Chapter Text
—
Mark massages his temples, eyes squinting against the mid-morning light. They’ve probed his mind, performed actual basement surgery on his brain, and now he’s being told to stare at the insides of his eyelids for the next thirty minutes? This isn’t going to do anything. He says as much to Reghabi, who gives him a hard look.
“Give it a chance, Mark.”
Of all the non-invasive bullshit her and Devon could have cooked up, how did they land on meditation?
“It was that or another five-inch needle in your brain. How’s the headache?”
Just as bad as when she asked three minutes ago, thank you. Mark heaves a sigh and rubs aggressively at his face. Devon left not long after he woke up (crying, might he add — he woke up crying. Devon will never mention it, but he’ll certainly never live it down). Reghabi told him later that Devon hadn’t slept the entire night, too preoccupied with ripping her a new one for almost killing him, or waiting silently for him to open his eyes. Once he was conscious and safe from any immediate brain damage, she kissed him on the forehead and took her leave.
You know, to be with her infant daughter.
Besides the painful incision on his scalp, Mark’s headache is drumming dully at the base of his skull, and moving his head at all only pisses it off. Five-inch needle indeed.
He still hasn’t moved from his position on the couch. His dreams left a residue on his subconscious — it’s been two hours since he woke up, and Gemma’s presence is stuck fast to him. Unwanted memories of her flit through his mind, dredging up emotions he’s hardly managed to subdue over the past years. He can feel her gaze digging into the hole in his head, where he let a surgeon split his brain in half just to forget her.
Devon was lying, he thinks, when she said that Gemma would be proud of his job. She’d be disgusted.
Glass clinks against a metal sink. Brought back to the present, Mark turns toward the kitchen, careful to twist his whole body to avoid another mind-numbing migraine. Reghabi’s washing his dishes, he notes. She wipes the suds off a plate and glares at him. What’s with this lady and the staring?
Reghabi hasn’t stopped moving around since Mark woke up. Checking his pulse, asking him questions that made no sense (“When’s the last time you visited Perpetuity?” “The what?”). Mark reaffirmed that he feels no different, that the flooding didn’t do anything besides make him stroke out and get a concussion. At that, she got even more restless. She’s tense, and he’s not sure why. Granted, he knows near nothing about her — at that revelation, he ponders on why he lets a murderous stranger live in his basement.
Reghabi breaks the awkward silence. “Look. We have very few options here, and you’re in far too delicate a state right now to play twenty-questions while I hold a metal rod to your brain.”
She sets the plate down and walks around the counter, making it easier for Mark to look up at her. “Meditation is slow, easy, and it’s all on your terms. Flooding the chip helped jump-start your reintegration, but we need more. And we need it to happen faster.” She motioned to his bedroom door. “Just humor me. Thirty minutes.”
Happy to return the eye-fuckery, Mark maintains a powerful I’m annoyed at you glare until Reghabi finally relents.
“I’ll be downstairs. Start screaming if you need me.” With that, Mark’s freeloader snags a cup of yogurt out of his fridge and darts downstairs.
The basement door creaks on its hinges with Reghabi’s exit. Without her incessant nagging, the living room suddenly feels utterly empty. Gemma’s still dissecting him with her eyes, just out of his periphery. The headache continues drumming a beat into his brain. He blinks very, very slowly.
“Fucking ridiculous,” he says, to absolutely nobody.
—
Mark eventually hauls his ass into the bedroom, beer in hand. With a groan, he slips a gray hoodie over his shirt and sits criss-cross applesauce in front of his bed. Waiting for the worst of his headache to subside, he holds the cold glass of the bottle against his forehead and observes the bedroom.
Mark is ashamed to admit that he never really moved into his bedroom. A few boxes are stacked against the wall to his right. Some clothes from his closet are strewn across the bed. A mirror leans against the wall in the corner of the room — Mark pointedly avoids looking at himself.
Comparing his bleak cookie-cutter house to the one he spent two years in with Gemma was unfair, but he finds himself yearning for its comfort nonetheless. Between the loved-after plants and the bookshelves full to bursting with Russian literature, their house was beautiful. Every room was meticulously arranged, lived-in, and so her that he couldn’t stand to live there after she died. The sun-soaked bed sheets of their old bedroom draw a stark contrast to his gray, boorish bedroom now. He keeps her things hidden in the shadows of his basement, like a coward.
