Chapter Text
They sit still and unmoving on the edge of the bed, like figures carved in wax. Silent, rigid. Hollowed out by the weight of the wait.
Their shoulders are close but not touching, because as soon as they touch, they give in. And the sooner they give in, the closer this is to being over.
The room is dim with low, anxious light. Lumon shut off the power to the replica house two days ago. They’ve been getting by on the blue glow of the emergency strips and a handful of candles they scavenged from the dining room, but those, along with the meagre supply of vending machine snacks that Choreography and Merriment had smuggled in before they barricaded the doors shut, are running out. Time is running out.
It’s been weeks. Maybe longer. Time doesn’t obey the same rules down here.
Sometimes they snatch Helly from him. Flip the Glasgow Block and switch her out for Helena. It happens without warning. Mid laugh. Mid bite. Mid kiss. Mark reaches for the love of his life, only to find Helena’s cold dead eyes in her place. But even she is getting exhausted by it, now. She doesn’t even try to negotiate with him anymore. Just trudges around the house until it’s over, a prisoner waiting to be released.
Lumon is doing it to disorient them, keep them weak and scared. Helly always comes back, but each time it happens it leaves a fracture behind. It takes longer and longer for her to look like herself again.
But tonight, Helly is here.
She hasn’t looked at him since they sat down. She leans forward, elbows to knees, spine curved. She’s in a staring contest with the looming portrait of Kier on the wall and she’s winning. Mark hunches forward too, feeling the dull, stiff ache in his back. His hand hangs loose between them.
His voice is low when he speaks.
“How much time do you think we have left?”
Helly doesn’t answer right away. Her fingers knot and unknot in her lap.
“Not long.”
The answer lands like a pebble dropped in shallow water. No splash, only quiet ripples disrupting the surface tension. Mark nods slowly, then swallows. His pinky finger brushes her thigh. “What if this is the last time?”
She turns her head to look at him now. Her expression, calm and resigned. “It might be.”
Mark’s throat tightens. His gaze grips hers and doesn’t let go. Her face is almost gaunt, eyes rimmed in sleepless red, lips a little chapped. Battle worn and weary. She’s the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen in his life.
Helly studies him for a long moment. He sees grief in her eyes as she blinks back at him slowly, then breathes out through her nose. Not quite a laugh, not quite a sigh of defeat, but he understands.
“Let’s make it a good one,” she smiles.
When she reaches over and takes his hand, her fingers are colder than he expects. They sit like that for a moment, hands clasped, breath shared, the flickering light casting long shadows around them. Mark’s thumb moves over the back of her knuckles. His breath comes uneven and shallow.
She doesn’t speak, just shifts on the bed, knees widening slightly as she gently pulls him toward her. He rises without resistance, standing from the bed and dipping one knee between her legs.
Helly brings her hand to his face first, curling her fingers along his cheek like she’s tucking something delicate into place. Fingertips ghost over his thickening beard. His eyes scan her, memorising every detail, as though the memories aren’t going to dissipate like ink in water the moment they cross the threshold to leave. Her thumbs brush beneath his eyes, smoothing the exhaustion.
Their foreheads meet.
The first kiss is a whisper. Barely there, soft and trembling. He breathes into her parted lips more than he kisses her. She inhales him like oxygen.
The second kiss lingers. Her hands slide behind his neck, tangling with his unkempt hair. His mouth finds hers again, slow and wet and breathless. Their lips drag and catch, not urgent but infinite. He wants to force her mouth open and crawl inside of her, tongue first. Every kiss is an answer. Every pause is a goodbye.
Her hands drift down to the fabric of his shirt. Something stiff and dusty from Kier’s replica wardrobe. She doesn’t look down, just works open the buttons of her ancestor’s clothing with steady fingers, peeling away the past to make space for the present.
“You’re shaking,” she murmurs, voice soft against his lips.
“You’re not,” he breathes back, hands resting at her waist.
“It’s okay,” she tells him. “We’re okay.”
She pulls open his shirt. Mark shrugs out of it, eyes on her the whole time. His hands slide up the hem of her nightdress — another ancient relic pawed from the founder’s closet, one of Imogene’s. It suits them, being dressed as husband and wife.
Helly raises her arms, allowing Mark to undress her. He peels the fabric away and drops it to the floor. Her bare skin is warm beneath his palms as he traces the slope of her shoulders, the curve of her spine, the divots between her ribs.
He kisses her again, longer and deeper this time.
Their tongues move slow and heavy, thick like honey. Their breathing is louder now, interspersed with moans. Her fingernails dig lightly into his back, then trace around his abdomen and sink lower. Mark exhales shakily as she unfastens his belt. Lips graze his throat, teeth scraping lightly along his collarbone.
She whispers something into his skin. He doesn’t quite catch it. He doesn’t think it was meant for him.
