#duskfalls

Saoirse sighs into the chill of the wind as the events of the last week finally hit her.

The outfit is all out of sorts, of course—pajama pants, Liam’s shirt, her trainers that have been through several countries, two b&b’s, a hit order, and a handful of illegal activities—and she’s pretty definitely certain she has a traumatic brain injury from the crash, and if not from the crash then from the St. Patrick’s Day debacle, and if not from that, then surely from Dara’s surprisingly strong slap.

Must be, because there’s no other explanation as to how Greta’s sitting next to her, four decades of anguish just released into the whole of Northern Ireland—and a small resort on the coast of Portugal—laughing at a dig from Robyn.

Saoirse’s not even fully convinced Greta’s real until she speaks to her.

“Is there something going on between them?”

Her eyes follow Greta’s as they trail Robyn and Dara, headed for the car. They don’t look any different to her than they have for the last twenty years, but if they had been changing right in front of her, would that she mean she wouldn’t have noticed? Would she have even cared to notice?

(Which, great—another mystery for her to worry about.)

“I’m not sure God himself even knows what goes on between the two of them,” Saoirse says.

Greta laughs softly, and Saoirse follows the sound, a relaxed smile forming on Greta’s lips. Saoirse watches her eyes close for moment, basking in the sun. If Saoirse squints, she can still see that girl—bleached brows, low bun, curly whisps of hair surrounding eyeliner that she wasn’t ever sure when stopped being classified as eyeliner—and her eyes trail down, toward the tattoo. She wonders if hers looks as worn. She doesn’t ever really see it, the mark swallowed by collars and headsets and hairstylists saying we’ll just cover that up with a down-do, won’t we?

“It meant a lot to me,” Greta says. Saoirse finds Greta’s eyes back on her, curious, observant. “You didn’t hesitate.”

Saoirse clears her throat.

“I would’ve done anything you said,” she says. “I thought you were the coolest.”

Greta laughs.

“What about now?”

The question hangs in the silence. The wind rips between them and Robyn and Dara’s laughter carries from the boot of the car across the field, but Saoirse can’t tear her eyes away from Greta.

“I think you were scared.”

Greta nods, Saoirse, a sigh—

“But—I think even if I had known back then—I still would’ve thought you were the coolest. I did. Even after,” she says. “There was something that made you real. You existed outside of the context of yourself. I never had that. Not until you.”

Then—

“Not that your trauma is what makes you interesting or that I wish any of that stuff had happened to me, because it was a truly awful thing and I’m sure all of us would be much better off if none of it had to happen at all, but—”

“I get it,” Greta interrupts, eyes amused. “I mean, I wore it on my sleeve. Literally.”

“You sort of did,” Saoirse agrees, even though sort of is a massive understatement. She shakes her head and laughs quietly to herself. “You still do.”

Greta knocks her shoulder, and she feels sixteen again, mitching school out by the old train station and spending the day doing whatever they wanted. It wasn’t often they could get away with it, and then it seemed like it was over before it had even begun.

“Not that I would really know,” Saoirse says. “I’m sorry that I don’t.” She locks eyes with Greta. “I’ve regretted it every day since then, you know. We just—we didn’t know what to do. We were kids.”

“I know,” Greta says, her smile sad. “I didn’t understand it then, but I do. I have. For a long time.”

Saoirse nods. She’s not sure it’ll ever stop eating her, the guilt, but she’s done far worse things now, hasn’t she? And Greta is here. Alive.

(Kind of happy. On the way, hopefully.)

“Yup,” Saoirse says. “Still cool.”

Greta laughs, her smile brightens.

“You have a television show,” Greta says. “What could be cooler than that?”

“Some might say it is in fact the single most uncool thing about me.”

“Robyn?”

“Among others.”

Greta shrugs.

“I like it,” she says. “Your show.”

“You watch?” Saoirse asks.

“Of course.”

(It’s funny how, even now, a compliment from Greta can wash away years of doubt and critique.)

“I watch it with my daughter,” she says. “It’s how I ended up telling her about yous. She didn’t believe me—that we were friends. Had to brag, didn’t I?”

She isn’t sure which part of that gets her, maybe the fact that Greta had held onto them—her—all these years, maybe the fact that she wanted to tell her daughter. Her gaze finds the tattoo again. “Do you still have the photo?”

“I do.”

Saoirse nods.

“I brought mine, when you…you know, I thought you might like it with you, when you—” She swallows back tears. “We thought you were dead. I—I thought you were dead, Greta.”

“Yeah,” Greta says, a darker edge laced in her voice.

They sit with that, the knowledge of the girl who never was ripe between them. Saoirse picks at her nail bed, head aching and wind howling, and it feels the same as it did then.

“I don’t want to leave you,” she admits. “Not again.”

Greta grabs her hand, and Saoirse’s eyes close. She takes a deep breath. Pretends it’s back then. Greta squeezes tighter, as if she’s done the exact same.

A huge opportunity.

Karolina’s been repeating it to herself relentlessly, filling her head with those three simple words at every possible moment—scribbling them into the margins of notepads during meetings where she’s effectively useless, carving them into the steam coating her bathroom mirror on the mornings where she feels the dreaded thrum of regret pulse at her fingertips, tracing invisible letters across her thighs as her driver takes to her to and from the office—if for any reason than to stop herself from thinking any harder about it. It is a huge opportunity, and a good one at that. At least, that’s what Gerri had said.

It’s a test, Karolina. Pass it, and you’re well on your way.

She remembers asking Gerri why she had to pass a test like this at all, what part of her worth at a company like Waystar had anything to do with chasing Logan’s children around the world, couldn’t recall when in her nearly-two-decades of professional experience a promotion ever involved playdates with her CEO’s daughter, but she realizes now that those had been the wrong questions entirely. She should’ve asked Gerri if Waystar was worth it.

Currently, it seems entirely not worth it.

“How are we looking?” Shiv asks, briskly walking toward a packed conference room. Karolina trudges behind her, dodging random employees and underlings she’ll never learn the names of, and checks Shiv’s schedule on her phone. It’s a job that should be Sarah’s, but something about the Harvard Veritones and a summer showcase involving far too many shots in the Shanghai Pudong International Airport means that Sarah’s visa was denied, which also means that the roles are so muddied now that Karolina isn’t quite sure what her job is at all. Manager of Shiv Roy? Professional Adult Babysitter? Senior Grooming Advisor?

(I don’t quite understand what my role would be over there, sire,” she’d said, nervous hands clasped tightly in her lap.

“You’ll mold her, Karolina,” Logan said. “She needs guidance from someone who understands. You get it, don’t you? She needs a serious person.”)

“Two meetings left—and we have a tentative dinner with a tech reporter who has a layover in the city,” Karolina says.

“Who?”

“Freelancer,” Karolina says. “He has a history with a few A-List publications, but recent patterns suggest he’s likely looking to submit to Wall Street or The Post.”

“What’s his angle?” Shiv asks.

“Hard to say right now, but my best guess?”

Shiv pauses as they reach the door, her hand hovering over the handle.

“How America’s Politico Sweetheart has anything to do with Waystar’s recent tech grabs in China.”

“Prep some key messaging,” Shiv says. “Tell him I won’t be answering any questions about Kendall or Vaulter.”

“Okay,” Karolina says, glancing into the conference room. “You remember our goal for this meeting?”

Shiv winks. “Got my keys and wallet, too.”

—

“So,” Karolina said, cigarette burning loosely in her hand. She wasn’t expecting to find Shiv out here, hiding from the party like a wallflower. “Are the rumors true?”

“What rumors?”

“You know,” Karolina said. “The name on the front of the building. It’s gonna be yours.”

Shiv froze then, but there was a wistful look she couldn’t hide, a satisfied quirk of her lips and an all-too nonchalant of a shrug that all but confirmed it. He chose her.

“I’m just…observing,” Shiv said. “Getting to know the company.”

“Sure. Observing,” Karolina said. “Do you also like to sit at construction sites and watch concrete dry?”

“What, is your job not exciting enough? You need extra drama?” Shiv asked. “I’m sure Kendall will have you in a bind bright and early on Monday morning. What was it this time? Vape fluid?”

Karolina brought the cigarette to her lips. She couldn’t help but laugh as Shiv’s eyes turned toward her, bright.

“And candy.”

—

Karolina’s already entered the room by the time she realizes she shouldn’t have, news of the freelancer canceling their dinner sitting on the edge of her tongue as Shiv’s voice reverberates through their makeshift conference-room-turned-battle-station.

“This is ridiculous,” Shiv says, pacing in front of the large windows showcasing the city’s nightcap, phone glued to her ear. “You know that’s not it, Tom.” Tom. “Fine, yeah, I’ll just—keep rearranging deck chairs on the fucking Titanic, I guess.” Silence. “That is what I’m fucking doing.”

It’s then that Karolina makes her move, pulling open the door as if she’s just entered, louder this time, so that Shiv has no reason not to notice. She does, a sly glance in Karolina’s direction and Karolina walks over to her laptop still open on the table. She checks the time as she sits down. 6pm, which means it’s a heart 6am in Manhattan. If she remembers correctly, which she most certainly does, Tom has a division sync in just two hours. Regret threatens her once again, but not for any crucial matter—she just really wishes she could’ve seen the shit show that would’ve been Tom’s first few weeks of reign over ATN.

“Whatever, I have to go,” Shiv says. “Yeah. Love you.”

Karolina busies herself on her laptop as Shiv hangs up. It’s not like she has as much work as she wishes she did, it’s, so far, all felt like a colossal waste of both her time and talent, but she lets her fingers do her bidding before she gets too far ahead of herself. A huge opportunity. Huge.

Shiv sits down in her spot, only a few seats away, and they settle into a comfortable silence. It’s like this most days, working in quiet unless there’s a meeting to prep for, responding to email chains while five feet away from one another, Shiv sending lists of prospective investors and projects and Karolina sending page-long lists back of why it would be a terrible idea for Waystar to get involved with any of those companies.

It’s only when Karolina stops fake-typing that she realizes Shiv isn’t typing at all, and she looks over, Shiv lost in thought as she stares at her computer screen. Karolina’s done a lot of shit that’s been far above her pay grade the last few weeks, and she doesn’t think adding emotional labor to the list is going to help her growing resentment at all, but she knows firsthand how objectively awful this entire endeavor has been, so she humors Shiv.

“Are contactless computers our next great investment?” she asks. It’s a second before Shiv realizes she’s being spoken to, looking at Karolina with a tired kind of confusion.

“I just didn’t know if you were testing out some kind of eye-tracking software,” Karolina goes on. “I mean, knowing Waystar’s customer base, I don’t really think spyware is the direction to go in, but—what do I know?”

Shiv leans back in her chair and crosses her arms, glaringly unamused. She stares at Karolina for what feels like an eternity and then speaks, her question begging with sincerity.

“Do you think this is all bullshit?”

Karolina is briefly stunned, unused to Shiv speaking so plainly to her. Much to Karolina’s surprise, in the four months they’ve been working together it’s stayed strictly professional. Small talk, business talk, even the occasional serious talk—because that’s what Karolina’s there for, right?—but never real talk. And this, is real. It’s not Shiv asking Karolina to give the answer she wants to hear; she’s asking Karolina to give the answer that Karolina believes to be true. She’s asking if it’s worth it. She doesn’t have the heart to tell Shiv that that’s something she doesn’t quite know just yet, but she does know one thing.

