Helena is no stranger to eyes on her. To eyes on her body, supposed x-ray vision seeing through the fabric of her clothes and her being; right into the core of what she is. Years ago she would’ve called herself a weapon. Lifetimes ago she would’ve called herself a person. Now she recognises the body she’s caged in for what it is - a trap.
Jame always knew when she was lying, even when Helena herself failed to recognise the deception. He knew when her apologies were false, when her plate was not scraped clean but instead emptied into a corner she thought no one would spare a glance at.
“Do you know what you are?” He would ask her when she was as small in age as she was in size, her legs barely the length of the dinner table’s. He enjoyed her most like this. Helena understood him more now that she’s faced with an adversary of her own. How ironic that her enemy would also be the version of her that knew the word no.
But what good is the defeat of an enemy when they have accepted their loss long before the battle even began? Helena may not have been a fighter, may not have embodied and controlled the tenets etched into her from birth, but her father didn’t need a fist to the face to see a challenge. At least, not when it came to her.
“An Eagan.” She used to reply, innocence and naivety barely saving her from immediate ridicule. The man masquerading as her father would chuckle, a sound she learned to fear rather quickly, a mockery of animalistic survival instincts.
“Your daughter.” She would scream, during the times she could feel her psyche fracturing with her identity, broken, failed, wrong.
He didn’t care for her answers, didn’t ever permit Helena’s inability to recognise the reality of what her existence truly was. And it was his tone that she thought of most in the dark hours of the night, her silk pressed pyjamas lying unnaturally against her skin; the seams of her buttoned shirt cleaving deep beneath the layers of her skin. She longed for a companion, a stuffed toy, a friend . But Helena was threatening enough on her own. Never against his well being, no, he conditioned her far too well for that. But her insubordination could cost him his reputation, his standing. It could make others realise the act of ‘father’ was just that: an act.
His tone is what she learned to recognise, when she knew punishment was coming, when she knew the hands that reached for her wouldn’t bother with the pretense of care before curling to strike. How his mouth would twitch over the word “Daughter” in a way Helena’s childlike mind learned to associate with kindness.
She was thirteen when she realised what he was looking for, when he demanded she tell him who this stranger in the body he created was.
“Nothing.”
His lips would twitch again, into a smile this time; the hands that reached for her masking their insidious path of desire with paternal protection
And the silk pressed pyjamas would no longer be lying against her skin, but she had no tether to hold onto. In those moments, though few and far between, Helena ceased to be. She was as she had always been, and always would be. His daughter, an Eagan, his thing; nothing.
He had always enjoyed watching her eat, breakfast in particular, as though she ever bothered to consume something at any other point in the day. Why would she, when he wouldn’t be present for her production?
Nowadays her mind wanders to the fraud that wears Helena’s skin as her own, as if this spectre of Helena’s life had any idea what it was like to possess the appearance of Lumon’s heiress. Helly would flinch if Jame lifted a hand towards her, even if it was just to caress, she wouldn’t understand that flinching only made his smile morph into a grin. Helly wouldn’t understand that sometimes it’s better not to fight the inevitability of family.
There were so many parts of her lost to time, memories erased not by Lumon’s advanced scientific procedures but instead by the little self preservation Helena had left. Does Helly feel the burden of femininity, of womanhood, the way Helena does?
She dresses Helly each morning in the way she herself was taught to do decades ago, skirt cut at the knees but no higher, sleeves down to the wrist despite her markings never lasting past her twelfth birthday. She tried so hard to make a lasting impact on the landscape of her being but every attempt was futile. Jame knew her too well. If he had to shave her legs bare himself to prevent her hands coming into contact with a blade, well, that was just another burden he was willing to shoulder as any Father would.
Does severance allow others’ perceptions to transfer over to the other inside of her? Their eyes must see the same thing, even if her innie refused to let them look. Refused to let Helena mold her as Jame molded Helena. Helena has seen the CCTV footage, though it’s impossible to reconcile the idea of innies seeing her raw, bleeding and ugly, then responding with everything except disappointment.
The thing’s wrists must ache from hours of typing and scrolling and sorting. Does she know they aren’t meant to feel that way? Does she recognise that under the throbbing intensity of pain, there’s something sharper? A shape. A circle. The imprint of fingers wrapped desperately around where her hand meets her arm.
Helena doesn’t leave bruises, her skin was never hers to mark (Jame knew to remind her of this until it sunk in fully) but surely Helly has felt the ghost of her grip all the same. If Helena compulsively checks the circumference of her flesh and bone every hour, is not muscle memory for Helly to do the same?
Helena has never been a person, has always been something imperfect, flawed, a stain on her legacy. Yet somehow a further segmented girl born from the already countless identities suppressed behind pearly white teeth and a talk show smile is more of a person than Helena is.
Does the half-life inside of her not see this body for what it is?
Does anyone?
Helena’s hand hovers over the rewind button, vision blurred but stuck on the stupid hallway and her stupid innie and it’s insulting infatuation with another thing.
She feels sick to her stomach. It should be Helena.
Though on which side, she’s not sure.