcare. It is not as if the child is in any danger and she is clearly well taken care of."
Julie is not in MDR every day, but when she is here, she is carried here in Mark's arms wearing a white collared shirt underneath a black pinafore dress. All Lumon issue.
"She was by the elevator," he would shrug.
"Is she severed?"
Irving's first instinct is to respond with outrage, disgust. Of course not! he wants to say. Of course they would not do this to a child. There would be no need. To do so would be -
And even in his thoughts he cannot allow himself to finish that sentence so he swallows down the feeling and replies with a flippant "Of course not, Helly. What kind of people do you take them for?"
dylan g.
It's...different knowing that he's got his own kid out there.
Like, Dylan's thought about it. He's considered the possibility that his outie's had like 10 or 12 children with some smoking hot babe, but he's never really thought about what that would mean. If he did ever think about it, he probably would have thought that he'd feel about his kids the way he feels about Julie - a little kid he hangs out with once in a while who is so cute that sometimes he wants to squish her. But she's not his and he's always known that. She's just some random kid that they kind of let wander around.
And then he met his son and he didn't even meet the kid for that long. Less than thirty seconds of holding him in his arms and hearing his voice calling him "Daddy" was enough. He'd die for that kid. He'd kill for that kid. He'd run into a burning building, fight off a bear, rebel against the evil corporation keeping his consciousness prisoner for that kid. But, more importantly, he'd live for that kid.
Yeah, that last one was a trippy thing to realize. He wants to live. He wants a life outside of these walls and hallways. A life where he has more to his name than some fingertraps and caricatures, maybe an engraved plaque. Before, his biggest aspiration was a waffle party and maybe even his face etched in, like, a diamond cube or something.
He thinks about what his outie named him. He hopes it was something cool like Hunter or Malik or Zander. Fuck, maybe his name is Dylan, but whatever name he got is automatically the coolest name ever because its his kid's name and his kid is a fucking badass.
helly r.
It's fucked, isn't it? That she knows what the sky is, what it looks like, but she'll never get to see it. That she knows where Delaware is, but she'll never get to go there. That she knows what a mother is, but she can't remember her own.
All she has is the ceiling's fluorescent lights, the identical, endless hallways of Lumon, and...Irving? He's the most Mom-like out of her very limited options of Mark and Dylan. Even if she expands her list to include Milchick and Cobel, she's still pretty sure that Irving's the mom.
"Where's your mom?" She asks Julie S. "What's her deal?"
Julie S., sat on the floor by their desks coloring some paper with crayons, looks up at her with a befuddled look on her little face. She thinks for a moment, then shakes her head at Helly before returning to her drawing.
"You've got a mom, right? They didn't just hatch you out of an egg or something? Grow you in a machine?"
Julie frowns at her like she's stupid. Helly's seen that look before on someone else's face.
"Helly, stop bothering Julie," Mark says, not taking his eyes off of his computer.
Mark doesn't dote on Julie the way Dylan or Irving do, but he's probably the most intense about her. He’s always just...watching her. Even when he's not looking at her, he's watching her. He's the first to notice if she's doing something she's not supposed to do. She never trips or falls because he's always just...there before it can happen.
She asked him in the beginning if the fact that her name is Julie S. and his name is Mark S. meant that they were related, but he just rolled his eyes at her.
"I mean, there are plenty of names that start with 's'." He said. "It's more than likely just a coincidence." The wording implies to Helly that he's had that same thought before and dismissed it to himself in the exact same way. "We don't even look alike."
Helly kind of disagrees, but she supposes most of the people here have dark hair and dark eyes. She's the only outlier.
Helly feels something tugging at her and looks down to see Julie with one fist clenched in her skirt and the other hand holding up the drawing she was working on. "It's you!"
It's...ugly, but Helly guesses that since she's just some kind of baby, she doesn't really have it in her to do any better. Better luck when she's got fine motor function.
"Yeah, sure I guess."
Julie wiggles the drawing in her hand. "For you!" She glances at the other desks, where the others have Julie's scribblings of them. Mark keeps his next to his Allentown cube.
"Oh, um, no thanks."
Julie blinks up at her. Then blinks at her some more. Then looks up at where Irving is staring at Helly and mouthing take the picture at her. Helly shakes her head at him. She doesn't want it. Irving gives her another, a deeper level of disappointment that hits something primal at the center of her brain. "I mean, sure, cool. I'll take it."