“I think that it better not be.”

Because she’s given up things for her career before, weekends, bachelorette parties, first dates—dating—but this is a lot. Chasing some nepo-baby to China just because her dad dangled the proposition of a promotion in front of her was a big risk, and she’s not about to let it amount to nothing. Shiv’s jaw clenches then, at nobody in particular, and she looks up at Karolina, serious.

“Roman’s in the management training program,” she says. Karolina can’t help but interpret a small amount of worry in Shiv’s tone, a new emotion from the youngest Roy that she hadn’t yet discovered could be shown. Shiv says just as much then, a tired hand running through her hair. “Should I be concerned?”

Shiv looks at her like Karolina’s got all the answers in the world, and despite the fact that part of Karolina’s need-to-know briefing prior to coming to Shanghai was centered around Shiv entering the CEO tract, she still couldn’t guess Logan Roy’s plan of action with a loaded gun pointed to her head. All she knows is what’s in front of her. The facts.

“Roman’s never been to Shanghai,” she reasons.

“But he’s been to LA.”

“And then he was fired.”

“And now, he’s COO,” Shiv says. “And they just shipped him off to Management Training.”

“Look, Management Training is largely for on-the-ground suits who will never make it past regional management,” Karolina says. She should know, she led the campaign research. “It’s where executives go to die, Shiv.”

Still, it’s not enough to satisfy Shiv.

“Maybe for executives who don’t have a name on the building.”

She wonders if this simmering insecurity is something she’s missed, or if it’s a new development in the world of Shiv Roy. She’d always imagined there was some. She could always see it with Kendall, the validation seeking, the overbearing need to be involved, to have his voice heard—but Shiv, she’d always been the wild card. The prodigal daughter, the one who got away and built something for herself. She seemed sure. Even when Karolina had stepped down and made her way to the Shanghai office for the first time, Shiv hadn’t let a shred of her nerves show, but now—Karolina thinks she isn’t the only person who’s tired.

“He doesn’t have anything over you,” Karolina says.

“He has Gerri,” Shiv argues. “A fucking steel-rod in the Old Guard, and he has her wrapped around his fucking spiny finger. He has Gerri.”

“And you have me,” Karolina blurts it before she can stop herself.

Shiv gives her a once over, as if she hadn’t considered Karolina as anything of value yet. It’s funny, she’s probably no less of a pawn to Shiv than Shiv is to her, only Shiv hadn’t realized the stakes were even, didn’t know that the goalposts were shared.

“And what are you exactly?” Shiv asks.

“I’m your golden ticket,” Karolina says, not missing a beat.

Shiv’s lip quirks. “How’s that?”

Karolina leans forward. “Because, whether I like it or not, my career hinges on yours,” she says. “And truthfully, Shiv, I’m not wasting a year in Shanghai without getting my dues.”

—

It’s at night, when Karolina misses home the most.

The cracked asphalt and yellow cabs, college students littering her street with the butts of stale Newport Reds as their two-in-the-morning laughter echoes through her thin front windows on their way to the subway line that takes them back downtown, the subway, going to sleep knowing she’ll wake up and get to stop by her favorite cafe on the way to the office. She thinks she’s almost forgotten the smell of cigarettes mixed with some twenty-one-year-old’s lavender oat milk latte, not that she’d thought to savor it anyway. Stopping to smell the roses only works if you have time to notice there are any roses at all.

They left for China right after the New Year. She remembers her holiday bonus and an ultimatum. She doesn’t recall any roses.

  —

  “Media day?” Shiv asks, tense as her arms stiffly on the back of a chair in the conference room. Karolina looks up at her from across the table. “I thought you said this would blow over.”

This, also known as “The Shiv in Shanghai: America’s Politico Sweetheart and Her Grab for the Crown,” published in the New York Mag by the very reporter who’d skipped out on their planned dinner. It’s a lengthy think piece on the future of Waystar and the impending battle of the heirs, and it had been a nightmare to deal with twelve hours ahead of New York. Karolina thrums her fingers along the wood, trying to come up with the simplest explanation of their current predicament.

It’s simple, in her mind: the Roy siblings are cash cows for the American news machine, and even the smallest scent of a fight for the throne is much too intriguing to let pass without making it as big of a deal as possible. Unfortunately, Shiv entering Waystar’s payroll is a big deal, a very large, unprecedented, huge deal.

(“Say, Karolina,” Logan folded his arms across his desk. “Shiv’s in Shanghai, what’s our angle?”

“Well, we wouldn’t want to make Kendall look unfit—not when he’s still largely a face of the company,” Karolina said. “Bridging the gap, maybe. The youngest Roy bringing a new perspective to Waystar’s tech wing. It’s broad. Prepping for the future. Maybe we bring her…liberal politics, into it. Western expansion in the Asian market. Growth.”)

“Things are moving faster than we’d initially wanted, yes,” Karolina says, treading lightly. “But, it’s important that we’re the ones controlling the narrative surrounding your introduction into the company. Not caricature drawings on Page 6.”

“And, what—inviting a bunch of reporters into our international offices is supposed to show them that I’m just on some field trip? Shaking hands and making nice for shits and giggles?”

“If you want to put it that way, sure,” Karolina says, looking at her laptop. “It’s just what we need them to believe. That you’re an addition to the company’s roster. Not anyone’s replacement.”

“For the time being.”

“What?” Karolina’s eyes shoot back to Shiv.

“At a certain point, they’re gonna know,” Shiv argues. “We’re dancing around the inevitable here.”

“Shiv, your father—”

“Isn’t here,” she says. “He sent me off to China with a half-baked plan and a watchdog, and I’m just supposed to follow along?”

“It’s not half-baked, Shiv, it’s procedure.”

“But, you are a watchdog, then?” Shiv asks, a smug smile encroaching on her face.

Karolina exhales lightly. She’s unsure if the argument would be worth it at all, unsure if there even is anything to argue at all. The leash is taut on Karolina; she either succeeds, or she’s sent back to the pound.

“If that’s how you want to put it, then sure,” Karolina says. “I’m your personal watchdog. And right now, I’m watching you waste an entire prep slot complaining about an opportunity to show your father exactly why you should be CEO.”

Shiv’s posture stiffens, and Karolina knows she’s got her right back where she wants her. Karolina may be on a tight leash, but she needs to keep Shiv on an even tighter one.

“Fine, media day,” Shiv huffs, sitting down. “Lay it on me.”

—

Shiv is brilliant.

She’s warm smiles and schmoozes, floating through the office like she owns it—Karolina wonders if that helps, knowing in some way that she actually does—and it’s relieving, to know that beyond the complaints, beyond the bitterness behind closed doors and the pushback that feels all too personal at times, Shiv has been listening to her.

Karolina’s staying late, wrapping up a report on all of the follow-ups she’ll need to do after the weekend when Shiv enters the conference room, silently placing a paper coffee cup next to Karolina’s laptop as she sits down next to her.

“Do you ever leave this room?” Shiv asks, hands wrapped around her own cup of coffee.

“They still haven’t found an office for me to take over, so…” she drifts off, twisting the coffee cup around to look at the logo. It’s someplace down the street that they stop at occasionally on their way back from off-campus meetings. She quirks an eyebrow at Shiv as she picks it up.

“I made one of the IT guys go get them,” Shiv admits, and Karolina nods. Sounds right. “Sorry if it’s not hot enough, you were on a phone call earlier and I didn’t want to interrupt.”

“It was Gerri,” Karolina offers. She sips the coffee, knowing she probably shouldn’t be having any caffeine this late in the evening, but her sleep schedule’s never been one to boast about, and, anyway, it could do her some good to get her work done, now that she actually has some to do.

“Yeah?” Shiv asks. “How’s the old Fairy Godmother?”

Which, not good. There are rumblings of a major leak surrounding cruises, not to mention Kendall’s pause from reality still causing blowback in the press, and Roman, well—Karolina’s just lucky she’s with Shiv.

“We were just catching up,” she says. “Hard to stay in touch when we’re twelve hours ahead.”

“Tell me about it,” Shiv sighs. “Tom and I are lucky if we get a conversation in every few days.”

“What does he think about all of this?” Karolina asks, then. She says it absentmindedly, like she would about the weather or a new restaurant, and maybe she is prodding, poking her head into things that don’t concern her, itching for a sense of normalcy within the throes of the upheaval of her life with the source of said upheaval as her cannon fodder, but Shiv doesn’t seem to back an eye. Maybe she’s searching for something normal, too.

“He’ll come around,” Shiv says, and it’s an admission of sorts, that Tom isn’t fully on board with the change.

“To which part?”

“Which part?” Shiv asks.

“The part where he’s not going to be CEO, or the part where you’re going to be.”

Shiv pauses, a dilemma she’s obviously thought of before by the way she bites the inside of her cheek. How could she not? Everyone knows Tom’s endgame. When Karolina read the presser for their wedding announcement she was surprised the venue was listed as Eastnor Castle and not One World Trade Center.

“I think…” Shiv trails off, ultimately shaking her head. “It’s too early for those kinds of conversations. Dad, he’s unpredictable.”

Something snaps in Karolina at the noncommittal statement. Like this is all just some side quest, a will-they-won’t-they between Shiv and the C-Suite.

“Shiv,” Karolina says, and Shiv’s eyes snap to hers. “Do you want this?”

Because she has to know. Karolina is wasting time and credibility if Shiv isn’t all in. Shiv hesitates, and Karolina can see the grips of the voices in her head, the Dads and the Toms and the Kendalls, and Karolina doesn’t want their satiation. Doesn’t want the Politico Sweetheart’s centrist neutrality. She wants honesty.

“You,” she adds. “Not them.”

Shiv’s brow furrows, a determined little movement that Karolina’s noticed only appears when things get serious. Real.

“I do,” Shiv says.

“Okay,” Karolina says, like an affirmation. I believe you. “Thanks for the coffee.”

She turns back to her laptop, but Shiv’s voice rings out again.

“Hey,” she says. “I mean—what’s in this for you? Being here.”

“It’s my job, Shiv,” Karolina says.

“Last time I checked, Waystar PR took place halfway across the globe. This couldn’t have been what you thought you were signing up for.”

It’s not, but there are only three words Karolina can think of. Well—the other three.

“It’s a test,” she says. “For you, and for me.”

Shiv’s face contorts in confusion.

“How is this a test for you?”

(“Now, Karolina. We’ll see how things fair over there, and if you’re successful, well. We can talk about what that means for you.”)

“You’re my test, Shiv,” Karolina says. “Your image, your progress. It’s on me.”

“So, I am just a puppet,” Shiv says. “Your puppet.”

“You’re not,” Karolina says. She doesn’t say what she really thinks—that Shiv is a type of untamable beast. That she’ll do her best to shape and mold, but to what avail, she’s not so sure. “This is mutually beneficial. You fail, I fail.”

Shiv mulls it over, crosses her arms.

“And what happens if you fail?”