She slides his trousers down slowly and he steps out of them, kicks them away. Then, he kisses down her neck, her chest, her sternum. Takes the flesh of her breast between his teeth and bites. Flicks his tongue over her nipple. Memorising the shape of her with his mouth. When he rises again they’re both bare. Fully nude, skin to skin. Nothing left between them.
Helly leans back into the mattress and Mark follows, covering her body with his. Their chests press together, breath shallow and slow — his trembling, hers steady. Her fingers tangle in his hair again and their mouths meet once more.
They move slowly, wordlessly. Something sacred. The sheets shift beneath them as Helly adjusts, laying on her back, hair spilling like silk across the pillow. Her skin is flushed with the heat of desire. Mark kneels between her legs. His eyes devour her. His hands hover, then settle, one beside her face, the other gliding up the inside of her leg.
He kisses his way down her body – throat, chest, stomach, hips – until he’s doing nothing but breathing against her skin. Not teasing, but not rushing either. His fingers slide between her folds and she gasps, still so fucking sensitive beneath his touch. He caresses her like she’s made of glass. She whispers his name on every out-breath as his thumb strokes her clit and his fingers slip inside her – one first, then another.
She arches, eyelids fluttering, breath catching like she might cry.
“Mark,” she whispers. “Please don’t stop.”
“Never,” he murmurs.
His fingers curl, gentle yet purposeful, finding the spot inside of her that begs to be touched. She moans, whimpers, writhes beneath him as she clutches at his arms. He sucks bruises into her abdomen, then the side of her breast, then her throat, mapping his way back to her lips.
When she’s ready – wet and open and aching for him – he slides his hand away and shifts between her thighs. She watches him, wide-eyed and waiting, vulnerable in a way that has nothing to do with nudity and everything to do with being exposed.
“Yes?”
“Yes.”
He asks her every single time.
He lines himself up and enters her slowly, so slowly, pushing inch by inch until he’s fully buried inside. They both gasp – her from the stretch, him from the feeling of being fully enveloped in something holy. He stills. Her hands come to his face, her thumbs brushing along his jaw. Their foreheads touch.
“Make it a good one,” she tells him again with a soft, heartbreaking smile.
He makes a sound between a laugh and a sob. Nods his head. His tears drip onto her cheeks.
He begins to move.
Slow, deep rolls of his hips. The kind that makes her legs curl around him, ankles hooking at the base of his spine. He rocks into her gently, never withdrawing from her all the way. Their skin is sticky with heat, mouths brushing between gasps. They are past words now, speaking only in the language of motion.
Their foreheads are pressed together, noses brushing, mouths open. Each thrust is painfully slower than the last. Drawn out and cosmic as he bottoms out inside of her until there’s nowhere left to go.
Helly squirms beneath him and he feels it – that restless energy creeping in. Mark craves the feeling of being on top of her, his larger body covering her petite frame, him a shield between her and the world, but the more she has learnt to hone her sexual desires, the less time she can spend on her back. Eventually, the need to be the one in control overcomes her, something feral and raw.
He scoops one arm beneath her back and flips them, adjusts so that he sits upright with his back against the ornate headboard and steadies her trembling thighs as she settles back into his lap. Helly wraps one arm around his shoulders and drops the other hand between them to grip him as she rises just enough to guide him back inside of her.
Mark’s arms circle her waist as she sinks down onto him again, gasping softly, her face pressing into the crook of his neck. She rocks back and forth, undulating her hips in a slow steady rhythm as she cards her fingers through his hair, nails scraping his scalp. He groans into her skin. They are sealed together, chest to chest, navel to navel, right down to where he’s buried inside of her to the hilt.
She kisses his temple, his cheek, his scruff at his jaw – then drops her lips and digs her teeth into the soft flesh of his shoulder deep enough to leave the grooves of her teeth in his skin. She lingers there in the moment, pressing, breath hot and shaking.
He knows what she’s doing. He needs more.
“Bruise me,” he breathes, voice rough and low, head tilted back against the wall.
When Mark gives this body back to his outie, he needs him to know that it belongs to Helly.
She scratches his back, fingers like claws in his flesh. He can feel the skin breaking beneath her nails. He doesn’t flinch, just groans into it. Pulls her tighter. “Again,” he grunts.
“Destroy him,” he tells her. “Make him pay. We’ll send him back to his wife with your stamp on his body. Right down to the fucking bones.”
Helly’s eyes go wide, then darken.
She grips his face in both hands and kisses him hard. Fingers tangle in his hair, one hand slips around to the back of his neck as she picks up the pace of her hips. Slick, frantic movements as she gasps against his lips. The pound of the headboard against the wall is a steady drumbeat, setting the pace for the chorus of moans.
She pulls back to bite his neck again, harder this time, then sucks and laps at the same spot, over and over again until he can feel a bruise forming. Claiming him more and more with each broken blood vessel.
