i think about mark s' first minutes alive consisting of petey k asking "who are you" 19 times and mark vowing to find and kill him on instinct, cornered and afraid like a newborn foal in a locked room. mark s, who wakes up every day in the same underground, windowless office choking on grief and anger he can't explain and tries to escape, even if that escape is by definition a suicide, and fails. petey k, who greeted him upon arrival under their jailers' eyes so he couldn't offer words of reassurance (or did he, just like mark s who broke protocol for helly, and they both got punished for it in the same way?), who watches and worries and takes care of mark s by mapping the floor despite the express forbidding of it in search of a way out while mark s is tortured into ataraxic resignation. petey k, who finds a way to reintegrate (mark scout reintegrated without asking mark s because he wanted to see gemma alive, did petey k reintegrate without asking peter kilmer because he wanted mark s to live?) and goes to his very good friend's outie and shows him a recording of mark s, exhausted and begging in the break room. i think about mark scout, who let this stranger crash in his basement for a few days, who watches him collapse even as his relieved eyes meet his, thinking of someone else, and scrolls past a headline of his death, and attends his funeral out of duty for a version of himself that was loved enough to die for.
i think about helly r, who was seen and loved by mark, dylan and irving (let me out, give me a reason to stay, what is my reason to be as i am) as she respectfully penned requests for her outie to quit, as she got told she was not a person and, like mark s, saw suicide as the only way to get out for so long. as she was brought to the shrine to the family that made the only existence she gets a living hell, unbeknownst to her, by irving, who was being swallowed by the absence of a family himself, both inside and outside of the severed floor. i think about a suicidal irving b in front of that fire escape, standing alone and away from dylan's worried looks, having to break the only hug he's initiated in his whole life as dylan gets dragged away to the promise of a "real" family in dylan george's wife, away from irving (who is dylan g's family only, not dylan george's, who loves him so dearly, this dylan who knows that leaving is dying, who noticed irving was sweet on burt, who encouraged the courtship - who, alongside felicia, voiced the only positive acknowledgement of burt g and irving b's relationship as romantic with kindness). irving b who, unlike mark s and helly r upon their arrival, was told that he would not be dragged back if he chose to quit during that workday in particular, as if it was an act of mercy. irving b who came back anyway, because they killed his burt but that's not his helly, and he's dylan's favorite perk, and mark is being used by every single person inside and outside of the severed floor. mark with the weird sense of humor that only petey enjoyed, who hid petey's photo before irving was ready to say goodbye, and who mocked his greeting but still found out what was for dinner. mark, who took them all to O&D under the threat of torture the second he saw irving berate himself for wanting to visit burt. and he figures it out! and he gets their helly back, helly who was never cruel, whom his capacity for cruelty touched for a few seconds that he will never stop being sorry for. he doesn't get a permission slip to kill himself, but he gets to hold helly close and comfort her one last time in the way he had wanted to and never dared to, using this body that is also his to hug her like she did dylan, to tell him and mark that they are forgiven, that he's at peace with this choice. that he's feeling the warmth of the sun on his face for the first and last time in his life and that all three of them are loved enough to die for.
i think about dylan george's "stop being nice [to me]" to his wife because he didn't get the door salesman job. i think about dylan george, who forgot about the cookies but remembered to ask gretchen if the time with his innie was nice. i think about gretchen saying she kissed his innie because he reminded her of the way dylan used to be, and dylan referencing his (precarious, so precarious) financial contribution to the household in the same breath he threatens to quit so that this version of him (that he was, at some point, that he isn't anymore) won't take gretchen from him. i think about dylan g talking to gretchen george about her life with his outie and their children with ms. huang watching and listening and growing quieter on the other side of a CCTV system, and proposing to her because there's nothing to be had inside the severed floor anymore (mark has barely been down there since the ORTBO and might not come back at all, they took helly and he didn't even notice or listen to irving's suspicions that he was trusted with. how is he supposed to separate the guilt from the fear? what if it's helena again? how will he ever find the elevator now that irving's dead? does he really have the strength of two men? is he dumb? is he a dick? is he an asshole down here too?). i think about gretchen saying no to the proposal and to the visiting hours altogether if it means he gets to live, but about how she knows that she's not all he has. how dylan g must have told her about irving b, about the funeral, about helly and mark, about petey and their jokes. how gretchen must've told dylan george about all this, dylan george who writes to dylan g after he tried to quit without his prompting, to tell him both fuck you and that he gets it, both the suicide and the loving gretchen, and he won't take the choice to quit (and die) away from dylan g, but still encourages him to fight for what he has down there.