Karolina settles back into her chair.

“I don’t fail.”

—

Karolina would be lying if she said she didn’t notice the shift happen.

It’s subtle in the way something drastic can only be, like one night you go to sleep in New York and the next you’re in Shanghai. One night you can’t even figure out the remote control to the television and the next you’re rehashing three seasons worth of Chinese reality show drama into your weekly email to Gerri. One night, your apartment has never even seen another person, and the next, Shiv Roy is inside of it, two glasses of wine deep, sitting on your couch and talking like you’ve been friends for years.

“C’mon, you and Gerri have never done anything?”

It’s most likely the wine when Karolina almost blurts that Gerri has been far too busy with Shiv’s brother to ever notice her, but she keeps her composure, laughing slightly as she puts her glass down.

“I said you could ask one personal question, and this is what you’re stuck on?”

“Fine,” Shiv says. “Can I have a redo?”

“One,” Karolina says. “So ask wisely.”

She knows in the morning she’ll regret offering, thinks what was supposed to be a simple prep session for an on-screen interview later in the week turned into one episode of Karolina’s newest reality show binge, which then turned into one glass of wine, which turned into two, which led her here. Invasive probing into her personal life by none other than Shiv Roy.

“Aside from Gerri, anyone waiting for you at home?”

Karolina rolls her eyes at the added innuendo, but she finds it difficult to stay annoyed at the satisfied look Shiv throws her way, a realization that rolls around nervously in the pit of her stomach.

“No,” Karolina says, grasping onto her composure. “Married to the job, I guess.”

She doesn’t realize how sad it is until after she’s said it, the loneliness that hangs in the air in the aftermath of her words. Shiv, to her credit, doesn’t give away whether she’s surprised or not, only a lingering curiosity in the following quiet.

“The job,” Shiv repeats, slowly. “So. Why PR?”

Karolina shrugs, grateful for Shiv’s swift change in subjects.

“It’s what I’m good at.”

“Sure—” Shiv says, notably not disagreeing, “But what do you like about it?”

“I don’t know,” Karolina says, picking her glass back up. “I guess…I like problem solving. Crafting a narrative, watching the pieces fall into place.”

“Control?”

Shiv eyes her, the intensity of her gaze growing, and Karolina’s nerves return, unsure of Shiv’s endgame.

“Storytelling,” Karolina says. Shiv nods, seemingly satisfied enough, and she takes a sip of her wine.

“What’s my story?” she asks.

“You tell me.”

“No, come on,” Shiv says. “What narrative have you crafted for the infamous Siobhan Roy?”

Karolina sighs. She doesn’t know why she’s stalling. She’s worked on this relentlessly, time-stamped and color-coded, refined, and then refined again. Sleepless nights spent on this very couch, crafting the journey.

“You’re the future,” Karolina says. “Optimism, growth. A new era for Waystar with a sense of safety under the same Roy name.”

It loses some of its magic as she says it out loud, as if the entirety of the endeavor is only possible as long as it’s never spoken into existence, as long as nobody knows that the plan is real enough to be taken away. Shiv seems to notice as much, lightening up the mood with yet another thorn jammed into Karolina’s side.

“But I’m a registered Democrat,” Shiv says. “I don’t think shareholders want a filthy liberal leading their company.”

“Your husband is a registered Republican,” Karolina says. “You’re amenable to alternative viewpoints.”

Shiv laughs.

“What?”

“Tom’s a registered Democrat.”

“He—what?”

Shiv must be entertained by Karolina’s horror, because the shit-eating grin won’t leave her face as she continues. “He named his dog after Walter Mondale,” she says through a new fit of giggles. “How’s the strategy now?”

Karolina closes her eyes and rubs a hand across her face, mumbling to herself, “Fucking—Walter Mondale?”

“Relax.” Karolina opens her eyes as Shiv’s hand lightly hits her knee. “He’s voted Republican since 2008.”

Despite this, Karolina still makes a mental note to carve out some time to redraft phase four of Shiv’s ascension to account for her Nazi-elbow-rubbing husband apparently being a registered Democrat. Shiv’s laughter dies down slowly, and just as she’s about to speak again, her phone dings, her smile faltering with a light, Shit, as she reads whatever’s on the screen.

“Everything okay?” Karolina asks, noting the frown.

“Yeah, sorry,” Shiv says. “Tom—he thought we could try scheduling our phone calls and I missed one.”

“Oh,” Karolina says. “We can call it a night if you need to get back to him.”

“No,” Shiv says, with what seems like, if Karolina didn’t know any better, urgency, and she tosses her phone aside. “No, I mean—the last thing I need from him right now is a lecture.”

“I take it he still hasn’t come around?”

“He’s just—” Shiv cuts herself off, waving her hand around flippantly.

Karolina’s asking before she can stop herself, “Why do you keep doing that?”

“Doing what?”

“Making excuses for him.”

Maybe it’s another thing that she can blame on the wine when it happens, but her stomach twists slightly as Shiv’s face falls, nerves replaced with something more somber as she notices a familiar tiredness display so clearly across Shiv’s features.

“He’s worked hard for it,” Shiv says. “We had a plan.”

“So have you. So do we.”

Shiv looks at her unsure.

“You can feel guilty,” Karolina continues, “but it doesn’t have to be the only thing that you feel.”

Shiv breaks the eye contact, “I know, I know.” She pauses as her gaze falls on the television. “You know, you weren’t this complimentary in the beginning.”

Karolina’s surprised by the assertion. She’d had been so caught up observing Shiv, she never thought that Shiv would be observing her right back.

“I was guarded, sure,” Karolina says. “This whole thing, I mean—I was weary.”

“Weren’t sure that the spoiled-runt of the Roy clan had it in her?”

“Well, I wouldn’t say you’re the runt.”

“Humor me,” Shiv says, though nothing currently feels warranting of a joke.

“I just didn’t want this to be a waste of my time,” Karolina admits. “Packing up and leaving for a new country without a clear result—it felt risky.”

(She’d done that once already, young and wide-eyed, suddenly stuck in a world that didn’t want her. It taught her how to adapt, sure, but she thinks somewhere inside of her it’s always left a gap. No place ever truly feels like home, no building or title or role. New York had become that—as much as it could be, and Waystar, well, it’s still a gamble.)

“And now that you’re here, four months into it?” Shiv asks.

“It feels less risky.” Risky all the same, but the payout is starting to look more likely.

“What changed?” Shiv asks.

There’s only one reasonable answer, one honest answer that she pretends to mull over. She keeps her eyes downcast as she says it, doesn’t need to look up to feel the intensity of the gaze that she knows is on her.

“You.”

—

Shiv starts to show more of herself, letting Karolina craft the story with all of the pieces, not just the ones that she wants people to see.

“Are you sure about this?” Shiv asks, smoothing her blazer.

“You’re ready,” Karolina says from behind, locking eyes through the mirror. “It’s a puff piece, nothing major.”

“It’s early.”

“It’s five months, Shiv.”

“You said six.”

It’s strange, being allowed to see Shiv like this, nervous and fussy, worried about making an impression.

“I said the timeline moved up,” Karolina reminds her. Shiv turns around, huffing out a deep breath.

“Can we go over everything one more time?”

“No,” Karolina says. “I want you to be organic, not rehearsed. You know this. It’s your life, Shiv. We’re having lunch with a reporter, and you’re just going to talk. You’ve done this before.”

“This one feels different,” Shiv says.

“Because you know what’s at stake,” Karolina says. “The reporter doesn’t.”

Shiv nods, taking another deep breath, and Karolina’s doing it before she realizes, her hand reaching up slightly to smooth out a stray strand of silky-red hair. Shiv just straightens her shoulders.

“I’ll be right there beside you,” Karolina assures her. “Just—enjoy it.”

“Enjoy it,” Shiv repeats to herself.

By the time they’re with the reporter, it’s as if Karolina isn’t even there at all.

—

“You know that’s not true.”

They’re in the car, speeding down the highway on their way to tour a potential partnering facility. It’s mostly for the press—shaking hands with VPs and laughing in front of the cameras with opposing executives. Karolina’s supposed to be giving Shiv the rundown on each of the high-ups they’ll be meeting with, but Shiv’s been on the phone with Tom the entire ride, leaving Karolina no choice but to eavesdrop as the conversation slowly devolves into an argument, Shiv’s agitated tone and Tom’s agitated voice the only sound filling the back of the car.

“I mean, what,” Shiv says. “Did you think I was just going to get bored and call it quits a couple of months into the job?” Silence. “A year, Tom. Six in Shanghai, and six in Europe, we’ve talked about this.”

(Just three months ago the entire prospect of seven more months of this seemed nauseating. Now, it seems exciting. When there are no meddling voices taking up her valuable prep time.)

“I don’t know, London, Berlin? Does it matter?” Shiv’s silent for longer than expected, and then she laughs, coldly. “I’m sorry you’re stuck in your en-suite at Headquarters getting chauffeured three blocks to work every day. It must be stressful for you.”

Whatever it is that Tom says on the other end must not be good, because it’s enough for Shiv to hang out the phone without another word. Karolina steals a glance in her direction, Shiv’s gaze firmly set out the opposite window.

“Wanna talk about it?” Karolina asks. It’s not her business, not really, but it feels wrong not to offer. Shiv’s silent for a while, Karolina just listening to the drone of the car’s tires speeding down the highway when Shiv does speak.

“Do you really think I can do this?” she asks, teary eyes turning toward Karolina. “Like, actually win the seat?”

Karolina doesn’t even have to think before saying it.

“Yes.” She clutches the papers in her hand. “What did he say to you?”

“It’s not what anyone says to me.” Shiv turns away again. “It’s what they’re not saying.”

“What are they not saying?”

“That they think I can do it.”

Karolina can’t imagine how unbearably lonely it must feel to be going after something so huge and to be made to feel so small for it. The people closest to Shiv are all of her direct competitors. Hell, even her own husband is vying for the very same spot.

“You can, Shiv,” Karolina says. “You can do it.” She does it before she has a chance to stop herself, reaching out to grab Shiv’s hand across the seat. She squeezes it lightly, Shiv’s eyes stuck on the window.

“Yeah,” Shiv breathes out. She squeezes Karolina’s hand back, once, and lets go. “Thanks, Karolina.”

And because she doesn’t want to leave the mood so heavy before sending Shiv off to smile and wave for three hours, “Does Tom really take a car three blocks to work every morning?”

Shiv laughs slightly, and Karolina bites back a small smile at the win.

“He says it’s for safety.”

“From what, the fucking rats?”

—

One meeting.

One meeting is all that’s left and Shiv will have closed her first deal. It’s monumental. Karolina heads to her usual spot in the corner of the conference room, ready to send a play-by-play to Gerri as the proceedings begin, but Shiv stops her.

“Sit here.” Shiv taps the chair next to her. She hadn’t requested Karolina for the meetings earlier that day, or earlier that week, or, ever, but then she sees the jerky pen and the stiff posture and Karolina realizes—Shiv is nervous. She’s nervous and she wants Karolina.