Her nails rake his chest now, across his sternum, over his heart. Reach inside me and rip it out, he thinks, it’s yours – you can keep it.
She doesn’t draw blood, but the skin is raised and red in her wake. She digs in. He arches into it, gasping for breath. He moans, clutching her hips, lifting her up. She whimpers softly as he rolls them again, onto their sides this time, still connected.
Helly lies partially across him, one leg thrown over his waist. The pace is still hers to set, but now more of his body is exposed for the taking. She rides him this way, slow and angled, their faces close enough that they’re fighting over the same oxygen. He’d let her take the air right from his lungs. Mark’s hand finds the nape of her neck, tilting her head back to look into her eyes as her fingertips dig into his ribs hard enough to bruise.
With each slow roll of her hips she leaves something behind – a nip, a pinch, a bite – trailing down his back and side in a pattern only she understands. He groans now, thrusting into her, matching her grind, tempo climbing.
“Lie to me,” she whispers. “Tell me we find each other out there. Tell me we live.”
“Fuck, Helly,” he groans. “I’ll find you. I swear it.”
It’s not a lie. He’ll reintegrate. He’ll force Helena to do the same with a razor held to her throat. He’ll find her and he’ll claim her all over again.
It won't be hard.
She’s so easy to fall in love with.
She’s settled into a steady, purposeful rhythm now, as they climb toward the end. Mark’s hand falls to her hip, then slides down to grip her ass as she rocks against him, frantic and desperate. She presses her lips against his shoulder blade. He can feel her temple slick with sweat against his cheek.
“Come inside me,” she whispers, low and wrecked. “Push it deep. Make it stay there forever.”
Her words send them tumbling.
They come together. It hits like a tidal wave – slow, huge, all-consuming. Helly shudders violently, crying out his name as her body clamps down around him. Mark grunts into her throat, holding her so tightly he could break her in two, thrusting deep as he spills into her, trembling.
He doesn’t pull out of her when it’s over. They don’t speak. Not for a long time.
Helly stays draped across him, her face buried in his neck. Her fingers ghost over the marks she made on his skin, soothing the sting and ache. Mark strokes her back with shaking hands, anchoring himself to the heat of her skin. The only sound is breath – thick and uneven.
Eventually, the moment breaks.
Helly shifts, pressing a kiss to his temple as she begins to move. She lifts herself off him with a quiet gasp, hissing the moment he slips free from her body. A sharp, involuntary sound of loss, of emptiness she wasn’t ready to feel. Mark reaches for her, but she’s already climbing from the bed.
She crosses the room in silence, feet nimble across the hardwood floor. Stops at the antique writing desk, trails her fingers over the polished wood, ghosting over the quill and ink pot. With delicate steps, she moves around to the other side, pulls out the chair and begins to rifle through the drawers.
Then, she finds what she’s looking for. Holds it up. Mark hasn’t seen one before, but he knows what it is.
A compass.
She lifts it gently, turns it between her fingers. The metal glints in the low light like a blade. It looks heavy, weighted in her palm. It’s a tool meant for precision. For control. For drawing perfect circles – endless, looping, unbroken. Something to define boundaries. To keep things contained.
She walks back toward the bed slowly. Mark watches with curiosity and dread. He’s sitting up now, legs folded beneath him, the bruises she left beginning to bloom across his chest and arms.
The compass catches the light in her hand, and for a split second – he thinks she’s going to ask him to die with her.
He sees it – a flash of them side by side on the bed. Sheets soaked red, hands still clasped. Two bodies, four lives, all of them gone. It would be easy, he thinks. Simple. Peaceful. Like stepping in the elevator and never getting back out.
For one terrible, trembling second, he thinks that if she asks, he’d say yes.
She crawls back into the bed beside him, tucking one leg beneath herself and raising the other, baring the soft, pale skin of her inner thigh. She holds the compass in one hand, steady, breathing slow as she raises it to hover above her skin.
Mark shifts onto his knees beside her. “Helly…” he croaks out, soft and wary.
“This is my body,” she cuts him off. “Mine. She gave it to me. And she doesn’t get to just take it back and pretend I was never here.”
Then, without flinching, she presses the point into her skin.
Mark startles forward, grabbing her wrist. “Jesus—Helly, don’t. You don’t have to—”
“I do.” She looks at him now and her eyes are glassy, full of fire and fear and life. “Please, Mark. I need this.”
He doesn’t try to stop her again. He just kneels beside her, one hand resting on her bent knee, and watches.
A thin red line appears.
Her hand shakes, but she doesn’t stop. She pulls the skin taut with one hand and carves slowly, one line, over and over in uneven, jagged strokes. The sound it makes is sickening – metallic scrapes, flesh surrendering, breath catching, sweat beading at her temples. She bites the inside of her cheek and exhales as she begins a second, angled line that joins with the first at the tip.