But Julie clutches the picture to her chest and toddles over to Irving's desk. He gasps with an exaggerated delight that Helly doesn't think she's capable of faking. "Why thank you so much, dear one. It's lovely." He picks her up and settles her on his lap. "Can you put that right there next to the other ones? Good job!"
What's even the point of lying to her? That pictures a mess and the only thing that vaguely resembles Helly is the shade of red crayon she used. It's not like she’s ever going to be able to become an artist. They're probably raising her to be the perfect Lumon drone. She's probably the next phase of whatever they're trying to do with this severance shit. Why have workers who have an innie and an outie when they can just grow people who are all innie, all the time?
They're first mistake was leaving them with enough information to realize that all of this was fucked up before they get so beaten down by hopelessness that they give up and comply or try to kill themselves. Helly hopes she finds enough mistakes to actually accomplish something meaningful besides plucking out all of her eyelashes and ripping off her nails. She hopes she is able to figure this out before Lumon is able to learn if this experiment is successful or not. She's probably got like 10 years.
It's so fucked that she knows what hell is and can never escape it. That she knows what dreams are, but can never sleep.
mark scout.
Mrs. Selvig is a sweet, if dotty, old lady so he can never be too mad when she obliviously walks out into a minefield, but Mark sure wishes she had enough awareness to stop poking around the mines with a sharp stick.
He should have expected the conversation to veer into this direction once he mentioned that Devon was pregnant, but the question still blindsides him. He would have rather she punched him.
"Did you and your wife ever think of having children?" She asks over tea one Saturday morning. It was the worst possible question on the worst possible day. Maybe his innie has got some major deadline coming up, but he left work feeling wrung out and he woke up feeling even worse. "My two boys, God bless them, are my heart and soul. If only they'd call more. Haha!"
"We tried, but it, um, it didn't work out." Mark takes another sip of her terrible tea and hopes she leaves it at that, but Mark learned a long time ago that there's no point in hoping for anything.
"Oh? What do you mean?"
He really doesn't want to answer, but he has better manners than to tell this lady to fuck off and mind her own business and she's really the only person he talks to beside his sister. "We, um, we lost the baby. My wife...she miscarried and after that..."
Mrs. Selvig takes his hand that was resting on the table between them. Her hands were cold. "Oh, Mark. I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have asked. I've had two miscarriages myself and it must have been so hard for you both."
He swallows the lump in his throat. "It was, but it was a long time ago. She wasn't even that far along."
"Still,the pain of it lingers. I remember my husband and I already had names picked out. Did you...?"
Mark stands abruptly. "Mrs. Selvig, thank you for coming over, but it's getting late and I had plans to meet with my sister for dinner."
"Oh, it really is quite late isn't it. Time flies when you are having good conversation." Mrs. Selvig collects her things but leaves the plate of cookies. "Just return the dish when you are done with them!"
"Of course, Mrs. Selvig."
"And, Mark," she says at the door. "I apologize if my questions were painful or unwelcome. I just want you to know that I am here for you if there's anything you want to talk about."
"Thank you, Mrs. Selvig. I think I might just be having a difficult week at work or something. Everything’s fine."
"If you say so," but she doesn't look convinced.
As soon as she leaves, Mark opens his liquor cabinet and cancels his fake plans with Devon to make time to drink until he goes blind.
The thing is that everything hurts now, even the happy things, and he feels like such an asshole because he is genuinely so, so happy for Devon (and Ricken too, he guesses) and he already loves her baby with whatever is left of his heart.
But whenever he thinks of the baby, all he can think about is how Gemma would have loved her too. She would have been there every step of the way. She would have driven everyone crazy with all the research she would have done about baby clothes and developmental milestones and schools. He can imagine the image board she would have made with all the pictures and cut outs and sticky notes and string for some reason, like an insane person.
He also knows she would be eaten up inside with jealousy and grief like he was. They would whisper it to each other in bed with the lights turned off like that would make those feelings not count somehow. It would be painful and ugly, but at least she would be feeling something. They'd be feeling something together.
But she can't feel anything anymore and if she was going to up and die on him, the least she could have done is take Mark's feelings with her, bury it with her so she can cradle in next to her heart for safekeeping until he could join her. But he still has them and he can try to cut them out with severance and with alcohol, but it's not a solution that he can see working forever. It's barely working now, but it's working better than what he was doing before, which was living with those feelings for an extra 8 hours a day he doesn't have to feel anymore.