So, Karolina sits there diligently. In an attempt of brevity, she slides a post-it in Shiv’s direction right before the acquisition target walks in, a swirly enjoy it in ballpoint-black that Shiv palms with a small smile before anyone else can see it. When it begins, Karolina takes notes, offers calm, affirming nods when Shiv says something, and glances in her direction. It’s going well. Until the client gets cold feet. Karolina holds her breath.

We’re just not sure we’re ready for this kind of move. We have to think about our shareholders.

But Shiv is quick on her feet.

“Forget acquisitions for just a moment,” she says. Eyes around the table look nervous as soon as the word forget tumbled out of her mouth, but she keeps going. “With our partnership, well—the integrations we can offer through our movie studios and amusement parks alone bring impressions into the millions. That’s not even factoring in our cruise lines and ATN—I mean, we get one actor on your app and the hits will be rolling in. Profits doubled within the year.”

And it’s missing something, but Shiv already knows that. She looks down at the papers in front of her. Frowns.

“Of course, with losses in the US market for five quarters straight, that’s not exactly difficult to achieve. Truthfully, if we’re talking Hollywood, that’s about as good as dead.”

(Karolina thinks she’ll savor that look forever, the gawking eyes of the men across from her as the target realized that Shiv backed them into an inescapable corner. Karolina knows the intensity of that gaze, has to wonder if she herself is moving somewhere she’ll never get out. Can’t decide if escaping is something she’d even want to do.)

—

They’re not late yet.

In ten minutes they’ll be five minutes away from being late, and it’s Karolina’s job to count, so she’s counting, but they’re not late yet. She knocks on the green room door again. No answer.

“Shiv?” she calls out, her voice met with silence. She knows Shiv’s in there. It’s the last place she’s checking and Shiv wouldn’t have just left. She tugs on the handle, and it’s unlocked. Because why shouldn’t that be the very first thing she checks?

She opens the door slowly, unsure of what could possibly be holding Shiv up other than some sort of wardrobe malfunction, but what she finds isn’t anything she had in mind. Shiv is sitting in silence, staring at herself in the mirror. Her gaze is steeled, and Karolina can see large inhales and exhales as her chest rises and falls. She steps into the room and closes the door.

“What do you want?” Shiv asks.

Karolina looks into the mirror, finding an unflinching sort of anger in Shiv’s eyes.

“They need you in the studio.”

Shiv’s first interview with a live audience. Celebrating her win. But why does it feel like there’s nothing to celebrate?

“I need a second,” Shiv says, and Karolina nods, a soft, Okay, escaping her lips.

Karolina busies herself on her phone, refreshing her email about twenty different times. This trip has been the driest her inbox has been in years. She’d have almost called it a sabbatical if it weren’t for—

“What do you normally say to Kendall?” Shiv’s voice pipes up. “When you used to prep him, what did you tell him?”

Karolina looks up again, Shiv’s eyes softer, now. Karolina isn’t sure what exactly Shiv’s getting at, what she hopes to achieve from Karolina’s response, but Karolina says it nonetheless.

“To remember what I told him.”

“Did he?”

Karolina pauses and locks her phone. She takes a tentative step closer. “Not usually.”

“Do you think I—” Shiv’s voice catches, and she has to take another deep breath. “You always tell me to—”

“Enjoy it,” Karolina finishes before her.

Shiv continues to stare straight ahead.

“This place fucking sucks.”

“I know it does,” Karolina says quietly.

Shiv looks down then, one deep breath, and then she’s back, shaking off her tears, steadying her lungs. She’d fool Karolina if she didn’t know her so well, couldn’t see the slight shake in her hands as clamoring fingers rub roughly across her wedding ring before pulling off forcefully. She stands and drops it onto the vanity in front of her, fixing her hair one last time in the mirror.

“Send that back,” Shiv says. “Don’t include a return address.”

Karolina nods, swiping it off the counter. Shiv seems to stand straighter, as if the weight of the ring itself was the very thing dragging her down.

“You ready?” Karolina asks.

“What’s it gonna be today?” Shiv asks.

“Just do what you’re here to do,” Karolina says. “Nothing more, nothing less.”

“…and what we really want at Waystar is for the people to enjoy it—to come on this journey with us, so that we might look back on this time as one of growth, of innovation, and of cultivation. To know that we are all the future of the Royco family.”

And Shiv looks directly into the crowd as she says it, enjoy it, and it’s as if she’s staring right at Karolina, piercing her with those eyes, saying her words back to her exactly as they’d practiced, and that feeling returns, right in the pit of Karolina’s stomach and she knows that she’s trapped. That she’s entered the space that she cannot get out of, and that feeling follows her all the way back to the green room until the door is shut and Shiv’s drunk with applause and a few glasses of whiskey and Karolina is cornered, her back against the vanity and Shiv flush against her front.

She can’t remember how they got here. One moment they were laughing on the couch and the next they were touching. One moment Karolina was moving away and the next she was standing still. One moment Shiv was across the room and the next she wasn’t.

“Shiv,” Karolina whispers, lips hovering unbearably close to hers. She can feel every breath Shiv takes, the slight movement as Shiv moves her glass to the vanity. Shiv looks onward, unphased, staring at Karolina as if they’re both exactly where they should be, and it’s a flaw, that gnawing thought that Karolina isn’t so sure where she belongs ever, but she doesn’t have to say anything. Shiv is already searching, already reading between the script that Karolina’s building in her mind.

“Why not?” Shiv asks. As if it’s meant to happen, as if Karolina’s pushing against something that shouldn’t be fought, even though she’s desperately aware that it should be.

“You know why,” she says. Still, she doesn’t move.

“But I don’t care.”

Karolina brings her hands up to Shiv’s shoulders, feels Shiv’s wedding ring dig into her thighs through the loose fabric of her pocket, and then she lightly pushes Shiv away.

“Not now,” she says. “Not like this.”

—

She thinks about it in the moments she shouldn’t, in meetings sitting right across from Shiv, wondering what might’ve happened if she’d said yes. In press interviews, watching the way Shiv’s lips curl around the words that Karolina feeds her, the words Karolina spends hours writing down, meticulously picking them out, imagining just how Shiv is going to say them. She thinks about it at night, imagines those lips on hers as she lays in an empty apartment no more barren than the one back home, and wonders what all of this is worth, what she expects to come out of it.

(“Then when, Karolina?”

The ring, buried deep in her pocket—“Shiv—”)

—

Logan, in all of his spite, chooses Berlin.

“—God forbid he sends me to the country where I have citizenship,” Shiv says. “Or where anyone speaks fucking English.”

Karolina watches Shiv pace back and forth in her living room, hand in her hair and a warm mug of tea propped on her lap. She realizes she’s lost track of what Shiv’s saying when Shiv’s suddenly stopped moving, arm on her hip as she looks at Karolina expectantly.

“What the fuck are you smirking about?”

Karolina bites her lip, not having realized that’s what she was doing.

“He’s sending you to Berlin because business is notoriously more difficult there,” Karolina explains.

(She leaves out that she’d made the same exact complaint to Gerri just hours before Shiv barged through her door.)

“He’s happy with your performance,” Karolina adds, and Shiv stills, her brows furrowing.

“Really?”

Karolina feels it this time as she smiles at the innocence of the question. Really? Like a kid in a toy store, tantrums and all.

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he trusts you.”

“Trust is a strong word,” Shiv says, moving toward the couch. “This is another one of his fucking tests, isn’t it?”

“Look who’s finally catching on,” Karolina says, playfully knocking her shoulder.

“Whatever,” Shiv scoffs, getting comfortable on the couch. She leans across Karolina to grab the remote, and the proximity sends a jolt of nerves through her gut. “I’m not leaving the country until we finish this show.”

  Later—after the wine’s been poured, and poured, and the television show is complete, they sit in a comfortable silence as Karolina surfs the channels.

“This apartment is a shoebox,” Shiv says, an observation made about four months too late, considering Karolina’s going to be moving out in less than two weeks. Besides the fact that it’s not, but—

“Someone else took the penthouse,” Karolina says pointedly. Shiv ignores the dig, placing a hand over Karolina’s on the remote.

“What’s that?”

Karolina knows this one. “A bunch of celebrities get sent out into a foreign country without their personal assistants,” Karolina says. Shiv quirks an eyebrow. Sound familiar?

“It’s not that hard.”

“Sure,” Karolina says. The couch shakes as Shiv turns fully toward Karolina, resting her head on the back of the couch.

“You know they asked Kendall to be on The Surreal Life?”

Karolina laughs at the reminder. That shit show.

“They pitched a season with Lori Petty and Fabio.”

“Wait—you were there?” Shiv asks, surprised. “How long have you been at this fucking company?”

Too long.

“It was when I had just gotten hired,” Karolina says. “The PR head at the time wanted them to go for it. Thought it could make him more sympathetic to the public if he had some heartfelt moment on national television.”

“So?” Shiv says. “Why didn’t he go all Simple Life?”

Karolina shrugs. “Anyone with half a brain could figure out that Kendall shouldn’t be monitored by cameras twenty-four-seven.”

“Fair enough,” Shiv mumbles.

Karolina looks over then, Shiv still leaning on the couch lazily. Her cheeks are whiskey-flushed, glassy eyes stuck on Karolina.

“What are you doing here?” Shiv asks.

“You’re in my apartment, Shiv.”

“No,” Shiv shakes her head. “Here. In Shanghai.”

“I told you, your father is—”

“Fuck that,” Shiv says softly. “With a resumé like yours, you could go to any firm in the world. Why take a grunt position after fifteen years with a company?”

It strikes her then, that Shiv knows exactly how long Karolina has been working for Waystar. How long she’s been working up to this.

“You know why.”

“Say it,” Shiv says. “I just want to hear it from you.”

Karolina grabs her wine glass, taking a sip before answering.

“Because I want the success story,” she says. Though, no, not quite. “I-I want your success story. To be a part of it.”

Shiv tilts her head.

“It’s more than that.”

Karolina knows it is. Knows the ugly part of her ambition has been rearing its head for the last six months, knows exactly why she’s willing to sacrifice so much for what could possibly garner nothing in return.

“I don’t want the glory, Shiv,” she says. “I just want—”

But how does she explain it? That she’s happiest in the wings? Watching her plans come to fruition, hearing her words coming out of Shiv’s mouth?

“Control?” Shiv asks.

Karolina realizes how close Shiv is now.

“Power?” Shiv tries again, leaning in closer.

“Shiv—” It’s a weak attempt, but Shiv is close now, and Karolina doesn’t think she wants to push her away.

“You’re always telling me to go for the things that I want,” Shiv whispers. “To understand what it is that I deserve.”

Karolina swallows, frozen to her spot. Trapped.

“What do you think you deserve right now?” she asks.

Shiv pauses, inches away from Karolina’s lips. They lock eyes.

“What do you think I deserve?”

Karolina’s fucked.

“Anything you want.”

—

For a brief moment in time, she feels unstoppable.

Whoever said not to mix business with pleasure certainly never experienced what this feels like. Like every time they walk into a crowded room everything slows down, the attention shifts, and the moment is theirs. Every time she locks eyes with Shiv she can feel power surge, like the city only sleeps when they’re no longer in it. Every brush of the fingers in their daily sync, every sly look during a conference call, every stolen kiss behind closed doors because the arschlochs in Berlin actually bothered to give Karolina an office, affirms that she’d made the right choice all of those moons ago.