Mark watches in stunned stillness. He can’t process it, not right away. He leans forward instinctively, rubbing slow soothing circles into her leg, tracing her knee, then down her calf, then back up.
Then, she draws a third line. Another angle.
His mouth opens. Closes.
It’s not random, it’s a letter.
The M begins to form – jagged and rough, but unmistakable.
“No–wait,” he breathes. “Helly—stop. What are you—no.”
Her jaw is clenched now, her body tight. Knuckles white around the metal. Blood beads in the shallow grooves, not pouring, but enough that Mark feels the sting as though it’s happening on his own skin. He reaches for her, grabs her wrist.
Her gaze flicks up, locking onto his.
“I’m doing this for me, not you,” she promises.
He nods, tears pricking at his eyes, and lets her continue. She pulls her arm from his grip and finishes the final stroke. Smooths her skin over the fresh, raw letter when she’s done.
It’s a sacred blemish on porcelain skin.
Mark can’t move at first, he’s frozen in place. Gaze flickering between her eyes, the wound, the trembling strength in her shoulders. His hand hovers near her thigh, unsure if he has the right to touch her at all. Then he leans forward, slowly.
He kisses her lips first. Not with hunger or urgency, but with unyielding devotion. His hand cups her jaw, her lips soft and pliant beneath his. She melts into it, lets herself be kissed like she’s the most precious thing in the world. When he pulls back, he doesn’t say anything. Just lowers his head.
He kisses her thigh, just beside the letter. His lips land against unbroken skin — warm, damp with sweat. He lingers there, mouth pressed to the red mark blooming beside the place where she carved him into herself.
He lifts his head. His voice catches in his throat.
“Do one on me.”
Helly blinks. Her mouth opens slightly, as if to protest, but he’s already shuffling closer, watching her with open, naked eyes. She studies him for a long moment, her breathing still uneven, then a soft smile creeps onto her face and she climbs into his lap.
Mark catches her by her hips, steadying her as she straddles him. Their bodies press together again, skin to skin. She brings her face close, forehead brushing his, and for a moment they just breathe like that. Quiet. Connected.
“It only hurts for a second,” she whispers.
He thinks this is going to hurt for the rest of his life.
Then she takes his arm. She lifts his bicep, holding it steady between them. The muscle is taut beneath her fingers, already marked with the fading shadows of her mouth. He winces as she presses the compass to his skin. She shushes him gently, lips against his temple, then resumes.
The first stroke draws a faint hiss from Mark. His other arm tightens around the small of her back, grounding himself. She repeats the motion again and again as the line thickens, then draws back to admire her work.
Helly smirks, just a little. The tension breaks for a flicker of breath.
“You want an H, right?” she murmurs. “Not an M?”
Mark breathes out a laugh. “Carve whatever you want. I’m yours either way.”
She bites her bottom lip to stop the smile, but it’s there. She leans forward and kisses the corner of his mouth. Then she continues.
As she draws the second line, her body begins to move—slow circles of her hips, just enough for him to feel the friction between them. His head tips back slightly, mouth parting, a groan slipping loose as her slick heat slides against him.
She keeps carving. Keeps grinding.
His cock is hard again beneath her, caught between them, sliding against her folds but never quite penetrating as she rocks in a steady, aching rhythm. He buries his face in her neck, gasping softly as her hand guides the compass to finish the third stroke. Blood beads up just beneath the surface, and she doesn’t stop moving. Doesn’t stop touching.
The final stroke is slower.
Deeper.
As she presses it in, she raises up then sinks down on him—his body slipping back inside hers, still sore, still tender from before. They both hiss through gritted teeth.
Mark shudders, mouth against her shoulder. “Fuck…”
“Almost done,” she whispers, voice shaking.
She draws the last stroke of the H as her hips roll forward, taking him deeper.
When she’s finished, she tosses the compass behind her. It clatters somewhere on the floor as she picks up the pace of her hips, frantic and needy movements as she whines.
Helly grips the outside of his bicep, hovering over the H. Then, she squeezes, pressing her thumb into the letter as hard as she can. Sealing it in place, forever.
That’s what does it.
Mark tenses beneath her, gasping, clinging. Helly cries out, sharp and strangled. Not from pain, but from the unbearable flood of feeling. They climax together again, slower this time, their bodies pressed flush, the wounds between them no longer metaphor.
Helly rests her forehead to his. Blood runs gently down his arm. Sweat slips down her spine. Marks fingers trace soft, absent circles on her thigh around the M. The air cools around them.
When the final candle burns out, the quiet, suffocating pressure takes hold.
The dread.
It creeps back in like a fog rolling over the horizon. Like footsteps down a quiet hallway. Like the nauseating realization that nothing they’ve done, and nothing they will do, is enough to stop what’s coming for them.
They know the end is near.