He could never come close to matching the skill of Gemma’s interior decorating, anyway. It’s a moot point.
With the headache as mild as it’ll get, Mark shakes his ghosts away and sets the bottle beside him. He takes a few deep breaths, settles the palms of his hands onto his knees, and closes his eyes.
Almost immediately, he feels his eyelids twitching with the urge to open them, so he scrunches them shut.
…
His fingers tap a senseless rhythm, which he stills by gripping his knees.
…
His mind, which he’s been deliberately trying to keep empty, drifts to the beer beside him. Jesus Christ.
…
Mark lasts about four minutes before his resolve crumbles. Despite not moving at all, his head pounds and his ears are ringing. He touches an ear to see if it hurts, but the noise is already fading away. Grunting, he grabs the beer and brings it to his lips.
Mark tips the bottle back and drinks, eyes idly surveying the room. He should seriously unpack — what’s Gemma going to think if she ever has to live here? Bored eyes drift over the ceiling fan, boxes, mirror.
…
The mirror.
There’s a man in the mirror.
Mark gasps and immediately chokes on his drink. Sputtering, he wipes at his face and crawls towards it, ignoring the way his concussed brain throbs in protest. He grabs the mirror and tilts it directly at his face.
Whatever Mark saw is gone. What remains is a humbling reflection of his own face: bloodshot eyes, too-long hair, and the beginnings of stubble. His hoodie is stained from the beer he choked on. He combs a shaking hand through his hair. Did flooding the chip finally push his brain past its limit? Was that his innie, or is he tripping out?
What the fuck is he doing?
“I’m losing it,” Mark mutters. He picks up the mirror and walks it to the middle of the bedroom, placing it in front of him as he sits back down. He may as well commit to this — it’s not like he’s in any condition to go back to work, and this is freaking him out. He rests his hands on his sweatpants, closing his eyes.
It only takes a few seconds of silence before his headache picks up again. He grimaces at the stabbing behind his eyes and resists the urge to down his beer to dull the sensation. He probably should have just gotten Reghabi, he thinks. If he’s hallucinating shit, she should be here. She could tell Mark whether or not he was clinically insane.
…
It takes a few minutes to calm his heart down, hands rubbing up and down his thighs in a soothing pattern. His ears start to ring, much louder than before, and he winces against the onslaught of noise.
He takes one final, deep breath, and opens his eyes.
A suited man sits before him, wearing his face. He squints at Mark like he’s trying to decipher him. His hair is perfectly combed, if a little long — the exact style Mark does every morning before work.
Mark’s stomach drops like a stone. He’s frozen, aside from his heaving chest. This is fucking insane. This is so, so wrong.
The Other Mark leans forward, hand pressing against the hardwood floor to support his weight. His expression has morphed from morbid curiosity into mild terror. Mark watches the movement with wide and unblinking eyes, sharing the sentiment.
“Uhh,” the Other Mark says, and the world shudders.
His eyesight blurs and —
His bedroom isn’t his bedroom anymore. He’s sitting in a bathroom stall. Mere seconds allow him to glance down at his lap, see the bright orange book perched on his legs, before —
— reality slots itself back into place, and —
Mark is left reeling in front of his reflection, arms askew in the air like he’s trying to rebalance himself.
The migraine hits Mark like a bullet between the eyes. He instinctively brings his hands up to cradle his head, doubling over from the pain. Stuttering out a string of curse words, Mark scrambles to his feet, anxious to get as far away from that mirror as possible.
He bolts down the basement stairs, half-tripping on his way down. Reghabi’s wide eyes meet his half-lidded ones from the couch she’s perched on. Credit to her: she’s quick to get up and support his weight as he sways on his feet.
The pain behind his eyes is near-unbearable now. Reghabi grabs both of Mark’s shoulders and drags his stumbling ass to the couch. He feels something warm drip out of his nose and down his chin.
“I saw— I saw him,” he says.