That worth, should never have been in question at all.

  —

  It’s vicious, the way things seem to fall apart just when they’re coming together.

“Are you serious?” Shiv asks, voice immediately loud in the privacy of her apartment. “I don’t give a fuck if Kendall’s run off into the fucking Siberian Forest or wherever the fuck they think he’s run off to, I n—you can’t just go, Karolina.”

“Shiv, please don’t make this any harder than it needs to be,” Karolina says. “It’s a few weeks, tops. I’ll be back before you know it.”

“But you’re mine,” Shiv says. “That’s like, the whole fucking point of you.”

It’s a stark reminder, those few words, how complicated simple things can be. There are two parts of her, clawing at each other. One is Shiv’s. Her coach, glorified babysitter, scriptwriter, pep talker—all things that grew out of a role that hadn’t yet existed, a role neither of them knew she was going to fill. The other half, the more frightening half, is herself. A side to her that she can’t qualify into small little sections. The part of her that would give everything up to follow her heart, to follow Shiv.

“Yeah?” Karolina asks. “I’m just another name on your father’s payroll. Here to do your bidding, right?”

“My keynote is tomorrow, Karolina,” Shiv says, voice growing louder. “You couldn’t have asked Dad for one fucking day?”

And it’s funny, ironic in a sadistic sort of way, maybe, that the side that belongs to Shiv, is the side that forces her to leave.

“You don’t think I did?” Karolina asks. “He said you’d be fine. That if I’ve done my job correctly, you won’t even need me there. Don’t you get it? It’s a test.”

“I don’t give a shit about your stupid tests, Karolina,” Shiv says. “Fail the fucking test!”

Karolina scoffs. “This isn’t a game, Shiv. This is my life. My career.”

“Exactly. So fucking do something for yourself. For once in your life—”

“It’s not just about me,” Karolina snaps. “Leaving is for the both of us. It’s for you. I mean, Christ, Shiv—everything I fucking do it for you. Everything.”

Shiv’s nostrils flare. Maybe it’s something she can’t admit, or something that, if she admits right now, will break her—Karolina is her anchor.

“If you go—” Shiv crosses her arms, her voice rigid. “My father’s payroll, is the last payroll you’ll ever be on at Waystar.”

It’s a make-it-or-break-it, the last ultimatum she might ever receive from a hot-headed Roy, but the choice is clear to her. If she stays, Shiv fails the test. Karolina loses either way. So, she chooses Shiv, whether Shiv wants to believe it or not.

“I guess I’ll start counting my days, then,” Karolina says softly. “Good luck at the keynote. Don’t expect me at the coronation.”

—

She attempts to watch the keynote while on the road, unsure of what rainy-mountainous European countryside they’ve dragged her off to this time, but the service gets spottier the farther out into the hills they go. Instead, she picks up Kendall, cleans up his bloody nose and straightens his blazer, all while pretending she isn’t thinking about Shiv, imagining she’s sending her off for the big presentation— smoothing her hair just one more time, fingers always hovering over places they shouldn’t be; not dressing up Logan’s second eldest like a newly unboxed Lobotomy Ken.

It’s not fun. There’s no joy in it. She feeds him the script and she prays that he remembers, clutches her coffee that’s gone cold and tries not to think about the waning Berlin sun and which version of the closing paragraph Shiv had chosen to go with as thunder claps off in the distance outside the sound studio.

“I saw their plan, and my dad’s plan was better.”

It used to feel good, her words on national television. Her publicity plans making or breaking business deals, her work paying off as if it was worth something, but it’s missing something now.

(Later, under the covers, the keynote in 1080p on her hotel’s high-speed Wi-Fi—her words.

It feels like it did, before she left. As if it meant something when Shiv read her script, because it did. Because they were being said by someone who cares. And when she closes her eyes and listens as the crowd applauds, it feels like that applause is for her. Like she can take pride in this thing that she’d created. Like she passed a test. But when she opens them and sees her face, watches a smile that doesn’t quite stretch as far as she knows it can, the feeling fades. The light dims.

But it’s better this way. That’s what she’ll tell herself.)

—

“It’s bullshit.”

Karolina watches as Roman paces throughout Gerri’s office. He’d barged in without a spare glance, not that she and Gerri were in the middle of any sort of thrilling conversation—not that they’d been in any sort of conversation at all, Karolina perched on the couch in the corner of Gerri’s office as her last remaining salvation from the hordes of new underlings barging through her own door every few minutes. Still, she finds a quiet kind of amusement in the way she goes from slightly unnoticed to forgotten in a split second, a fly on the wall to Roman Roy’s first tantrum of the day. She discreetly marks a tally in her planner. This is the fourth one she’s been privy to this month alone.

“It’s business,” Gerri replies, a tired kind of sternness taking up her voice. Roman doesn’t seem to notice.

“No,” he says, like a child trying to correct their parent. “It’s bullshit. She doesn’t work here, a-and she doesn’t even want to. She’s just—showing her fucking dick.”

Gerri’s eyes move past him towards Karolina, and Karolina looks down. This is Gerri’s mess.

“She’s just coming back to shadow, Roman,” Gerri says, as if that should somehow pacify him. “You and Kendall—”

“Me and Kendall worked for this,” Roman argues. “She’s just walking back in here like she’s owed the place.”

Karolina has to bite her lip to stop herself from laughing at the prospect of Roman and Kendall having worked for anything at all. An entire media conglomerate at the tips of their fingers, only shielded from them by the silver plate itself. She also has to stop herself from shouting out in a rage that Shiv has worked for this. Probably more than Roman ever has—

“Roman, if you have a problem—”

“Take it up with the big man,” Roman says, waving her off. “Yeah, yeah, I know. Whatever.”

He turns around then, finally spotting Karolina. She smiles awkwardly over her laptop.

“Oh,” Roman says. “Hey, Karolina.”

“Hi, Roman.”

“Congrats on the new title.”

She’d returned to her own office and a new plaque. Head of Public Relations and Communications. It hadn’t felt like winning.

“Thank you, Roman.”

He stops in front of her, eyebrows scrunched and arms crossed.

“This doesn’t really change anything, right?” Roman says, feigning interest. “You still have to run around and tell all those press people how many sugars Dad takes in his coffee?”

Karolina shifts in her seat. Not that a squeaky twink in a two-piece is any match for her resolve, but it’s a Thursday and her patience is wearing thin, and those press people forgot the correct amount of sugar in Logan’s coffee the day before, so yeah. Maybe he hit a sore spot.

“That’s not really—”

“Now that you have some staying power, could you tell them to stop referring to me as Logan Roy’s middle child?” Roman interrupts. “I’d prefer something more debonaire like, I don’t know, C-O-O?”

“I’ll run it up the chain,” Karolina nods, not letting her smile slip.

He shrugs. “Wait—” It hits. “They sent you to Shanghai. Shiv’s in Management Training now?” He laughs. “I mean, what’s your take here? Aren’t these optics, like, a major fuckhole?”

Fuckholes aside—“It’s an exciting time for the company,” Karolina says. “That’s what I’d say.”

“God, you people are—”

—

Logan dies.

It’s drastically subtle, how she’s learning most things tend to be. One moment she’s dreading traveling halfway across the world, and the next she doesn’t want to leave. One night the only conversation she’s ever had with Shiv Roy was a brief chat on a smoke break and the next she’s leaving Shiv’s wedding ring on Tom’s desk in a plastic sandwich bag. One day Logan is alive, and the next he isn’t.

Pronounced dead in fucking Bergen County. Humiliating, really.

Karolina drafts the statement. Perfunctory, complimentary, assuring—everything the public needs to hear in all this PR nightmare’s glory, and then they don’t need it. She watches Shiv’s statement to the press from her office, the building’s floors more quiet than she’s ever heard them in all fifteen years, and it’s perfect. Everything she wrote and more, with a little bit more heart. It’s a feeling she can’t quite place, not at all like she’s passed the test—maybe someone like she’s failed it—but even still, it’s like her work is done.

It’s how she knows Shiv is going to win the seat.

(She goes to the funeral. It’s her first time seeing Shiv since Berlin. She looks older, like the six months they’d spent apart were enough to change them into entirely new people. Tom’s not at the funeral, but Karolina notices the ring. The ring that she never mailed but brought back with her, and left on Tom’s desk without a return address. She dodges Shiv at the repast, hides behind Gerri’s questioning glares and distracts them all with interim CEO gossip.

And then it's like she was never there at all.)

—

Gerri is interim CEO for one month when Shiv returns, and then it’s hers.

Nobody thinks it’s going to happen. The office buzzes in the days leading up—Kendall this, Shiv that—but then the board convenes. Logan’s last order of business—a merger with some Swedish tech outfit, and Karolina hears the rumors from the room as they come. Shiv just spent the last year crafting relationships with big tech in China. She just did a successful keynote on the future of entertainment tech in Europe. It’s hers. America’s Politico Sweetheart turned Sweet-talker of Tech. The board wants her and her shiny new relationships. She wins.

Karolina goes to the coronation. She doesn’t think she’d be able to live with herself if she didn’t. She watches from the corner as Shiv signs the dotted line, smiles for the photos, shakes hands and earns their blessing. A year ago, she wouldn’t have been ready. She most likely still isn’t ready—who could be—but it’s not the same Shiv that it would’ve been. It’s the confident Shiv. The one who believes in herself. The one who isn’t asking if she can do it anymore. The one who is doing it.

After, she goes back to her office. She thinks about packing her things, abandoning the office that she’d only gotten to use for the better part of a few months. Shiv had said it clearly, and it’s not that simple, legally, but Karolina knew the terms. She knew it could come to this. She starts a “Where I Left Off” document for Hugo—though it pains her to imagine him besting her in the end—or whoever. She hopes it’s some shiny new suit, one of those millennial consulting firms that Shiv doesn’t have to get close to.

Then Shiv shows up at her door. The air is rife with tension.

“You came,” Shiv says, breaking the ice.

Karolina sits stiffly behind her desk. “Would’ve looked bad for you if I didn’t,” she says. “The board should know you have the V-Suite’s support.” Shiv nods. That’s all it was, optics.

“I got your flowers.”

“I thought a call would’ve been unwelcome,” Karolina says. Shiv shrugs. Moves closer. That’s when Karolina notices—

“Where’s your ring?”

Shiv looks down at her hand, as if she’s just noticed it was bare. She hesitates.

“I only put it on for the cameras,” Shiv says.

“Why?” Karolina asks.

“Well—divorce is too dangerous for the brand-new, inexperienced CEO,” Shiv says.

Karolina keeps a still face. Divorce. “Who told you that?”

Shiv shrugs, walks further into the office. “It’s what I imagined you’d say,” Shiv says. “Shareholders need stability right now, Shiv. It’s not like you have to be with him. Just pretend.”

Karolina bites her lip as Shiv mocks her PR voice.

“So that’s it?” she asks.

“I mean, he’s gonna fight it,” Shiv says. “Figure out some way to say I broke the terms of the prenup. Say he sacrificed progress in his career for me to have this. It’ll be public. Ugly.”