i think about burt goodman, who lost his job because a part of him he condemned to a life of forced labor as atonement fell in love with a man he will never meet, that his husband will never be, a version of himself with a lov he believes he could never have after what he's done for lumon. i think about him recording a video for the formal execution of what he thought of as an innocent version of himself telling everyone at O&D that despite the conspicuous absence of their memories, he feels burt g's fulfillment from working there, and their love. i think about how he assumed that burt g's lover would be there, even if irving b's presence was a clerical error that would lead to a crack in lumon's image so large it would set the foundation of its downfall as a company but not before getting irving b killed. burt goodman, who heard a desperate stranger at his door screaming his name and followed him for weeks, who invited him for dinner to facillitate the breaking and entering of a company higher up into his house in search for excuses to kill him, who saw his own complicity in the death machine of lumon pencilled carefully alongside all the names of people irving bailiff was trying to help, and heard him say "i know now that you're not with them" even as he tensed in fear, even as he found his home violated (this time knowingly, unlike the night of the dinner), because his service dog (the only one that takes care of irving bailiff, the only one that irving bailiff can take care of) was at ease. burt goodman, who was asked to take irving bailiff to his death, and irving bailiff, who knew this and still got in burt's car. burt goodman, who would give up his life so that this innocent love a part of him had with this stranger lives in some way, even if he burns, even if it's tucked away safely in the corner of a chip, unknown and unknowable to the both of them, in irving bailiff's brain.
i think about irving bailiff and his single bed, his wardrobe mostly full of dress shirts for irving b, maritime signal flags and whispered conspiracies from an anonymized phone booth as cryptographically sound ways to show love without necessarily getting it in return. tall walls that need a watchdog and matching uniforms with a father buried in the same trunk that holds years of violence from him, to him, to people like him, to people more vulnerable than him, and ways to use the evidence of harm to get all of them out. i think about irving bailiff existing in dusty medal displays and out of focus trinkets and the soft presses of hands against fur and paint and cheekbones with such longing that they can't be looked at directly for too long without them catching on fire and disappearing without a trace, only fleeting glimpses in the dark. did he also come out of the elevator feeling loved, like burt goodman, and put a comb in his pocket instead of a key card? did he pick up marcus aurelius the evening after burt g's retirement party without knowing why? did his eyes wander to that lone vulture and was he pricked by suspicion, or is the loneliness such an expected fixture that it was the good days that felt like a fluke? when he apologized to burt goodman for showing up and startling him and his husband, did he think it was an act of love for burt that got his innie killed in the end? did he think of his paintings and his own father and saw irving b sacrificing himself for a cause that irving bailiff didn't even stop to consider wasn't shared? or did he imagine a man with burt goodman's face holding irving b with recognition, respect and care in a hell neither of them wanted to be in, and found this hell to be the same in their lives outside?
i know that he did not think of helly r, dylan g and mark s, whom that act of love that killed his innie saved. i know that he didn't think of felicia welcoming his innie with a hug and sharing one of her precious two daily vending machine snacks, reminiscing about the burt they both loved. i know he didn't think of ms. casey, in her longest time awake (alive!), whose first action outside of her instructed behavior as an unilateral therapeutic mouthpiece was telling irving b that burt was in an unauthorized location instead of their bosses. i know he didn't think of them because he doesn't know they exist.
i think about june kilmer, whom peter kilmer loved and petey k never met in his two reintegrated weeks before death, who was so loved that in a chaos of memories and tangled lifespans, she was a certainty: june is my daughter, and one hell of a guitar player. i understand why romantic love was put at the forefront of season two in contrast to the ensemble approach to season one. mark scout's and gemma's, mark s' and helly r's, both dylans and gretchen, both irvings and burt (and fields), in all their awkward, gangly, teenaged glory (including helena's abuse coming from a profound lack of agency over her own life and a concerning amount of power over the employees', cobel and hampton's cynical revisiting of a teenage crush that was never allowed to exist, the glimpses into devon and ricken's very genuine love being based on his intense earnestness and how it crumbles when his own insecurities put him in a position to perform). but i still hope that all of these relationships outside of monogamous love and the various successes and failures of the nuclear family are at the core of the story that severance will end up telling. there is so much love in all of their lives, and severance is the reason all of them don't know about most of it. they're denied the possibility of mourning their dead, and the possibility of loving and being loved, because it makes them easier to exploit, because it's harder to fight back if you're doing it alone. there's a petey-shaped hole in season two and i want all this love (that the heterosexual, cisgender, monogamous, white supremacist ideal of family doesn't have room for) to burst through it and burn lumon and the eagan legacy to the ground.