He's started having dreams about her. Julia. He wanted her to get everything from Gemma and nothing from him, but maybe there could be something of him in the shape of her nose and the curve of her ears. Maybe she would have grown to resemble one of them more as she grew older, but she never would. She barely even grew at all.
Mark doesn't remember these dreams, but he still wakes up with the longing.
devon scout-hale.
Devon wishes it was five minutes ago when all she had to worry about was hosting Ricken’s book reading and her brother’s severe depression. God, it’s so fucked that she misses the time when that was her only problem.
"Is that everything?" she asks, hopes.
"No, not really, but you've got the basics." It’s so weird to hear Mark talk like that. It’s like he’s the one who’s gone back in time. There’s something missing from his voice that was weighing him down before or now or? Fuck. What is her life?
"Yeah, Lumon is evil and is keeping a bunch of people's innie's prisoners. Very basic stuff."
"Seems pretty straightforward to me,” he shrugs. Little shit. Of all the traits that could be inherent in someone’s being, Devon didn’t think being a sarcastic little asshole was one of them.
It’s wild. For there to be a version of Mark who never had Gemma. To be able to talk to him about her and for that to make him smile. God, she knew that her death destroyed him, but seeing Mark like this makes her realize just how much was destroyed.
"Oh, wait, there is something. There's a kid down there on the severed floor."
"A-a what? What the fuck?"
"A kid. Well, a toddler. She's two? We think she might belong to one of the employees in one of the other departments, but everyone we met so far have never seen her before. We don't know if she's severed or not. We don't think so."
She has a headache. That is fucked up in ways she can’t even process right now. She imagines Eleanor in Lumon’s clutches and she’s going to throw up? Hopefully this Mark isn’t a sympathetic vomiter like her Mark is. God, it was such a nightmare when they were kids.
"O-okay. A kid. There’s a kid in Lumon and they’re probably doing cartoonishly evil shit. Basic villain stuff. Does she have a name?"
"Julie. Julie S."
Her heart might have stopped? She’s definitely not breathing. The stress and the nonsense and the evil schemes were making her kind of flushed, but now she’s cold to her fingertips.
“Okay, so if it’s a girl, Julia,”
“Oh, that’s pretty.”
“And if it’s a boy-”
“It’s not going to be a boy.”
“Mark, you’ve got about a 50/50 shot of the baby being a girl.”
“Nope.”
“Oh my god, he’s been like this the whole time. Devon, please talk some sense into him.”
“Nope. She's a girl. I can feel it and if it turns out to be a boy, we’ll call him Ricken.”
“I would be most honored.”
”-von! Devon!” Mark’s voice pulls her from the memory. "Devon, where’d you go? Do you...know something?"
"No, no, it's probably just a coincidence.” Of course it’s a coincidence. It’s a pretty common name. She’s just- It’s the party planning and the conspiracy and hormones. They’re making her make connections that aren't there. “It's just that you and Gemma were - Nevermind. it's nothing. It's nothing. God, everything is so fucked up. We need to be really careful from now on because once your bosses figure out-"
"Jesus, I totally forgot. Cobel!"
cold harbor.
Someone is moving her bed.
She wakes up to the doctor's face at her bedside. Not the first thing she wanted to see when she woke up. She feels...like shit. She's sore everywhere and exhausted even though the clock one the wall shows that she's been asleep for 10 hours at least.
The last thing she remembers were the cries from little, healthy lungs before exhaustion and pain and blood loss led to her passing out.
The room is empty, save for the doctor. They removed the pregnancy books she had annotated and dog-eared. Someone has cleaned her while she was asleep, put her in fresh clothes. There's an IV in her arm and judging from the grogginess, she's still on some kind of painkiller. Is that alright? That won't affect her milk, will it?
"Where is my baby?"
"Oh, she's just in the other room getting a check up. She's perfect. You did such a good job."
She hopes she did. That was the only thing she could do in this room. She didn't mind that much because she wasn't alone. Soon there would be someone else with her and it would be her responsibility to take care of them. She was so excited to meet her.
"She?"
"Yes, you gave birth to a healthy baby girl."
"Julia, then." She had settled on that name for a girl sometime during her second trimester. She doesn't know why. She just liked it. Felt...summery. Warm. She liked it so much she picked Julian for a boy.