“He won’t win,” Karolina says, immediately.

The shift is subtle. Drastic.

“I know.”

Karolina raises her eyebrows.

“He can’t,” Shiv says. Then, she looks nervous. “Not with you on my side.”

Karolina attempts to hide her surprise.

“Thought you were firing me,” Karolina replies.

Shiv shrugs.

“And I thought you weren’t coming,” she says, and Karolina wonders if Shiv understands. Understands that there’s no world where Karolina wouldn’t show up for her. Shiv leans forward in her seat. “So. How’s CCO sound?”

Karolina’s mind blanks.

“Are you serious?”

Shiv leans back, “Sure, yeah, Shiv, I’d love to be Chief Communications Officer of a female-led Fortune 500. Thanks for the offer.”

“I mean—of course, I’d love to,” Karolina’s speechless. “Is this real?”

“It’s my company, Karolina,” Shiv says. “I want you in it. I do.”

Karolina bites back the tears coming to the surface, looking down if only so that she doesn’t have to look at Shiv.

“Shiv—”

“Not now,” she says softly. “Look, I—I owe you a lot.”

Karolina nods, eyes still glued to her desk, waiting to see where this is going to go.

“And—” There’s a movement out of the corner of her eye, Shiv’s hands, playing with the empty space on her ring finger, “There are things I’d like to discuss with you.”

“Things,” Karolina repeats, letting the word move around in her mouth. Karolina looks up again. Shiv is nervous.

“Dinner. This week?”

Karolina wonders if it’s worth it, if saying yes is some sort of destructive self-entrapment that she’d missed the first time around, but Shiv standing here now, in Karolina’s office, both having achieved everything that Karolina bet they would—she can’t find it in herself to say no.

“Yeah,” she says. “Yeah, I—that would be nice.”

Shiv nods to herself, that self-satisfied small smirk Karolina hadn’t realized she missed this much until it’s gone once again, and Shiv stands, looking at her watch.

“Transition meetings all day,” she says. “I think you’re scheduled for a few.”

“I am.”

“Great,” Shiv smiles, a small smile. “I’ll see you around then.

There’s more to say, they both know it, but Karolina nods and Shiv heads for the door, pausing as her hand reaches the handle.

“Hey, Karolina?”

Karolina looks up expectantly.

What?”

Shiv smiles, an easy glint in her eye.

cw for domestic violence & implied/referenced domestic violence. It is a prevalent theme throughout the entire fic & injuries are described quite a few times but it does not get graphic. the shown domestic violence does not stray from canon. please let me know if you think i've missed anything!

.

.

.

Karolina grips her glass loosely, a lousy mix of the worst 2000s house beats and party guests shouting over the music reverberating through her ears. Shiv stares at Tom across the room, her eyes turning into something more of a scowl compared to Karolina’s entertainment.

“You’d think he’d have a little more tact than trying to get with a competitor,” Shiv says.

Shiv is obviously using a loose definition of the word competitor, the woman being some executive from a privately owned firm that Karolina can’t recall ever being involved in news or theme parks, but she laughs quietly at the comment, unable to ignore the irony in the complaint.

“The fact that he’d even consider speaking to another woman in public in a way that could even hint at a business deal—” Karolina says. “It’s horrifying.”

“Whatever,” Shiv says, taking a sip of her drink. “We’re different.”

“Because…” Karolina lets the word hang in a question, not one that she really needs an answer to, but one she’d like to indulge in anyway.

“Because, I don’t trust them,” Shiv says, finally tearing her eyes away from Tom. It’s the unsaid that Karolina revels in when she pokes and prods, this time around being that Shiv trusts her.

“Although—” Shiv starts.

“Here we go,” Karolina sighs, bracing her arms on the table for impact.

“At least Tom has the decency to laugh at everything she says,” Shiv looks over at the pair again, and Karolina follows her gaze, an animated Tom laughing obnoxiously at whatever the woman has just told him.

Karolina leans closer to Shiv and whispers delicately in her ear, “Maybe she’s just funnier than you.”

She bites back a smirk as Shiv looks at her again, eyes sharp and eyebrow quirked.

“You think I’m jealous,” she states.

Karolina shrugs. “Are you?”

“No,” Shiv says immediately. She rests an elbow on the table and leans her head into her hand, an insufferable smugness taking over her features. “There are more pressing matters in front of me.”

Karolina lets her hair fall in front of her face, if only to hide the growing redness from the eyes of the surrounding crowd. If anyone were to ask, she’d say it was the alcohol. If anyone were to know, well, they’d know that Shiv Roy has Karolina Novotney wrapped around her fucking finger; annoying conversations about her husband be damned.

“Glad you came?” Shiv asks.

While glad is certainly not the word that Karolina would use for her last-minute attendance at the Billionaire Boys Club annual reunion—waking up to the news that her employer has hundreds of accounts of heinous crimes and illegal cover-ups headed right to the press is really not her preferred way to start the work week—it’s always nice to spend time with Shiv in a place that doesn’t feel so shrouded in secrecy. Still, there’s work to do, whether she wants to have that conversation or not.

“I’ll be glad if we can make it through this panel in one piece,” she admits.

“Well,” Shiv says, suddenly agitated. “Take that up with Kendall and Roman.”

“I’ll be taking it up with all three of you tomorrow,” Karolina says. “I need you all on your best behavior.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Shiv says. “Regret, responsibility, and remedy. Condemn and move on. Are we missing anything? Maybe, daughter and doormat?”

Karolina frowns. She’d assumed Shiv’s being here was something she wanted—a strategy to stay in the game, not another instance of being walked over. Karolina lowers her voice, suddenly conscious of their position in the room, a pit of wandering eyes and ears.

“Shiv, I won’t let them make you the face for this, you know that, right?” she asks. “If it all goes crashing down—”

“You wouldn’t,” Shiv says, her expression softening. “But I can think of about ten other faces who would.”

“Every one of those faces would have to go through me,” Karolina affirms.

Shiv is weary in her silence, and despite her instincts, Karolina grabs her hand from underneath the table.

“It’ll be fine,” she says. “All of them know how integral it is to have a female voice on the panel tomorrow. We can’t have Rocket Man and Rape Me fronting a situation like this, can we?”

Shiv looks down, worrying her lip slightly.

“What is it?” Karolina asks.

“It just—” Shiv shakes her head, “It feels like I’m losing favor. This can’t go wrong.”

Although Karolina’s entire job is influencing public response—she’s not entirely clairvoyant. She can’t know what people are going to think about Shiv Roy stepping into the role of the spokesperson for a company she doesn’t work for without it looking entirely pandered, and she doesn’t know how it’s going to look internally—despite the fact that nobody’s opinion below the executive floor matters much anyway—but, she does know that this is a huge deal, and huge favor, and the people who really matter shouldn’t take it lightly. Shouldn’t is always the keyword.

“You’re ready,” Karolina says. “We’re going to murder board the hell out of you three tomorrow. You’ll have a response to everything. Just stick to the script.”

“Stick to the script,” Shiv says. She leans in closer, suddenly smirking, “Got any other scripts you want to show me?”

Karolina squeezes her hand and then drops it, biting back a smile as Shiv shifts in impatience.

“If this panel goes well, I might just think of something.”

If.

“You sure there aren’t any we can workshop right now?” Shiv asks. She lowers her voice. “I’d really like to see that murder board you mentioned.”

“No,” Karolina says, though she knows she doesn’t sound confident. “We’re getting up early tomorrow.”

“Oh, come on,” Shiv says. “You really want to spend the rest of the night watching Tom cockblock himself?”

“And here I thought I was in the clear of hearing about him for the rest of the night.”

“You know he’s been talking about buying a vineyard?” Shiv asks.

Karolina downs the rest of her drink.

“If I take you to my room, can we please stop talking about Tom?”

Shiv can’t hide her smile.

“Only one way to find out.”

—

Karolina isn’t sure how it starts.

From her perspective, the panel goes well. It’s not entirely what they planned, what, with three conflicting personalities sharing one stage, but it worked. They got the message across: Waystar is taking the matter seriously, and they’re not leaving it in the hands of the same kinds of people who buried it under the rug all those years ago. Simple, effective. Condemn and move on. Except, if there’s one thing about the Roy family, it’s that none of them know how to fucking move on.

She’s in the corner of the room with a few members of her team, working on their rapid response plan for once word of the panel inevitably gets out. She’s only half-listening when the siblings re-enter, unsurprisingly still arguing about the events onstage. It’s the usual, Kendall mad at Shiv, and Shiv mad at Kendall, and Roman instigating so it seems like he did anything at all, the conversation not grabbing Karolina’s attention when Marcia’s voice peaks out from the group, a scolding for Shiv, of all people.

Karolina makes her way to the other side of the room, but there’s a building chaos in the short walk and she knows she’s too late to calm any of them with positive public response or statistics. It’s several voices escalating in volume until Logan’s rises above them all, and then there’s a loud crack, and suddenly Roman’s holding Kendall back, a jumble of “Don’t fucking touch her!” and “What the hell, Dad?” and Gerri’s eyes are flitting between Logan’s and Karolina’s, a frantic sort of resolve seeping out of her as she asks, “It played well, right Karolina? They’re saying it played well.”

“It played well,” Karolina automatically confirms, her heart pulsing through her throat as she shifts her eyes on Shiv, hunched over and gripping the side of her face. She doesn’t know what to do with her hands as Kendall and Tom attempt to inspect the wound, a futile effort anyway as Shiv finally regains some composure.

“It’s fine—I’m fine,” Shiv says, dodging the flurry of worried arms and voices as she escapes the room. “Someone get him a fucking Quaalude.”

Broken bits of Shiv’s, now fallen, champagne glass crackle under Tom’s steps as he trails behind her, and it’s only a few seconds between the door slamming shut and Gerri taking charge. Marcia takes Logan away—where to, Karolina doesn’t want to know—and Karolina feels a light tugging on her elbow, and suddenly Gerri’s pulling her into a corner. Gerri looks annoyed, and Karolina wonders if it’s at all similar to the seething sort of rage that’s simmering around in her at what they were just forced to witness, or if it’s closer to inconvenience—another tally on Gerri’s shit-list that she’ll never actually do anything about.

Gerri searches her eyes and under the scrutiny, Karolina crosses her arms, if only to hide the light tremble that she knows is coursing through her hands. Gerri, knowing her better than anyone, knows this as well, reaching out and gripping Karolina’s forearm. She rubs her thumb soothingly up and down, a peace offering before the barking of orders.

“I need you here,” Gerri says softly. Karolina clears her throat.

“I’m here,” she says. Gerri looks guilty for a moment after she’s said it, and Karolina can imagine why, because this isn’t the first time they’ve been in this situation—Karolina troubled by the Logan of it all and Gerri silently pleading with her to keep it together for just another hour—and it’s not unlike the other times Gerri’s sent her the same apologetic regret, as if Karolina’s career at Waystar is something she should’ve stopped all those years ago rather than encouraged. She didn’t always understand it, Gerri’s self-imposed debt felt owed to Karolina, but she thinks she’s starting to now.

Shiv never would’ve been here today if it weren’t for her. She never would’ve been on that stage, saying those things, pissing Logan off enough to do that, if it weren’t for decisions that Karolina had made, had said were good, foolproof even. She’s at fault, a backhand by proxy that she can almost feel pulsing in her own knuckles—an apology she’ll never be able to fulfill, a regret she will never live down.

“I’m here,” she says again, if only to ground herself, and Gerri looks wary, but she nods anyway.

“Okay,” Gerri says, sighing. “Okay, just—go see if Tom needs any help. He still has appearances to make if it can be helped, so—”

“I’ve got it, Gerri,” Karolina says. “Comms will get started on Logan’s statement regarding the panel, if asked. Once that’s briefed, we need everyone on the same page.”

Gerri’s visibly relieved at Karolina’s assertiveness, and she uses that reaction to anchor herself further as Gerri squeezes her arm once more and returns to the leftover crowd, giving everyone firm orders as Karolina leaves the room.

She spots Tom a few halls down, knocking repeatedly on a door that’s clearly not going to be opened.

“Tom,” Karolina says, his worried gaze meeting hers. She doesn’t know what he knows, doesn’t know what he suspects, but he doesn’t look at her with the same kind of threatening contempt he usually does. Right now, it’s just concern. Karolina speaks low, not wanting to be heard through the door. “She say anything?”

Tom shakes his head. “Hasn’t said a word.”

“Okay,” Karolina sighs. “Look—obviously this is, extenuating, but Gerri is requesting that continue the conference as planned—”

“Karolina—”

“Tom—”

“I’m her husband,” he hisses, and they both freeze. Karolina doesn’t want to say it, doesn’t have to say what she is to Shiv, because it’s her hesitation and his response to it—that flash of recognition that if it were Tom, Shiv wanted, he would’ve been through that door already. She’d almost feel bad for him if he wasn’t actively keeping her from getting Shiv help. “Just—keep me in the loop.”

She waits until he’s gone to knock on the door.

“Shiv?” she calls out. “It’s just me.”

It’s a little while before the lock clicks, and Karolina opens the door carefully, unsure of what she’ll find. It’s not entirely unexpected—bloodied towels on the counter, a disheveled Shiv going back and forth between rinsing out her mouth and attempting to apply pressure—but Karolina doesn’t think any amount of bracing could’ve prepared her for the sight anyway. She locks the door behind her.

“Here to serve the gag order?” Shiv asks, and Karolina has enough humility left in her to feel ashamed that it’s not out of the realm of possibility. Still, she doesn’t dignify the comment with a response.

“To check on you,” she corrects. Shiv pauses in front of the sink, her hands resting on the porcelain bowl. The injured side of her face is hidden from Karolina’s view, and if it weren’t for the splotchy mascara and the red tint of Shiv’s nose, Karolina might not have known anything was wrong at all.

“He meant to hit Roman,” Shiv says, as if it makes the situation any better. Karolina’s not so sure it does, but Shiv sounds sure of it, as if the knowledge that the backhand was meant for someone else can somehow absolve her of experiencing it like she’s the one who got hit. But she was.

“Okay,” Karolina says, even though she doesn’t believe her, and she’s certain Shiv doesn’t either as she turns on the faucet, eyes focused fervently on her hands as she scrubs at imaginary filth. The blood is already gone, so it must be the feeling.

Karolina makes it about fifteen seconds into Shiv’s erratic scrubbing until she can’t watch any longer.

“Shiv,” she says calmly, placing a hand on Shiv’s back. Shiv falters slightly, tensing under Karolina’s touch but not stopping, scrubbing at her nail beds as if she’d spent the entire day digging. Sometimes it’s all Shiv seems to know how to do; dig until her fingertips are raw and her head’s gone too far under far too quickly for Karolina to keep up. By the time Karolina gets there, the hole’s been filled. Whatever Shiv has buried is deep, and whatever Karolina hopes to find will take a lengthy excavation of her own, but that’s usually. This time around, Karolina doesn’t have to search for what Shiv’s trying to bury. It’s red and it’s angry and it’s in the shape of a human hand across the side of Shiv’s face, and Karolina saw it happen. Shiv knows she saw it happen.

Karolina shuts off the faucet before she even really thinks about it, and Shiv pauses, her hands still hovering in the sink. Karolina reaches around her and grabs a clean towel, drying Shiv’s hands wordlessly. She’s surprised that Shiv lets her, surprised that Shiv hasn’t run off already, adamant that she doesn’t need this, that she doesn’t need Karolina, and she’s surprised when Shiv turns around, her arms crossed and thousand-yard stare piercing the entirety of Karolina’s gut. She can see the wound in full now, harsh on Shiv’s pale skin and only getting worse by the second.

And what can she say? I’m sorry he did that. I’m sorry he used you in the face of scandal and then got mad when you tried to make it better. I’m sorry that you were only doing what you were told. I’m sorry that I’m a part of it. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.

How many times can she apologize for the things she can’t control? How many times will she have to look Shiv in the eye and apologize for being a bystander to it all anyway?

“Can I look?” she asks. She doesn’t think she has to; the sound of it was enough to know that the hit would leave a mark, and though it’s not a lot of blood, she wasn’t expecting as much as there actually is.

“Please?” she tries again, like Shiv would be doing her a favor. She thinks Shiv would be, because it’s Karolina at fault here—Karolina’s fault they said yes to the panel, her fault they even let Shiv on that stage—and Shiv lets out a deep, uneven breath and turns slightly, allowing Karolina access to the injury. She winces as Karolina pokes and prods, opens her jaw when Karolina asks her to open it, closes it when she asks her to close it. She discovers the main source of the blood—a loose molar and a chunk of skin missing from the inside of Shiv’s cheek, both of which feel terrible to call lucky, so she doesn’t call them anything at all.

She grabs the wet towel, slowly dabbing at Shiv’s face to clean the lingering mascara and blood, and Shiv closes her eyes, letting Karolina work.

“You did everything right,” Karolina eventually says, because she can’t bear to bring up blame.

“Doesn’t fucking feel like it,” Shiv mumbles.

“I know,” Karolina says. She sets the towel down, her hand coming to rest on the unharmed side of Shiv’s face, thumb grazing the soft skin lightly. Shiv opens her eyes, narrow and distant in the name of resolve, and it’s only a moment before the weight of it all catches up to her and takes her down. She drops her head into the crook of Karolina’s neck, her cries coming out like silent pleas to just make it fucking better, and Karolina doesn’t know what to do, doesn’t know how to start helping beyond the logistical mess of it all.

If they started driving now, how fast could they get back to the city? Should they charter a helicopter instead? How long before the pain sets in Shiv’s brain catches up to the loose molar? How soon could they get something heftier than extra-strength aspirin? Should she take something non-drowsy? What if she has a concussion? Can she take a fucking horse tranquilizer? Is there something that can make her forget? Something that can send them back in time and do everything differently, change whatever’s allowed them to make it to this point?

She holds Shiv tighter, like maybe the more of her that’s touching Shiv, the better she can absorb all of the hurt and replace it with something else. Dull it, at the very least. She’s still unsure of what to say, the right things all seemingly evading her. The simple ones come to the forefront, like what you’d ask a child with a freshly skinned knee, screaming their head off in the middle of the street. Are you injured or are you shocked? But Karolina’s not a mother, and nobody ever bandaged up her scrapes and bruises. It’s a level of comfort she dreads being asked of, something she and Shiv had successfully avoided throughout their entire entanglement, but Shiv didn’t ask for this, and Karolina doesn’t think she’s ever really had anyone to bandage up her bumps and bruises either, so if Karolina is the person Shiv’s letting through that locked door, she’s going to do what needs to be done.

“Does it hurt?” she asks once it seems Shiv’s calmed down a little. She’ll do the job; she just never said it wouldn’t be done poorly.

“What do you think?” Shiv says, pulling away.

Karolina sighs, pulling out her phone. “We need to get you to a dentist.”

“No,” Shiv immediately says. “No—I’m not going to some fucking hokey emergency dentist out here in Bumfuck. I’ll go to my dentist in the morning.”

Karolina doesn’t have to do the math to know that’s far too long to sit with a loose tooth without any medical intervention. Beyond the possible concussion, or jaw injury, or infection risk—

“We need to get you checked out, Shiv,” Karolina says. She must sound serious, because it’s enough for Shiv to lock eyes with her, and it takes all of Karolina’s resolve to stay calm as the tears begin to pool in Shiv’s eyes again. Somehow, she holds her gaze, ignoring the light drum in her stomach when Shiv huffs, her eyes moving to the ceiling.

“As if this isn’t already humiliating enough,” Shiv mumbles. She looks back at Karolina, a wordless sort of pleading that Karolina doesn’t know how to say no to. “I just want to go, Karolina.”

Karolina grips her phone, swallowing down her concerns. She nods, knowing it’s not the time to pick a fight.

“Do you want to see Tom first?” Karolina asks. Normally, she’d be thrilled by Shiv's response. Right now, it’s just sad.

“No,” Shiv says.

“Shiv—”

“It’s fucking embarrassing,” Shiv whispers. “Okay? I just—I just want to leave.”

It’s the unsaid that Karolina clings onto, that somehow Karolina has positioned herself in a place where Shiv is comfortable, a place where the embarrassment is dulled and she’s free to feel, despite Karolina’s perceptions of herself, despite her job, despite her role in all of this, and she won’t let Shiv down. Helicopter, she’s decided.

“I’ll go talk to him and get the flight situated,” she says, but then she stops at the door.

“Shiv—” Shiv looks at her, and Karolina doesn’t know if this is the first time this has happened, if every strike that was meant for Roman actually went to him, or if this is just another occurrence on an itemized list of occurrences, but words sit at the tip of Karolina’s tongue, things she wishes someone had been around to tell her all those years ago, things she wishes she could have understood sooner, first time or not. “It’s not humiliating. It feels that way, but—they all care about you. They do, and they don’t think any less of you.”

Karolina leaves before Shiv has to come up with a response, and she’s grateful that their exile goes smoothly. In some twist of fate, Tom still has to show face at the conference, so she lets him feel useful by having him call in an emergency fill of a narcotic for the ride. She’s hedging her bets on no concussion, supported by the fact that Shiv hasn’t had any claim of a headache and by her refusal to even stop by the summit’s medical staff for a quick check-up. Shiv’s out by the time the helicopter is in the air, and Karolina tries multiple times to get some rest herself with no success, her eyes continuously drawn to the sleeping bundle of red hair on her shoulder, not in her lap because she dazedly agreed to at least wear the seatbelt on the flight if she was going to make Karolina commit fifty other acts of negligence in one night.

Shiv wakes drowsily when they land, and she gets her way in the car when Karolina lets her forgo the seatbelt in favor of resting her head in Karolina’s lap. Karolina spends the duration of the ride brushing her fingers through Shiv’s hair, careful not to touch the swollen skin as it stares up at her. She has the driver go straight to her apartment, because she doesn’t know where to go, but Karolina’s place seems like the safer option, away from prying eyes, away from Tom.