"A good name. Very pretty name. I'll take you to her."
"Oh, yes, please."
The doctor helps her into a wheelchair and together they leave the room.
gemma scout.
Gemma comes to in a hospital bed. The doctor stands at the end of it like some kind of creep.
She feels...different. It's physical and it's mental and if someone doesn't give her some kind of explanation, she thinks she's going to go crazy.
"H-how long was I...?"
"You were in a coma, Gemma. The situation is...complicated, but you should be perfectly fine now. Some physical therapy to get back in tip top shape, but you are perfectly healthy."
"How long?"
"...About a year."
"A year." Gemma repeats blankly. "A year?"
She bursts into tears. She's inconsolable. Shaking. She slaps the doctor's hands away from her when he tries to comfort her, as if he could. She wants Mark. She wants to hold him or him to hold her. She feels like she's lost something. Something more than that year. Something infinitely fragile and precious.
mark s. and ms. casey
Mark S. met Julie S. during a wellness session with Ms. Casey.
It was early days. He was still getting used to the job and coming to terms with the nature of his existence. He had refined the Allentown file with a fervor and single-minded focus he had not felt before - well, obviously - or since. He felt...he didn't know how he felt. He didn't have the vocabulary to describe the sensation pushing against the inner walls of his lungs. He tried to explain it to the on-site nurse, but all she ever really did was provide bandages or ice packs and send them back to their desks.
"If you are sick, then your outie is responsible for managing your condition. Please have faith that he is doing his utmost to care for the condition of his body."
Irving and the passages of the handbook he suggested he read were a little helpful. Well, no, actually they weren't helpful at all but at least trying to think they were helpful distracted him for a little while. Petey did his best to guide Mark through whatever this crisis was, but he tried too hard to be casual about everything that it was difficult to flip the switch and take things seriously. The game of bingo they played during Irving B's tour of the Perpetuity Wing - another attempt to help Mark find meaning in the life he had been given - was fun, but it was another distraction.
Ms. Cobel noticed Mark's difficulties - he's not sure how since he barely ever saw her - and scheduled a wellness session for him.
Ms. Cobel escorted Mark to the Wellness Center herself, something Petey would tell him later he's never seen her do before. She took a moment to look at the painting of Kier hung up on the wall with a hand over her heart before she went to knock on one of the two doors.
"Ms. Casey," she called. "We're ready for you."
After a beat, the door opened and a woman stepped out. She was beautiful, Mark noted, but he noted this with the same sense of detachment he noticed the color of the carpet or the taste of his coffee. She was also probably the...seventh person he'd ever seen in his entire life.
"Ms. Casey, this is Mark S," Ms. Cobel introduced. "Mark S., this is Ms. Casey, the wellness counselor of the severed floor. She will be conducting your wellness session today."
There's a glint in Ms. Cobel's eye that Mark doesn't know how to read. He never figures out how.
"Your session is scheduled for thirty minutes, after which you will return to your workstation." Ms. Cobel said. "I hope you find it suitably...rejuvenating." She walked over to the exit to the Wellness Center and turned back to look at Mark and Ms. Casey. She paused for a beat, then a beat longer, and Mark eventually realized she was waiting for something. He turned to look at Ms. Casey, who looks back at him with this kind of placid expression.
"Yes, I hope so too," Mark said eventually. "Thank you, Ms. Cobel."
She nodded her head at him and then finally left.
"Won't you come inside?" Ms. Casey asked.
Mark followed her inside. The room was different from anything else he'd ever seen before. It was almost overwhelming - the colors, the lights, the tree.
The...?
"Um...?" Underneath the tree sat a bassinet. It took him a second to realize what it was exactly, it blended in with the rest of the Lumon furniture perfectly, but the baby lying inside of it was hard to mistake for anything else. "What...?"
"Ah, yes, Mark S, this is Julie S." Ms. Casey led him to the bassinet and gestured at the baby. She wasn't asleep like he initially thought she was. She was so quiet. She stared up at Mark with dark eyes like she was unsure what to make of him before her eyes flitted to Ms. Casey and then the mobile (of what Mark now recognized as the Four Tempers) spinning sedately above her. "Julie S., this is Mark S."
"Um, right. Hi, Julie." He wiggled his fingers at her. She blinked at him and her mouth twitched. A smile?
There's a different unnameable feeling growing in his chest. He felt dizzy and warm.
"Whose baby is this?" Mark asked. He was scared of Ms. Casey's answer and he didn’t know why.
"I'm taking care of her for the afternoon." She said.
"Oh, they're making you babysit and conduct wellness sessions? Isn't that a lot to put on your plate?"
Ms. Casey shook her head. "You are my only session today. I hope her presence does not prevent you from receiving the full benefits of a wellness session. I can ask Ms. Cobel or Mr. Milchick to take her -"
"No!" Mark startled himself with how quickly the response left his lips. "She's...sweet. She can stay."
Ms. Casesy's lips twitched. A smile? "She is very sweet. Not very fussy. Babies are supposed to be fussy. I think she likes the music."
With that, she sat down and he took that as his cue to sit in the chair opposite her. He started to feel...twitchy when he couldn't see Julie. What if she, he didn't know, rolled over or something and hurt herself somehow? This strange anxiety didn’t dissipate until Ms. Casey pulled the bassinet closer to her so she's able to peer inside.
The music began to play louder and Ms. Casey pulls out a paper. "What I'd like to do is share with you some facts about your outie because your outie is an exemplary person. These facts should be very pleasing. Just relax your body and be open to the facts. Try to enjoy each equally."
Mark was not sure what he was expecting from the wellness session. He was hoping someone would be able to tell him what all these nameless feelings are. He tried to explain it with all the feelings he did have names for, like Irving had suggested, but it only made him more confused. It was mostly woe, he thought, but with a little dread. There's malice too, but he doesn't know where it's directed. He felt bad because sometimes he pointed it at Petey or Irving or Carol when they had done nothing to create those feelings in him.
But sometimes it's frolic followed by a sharp spike of woe.
The facts about his outie didn’t really help. He didn’t really spend much time thinking about his outie. He was a stranger to Mark like Mark is a stranger to him. The only thing they share is a name and body, which on paper sounds like it should be significant, but in practice, not so much.
So he didn't really care about the facts, but Julie S. might have been on to something. Halfway through the session, Mark closed his eyes and, while Ms. Casey reminded him not to fall asleep, didn't stop him. Her voice reciting the facts was very soothing and blended with the music in a way that unlocked whatever it was that was stopping him from taking full breaths. He thought he could fit all those nameless feelings inside of him.
Before Mark knew it, a half hour had passed. Ms. Casey stood. "That will be all for today. I hope you found these facts comforting and motivating."
"Uh, right, sure. Absolutely. Thanks, Ms. Casey." Mark stood as well and began to leave the wellness center. "And, um, bye, Julie."
"Mark," Ms. Casey called out to him before he left. "Would you like to hold her?"
"Yes," and he shocked himself again without how quickly that answer left his lips. Ms. Casey didn't make a single identifiable expression, but she nodded. She lifted Julie out of her bassinet with smooth, practiced movements and showed him how to hold Julie without dropping her.
"H-hi, there." Mark thought that this is the most precious thing he's ever held and the most breakable. He didn't want to let go of her because he didn't know what would happen to her if he did. Maybe this was why they are having Ms. Casey take care of her. Screw the facts about his outie. Holding a baby was all he needed to quiet whatever unnameable noise was running amok in his head.
"You guys make a good team." He said without thinking as rocked Julie gently in his arms. He couldn’t take his eyes off of her. Was it strange that he loved the way she breathed? "A wellness team."
"Thank you." Ms. Casey said quietly. She let this moment exist for a little while longer, before she reminded him. "You need to return to work soon."
"R-right." He said. He didn't want to let go of her, but it's okay if he's letting her go to Ms. Casey. Ms. Casey takes Julie back. "Thank you again, Ms. Casey."
Ms. Cobel was waiting for him at the entrance of the Wellness Center. He remembers that she was breathing kind of quickly, but her voice was steady. "Hello, Mark. How are you feeling?"
"Um, better, yeah. Ms. Casey was really helpful."
Sometimes he feels like Ms. Cobel's eyes can stare right into his soul. Sometimes it feels like she holds it by its throat. So he didn't say what he was really feeling. He doesn't ask the question he desperately wanted the answer to.
Is there a feeling that is a mix of all four tempers equally? Can someone feel all of that and not fall apart?
???
There are parts of them, fragments of a fragment of a fragment, that scream at them when they look at her. To pick her up and run and never look back.
But they don't have the words to describe that feeling.
But they still feel it.