Karolina knows they’ve been distant lately, half of her conversations with Shiv filled with verbose rants over him. If she were Tom, she’d feel pretty shitty right now, but she can’t blame Shiv. It’s hard to seek comfort from someone who’s got one hand in yours and the other in the one that hit you. She’s not entirely sure what makes her different from Tom in this case; they both know that if what happened tonight leaks it’ll be Karolina crafting the narrative, it’ll be Karolina reminding the world that Logan Roy is a tremendous father and while he’s been recovering smoothly, we’d all do well to remember what a strain the past year has been on Mr. Roy’s health.

A confused old man accidentally hits his daughter. It’s a tale so old she actually thinks it might be better for the Roy family if it did leak, tugging on the heartstrings of the American public in the midst of a scandal. See? They’re victims too. All of them. Then, the car runs over a hefty pothole just a block down from Karolina’s building and Shiv winces deeply in her half-slumber, the pads of her fingers digging lightly into Karolina’s thigh, and Karolina regrets thinking it at all.

Maybe that’s the difference; if Karolina were to dig deep, she’d be one hand in Shiv’s and one hand adjacent to Logan’s, and right now, the hand that’s adjacent to Logan is full of a shaking kind of vitriol that she doesn’t think Tom could ever stomach holding over him. Condemn and move on. How can Karolina move on from this? The thing that isn’t, finally in front of their faces, and splattered across Shiv’s in shitty red splotches.

When they pull up in front of Karolina’s building, she drags her feet waking Shiv up. Her doorman gets their bags, and she waits until she imagines he’s about halfway to her front door when she starts kneading her hand into Shiv’s arm, murmuring a soft, “We’re here,” as she does so. Shiv stirs slowly, and Karolina instantaneously feels bad as Shiv’s brows furrow, her whole body tensing up in Karolina’s lap. That means it hurts, and there’s not much else they can do about it at this hour.

“Can you make it up?” Karolina asks, silently hoping that the answer is yes, because the only other alternative is Karolina tipping her doorman to carry Shiv up, and she isn’t so sure which one of them would hate that more.

“Yeah,” Shiv says, her voice nearly sick with pain as she slowly rises from Karolina’s lap.

Karolina steps out of the car first, relieved when the change in lighting seems to have no effect on Shiv. She holds out a hand and Shiv takes it, eyes hanging low as they make their way up to Karolina’s apartment. When they get in, Shiv’s got the bathroom first, Karolina digging around in her medicine cabinet for anything they can mix with what Shiv’s already taken.

Her mind wanders to how normal it is, Shiv’s toothbrush hidden in a drawer, Shiv’s extra clothes with their own shelf in Karolina’s closet, the side of Karolina’s bed that grows colder every night she spends alone. It feels normal, except Karolina’s rummaging around in her medicine cabinet to find a suitable secondary painkiller so Shiv doesn’t spend the entire night writhing in pain because her father nearly knocked her teeth out. Karolina takes a deep breath as she pours out a dose. Her phone lights up out of the corner of her eye every few minutes, likely texts from Gerri and emails from her assistant, and she puts it in her pocket without glancing at the screen, taking the pills and a cup of water to the bathroom.

She finds Shiv with a clean face, inspecting the damage under the harsh light. She sets the water and the pills on the counter, engulfing Shiv in a hug from behind. Shiv instinctively closes her eyes, leaning some of her weight against Karolina as they stand there. Karolina finally has a better look at the fully bloomed wound as well, Shiv’s skin a myriad of different colors trailing from her jawline toward her cheekbone. The worst is on the lower half, swollen slightly, no doubt in part due to the loose tooth. Karolina wishes she were good for anything more than damage control, better at anything other than closing doors and sweeping under rugs, but reasons that’s maybe what Shiv does need—someone to help her clean up the mess.

“Take these,” Karolina says, holding the pills in front of Shiv. Shiv sighs as she grabs them from Karolina, not meeting her eyes through the mirror, and she washes them down with a wince that Karolina assumes is downplayed based on the fact that Shiv didn’t even open her jaw wide enough to let anything more than the pills in. Karolina tries not to dwell on it. She kisses Shiv’s unharmed cheek lightly, and Shiv squeezes one of Karolina’s hands before escaping the embrace to go into the bedroom.

Karolina takes her time as she cleans up, somewhat selfishly she feels as she listens to Shiv rummaging through drawers all alone in her bedroom. It’s not the violence itself that’s still making her hands a little too clammy and her heart beat a little too fast, maybe more so the reminder. It’s like you’d ask a child, are you injured or are you shocked? Karolina would venture to say shocked. Fathers hitting their daughters, a tale as old as time, but it’s not so much a tale when it’s right in front of her. And now it’s in her home. It’s snuck its way under her door frame and into her bed, and it feels somewhat like the first time, a ripe eight-years-old and powerless as her mother cries, so confused as to why any of this is happening at all and terrified to so much as make a move, might she make it all worse somehow. In this case, the only thing she can do is keep moving, keep going forward in the event that something she does can make it better.

Shiv is already in bed by the time she returns to the bedroom, drowning in one of Karolina’s old sleep shirts, and she shakes off the feeling of yet another thing being tainted—her bed, her mirror, her shirt, her pillow, her Shiv. It doesn’t feel fair to say, because Shiv has always been wounded and it’s never changed much. She’s always walked around with a gaping hole in her chest whether she ever wanted anyone to notice or not, but the difference now is that she can’t hide it, and Karolina can’t choose to not look at it.

She climbs in bed next to Shiv, careful not to disturb her too much as she settles down, unsure of how close she’s wanted, but Shiv immediately leans back into Karolina and she assumes she’s wanted plenty, dropping a light kiss to the crown of Shiv’s head.

“How does it feel?” she asks.

“It’s bearable,” Shiv says, and bearable doesn’t mean that it doesn’t hurt, so Karolina just smooths Shiv’s hair, waiting for Shiv to fall asleep.

—

Shiv doesn’t talk about it. Not really. She wakes up the next morning and she makes an emergency dentist appointment, and she doesn’t even ask Karolina to go with, not in those words entirely, but she does say they’ll likely have to put her under, and Karolina doesn’t have to think twice before saying that she’ll call the driver and go with, just in case.

It’s a uniquely infuriating kind of feeling, having Shiv curled up on her couch with perpetually teary eyes and an ice pack hiding a mess of bruising that had only gotten worse overnight. Karolina had felt sick when she woke up and saw it, as if she’d been tricking herself into believing it wasn’t as hard of a hit as it actually was, a lighter bruising even pooling under her eye.

Karolina’s grateful that it’s a scheduled travel day for the executive team, hoping the pseudo-day off will give her the time to figure out how she’s going to face Logan when she returns to the office. How she’s going to pretend that Shiv doesn’t mean anything to her this time around, that her loyalty is to Waystar and by extension Logan, and that his image her top priority even though every time she thinks about him the only thing she can see is her own father’s backhand racing down for a strike. She knows it’s a mess of her own making. No one gave her the handbook, but she saw the signs, and she stayed. She welcomed it into her life and made herself a part of it. She tricks herself. She lets Logan yell at her until her legs feel like Jell-O and her tongue is crawling down the inside of her own throat and then an hour later, she laughs about it by the coffee cart as if it’s just all just some small misunderstanding. They all do it, they downplay and they pretend, because it’s easier than dealing with the truth.

Even now, molar hanging on by a literal thread, any emotion Shiv’s carried over from the night previous has been replaced with an it’s fine, it’s not that bad, and Karolina knows that’s what Shiv is accustomed to. Knows that Shiv shutting her eyes tight and talking as normally as she can through a tight and swollen jaw while on the phone with Tom is all she knows how to do. To satiate everyone else completely. Forget that it’s a big deal, just move on.

Karolina doesn’t understand how not to make this a big deal, but she doesn’t want to make it more difficult for Shiv. She doesn’t shove another ice pack in Shiv’s face when she gets off the phone, doesn’t question why the pills she left out are sitting untouched on the nightstand, doesn’t even bother to tease Shiv over wearing another item of clothing from Karolina’s closet like she normally would; she barely wants to breathe, afraid to mess up whatever semblance of equilibrium is left in Shiv’s orbit in case anything at all turns out to be the last straw.

She briefly wonders if it’s worse this way, dancing around the hard truth that Shiv Roy is a human, not immune to having pierceable skin and breakable bones, but she figures this is how Shiv wants it; downplayed. If Shiv doesn’t take a pill, then Karolina doesn’t have to know that it hurts.

The only thing is that Karolina does know that it hurts. She can feel the sharp pain that splinters from the hinge of her jaw to the base of her neck. Understands the earache, the weary, tired eyes, the persistent taste of iron in her mouth, and the way that everything seems to move a little slower, feel a little less real. She knows so much yet so little, because she’s not inside Shiv’s mind and she can’t tell what Shiv’s thinking, so she doesn’t hover. She just does what she’s asked, and she does what she can, and she doesn’t pressure Shiv into doing what she can’t.

She ignores the too-pale hands that clutch around her arm on the way down to the car, doesn’t pull out her phone when it buzzes a dozen different times because she doesn’t want Shiv to see all the names of the people who have let her down in the last thirty-two years as they come up on her caller-id, and puts on her most dazzling smile inside the dentist’s office as Shiv recounts the story that’s caused her ailment; an embarrassing tumble during some turbulence on the private jet. I should’ve listened to the stewardess—guess it’s one way to make time for the dentist, right?

Karolina makes sure to write the cover story down in her notes. It’s not the first she’s ever had on file for a Roy, and it’s not even the first that’s left her feeling wrong and wondering if she’s ever had any morals to begin with, but it is the first that she can’t reason with. She can’t decipher a why she’s doing it at all, the only lingering explanation is that it’s for Shiv. She’s doing what Shiv wants. What Shiv needs. She recalls Shiv’s quiet confidence walking into the examination room with the dentist, like she hadn’t been squeezing Karolina’s hand up to the very point that the car door opened outside the building, and she wonders what else she’s missed, how many other things she’s allowed Shiv to shrug off without question.

She swallows down the thought, settling into the private waiting room that she imagines the hokey dentist in Bumfuck wouldn’t have had. She pulls out her phone, searching for one voice on the other end of the line.

“Prognosis?” Gerri asks. Karolina’s relieved to hear her voice, relieved to hear anything beyond Shiv’s pain-induced silence and her own racing thoughts. She can hear fading voices in the background of Gerri’s end, meaning they’re likely not on the road yet.

“That we don’t get paid enough,” Karolina can’t stop herself from saying, even though she knows deep down that at this point, there’s no world where her debt with Shiv requires any payment at all. Because wasn’t it just a few weeks ago that she was wiping blood from Kendall’s nose? Getting him blow because even though they all know he should be the last person contacting shareholders, she did it anyway? She’s a cacophony of transactions, but she’s losing sight of a number that excuses any of it. Gerri sighs on the other end.

“Negotiations are off,” she says.

Karolina knows it’s wrong that her immediate reaction is satisfaction, because she also knows how much this is going to impact the shitstorm that’s already clouding each of them, but she can’t help it. It feels like some sort of check and balance in the name of a restorative justice that will never be served, and she holds onto it. It’s something.

“And the article?” Karolina asks. Gerri makes no note of the fact that it’s Karolina’s job to know.

“We’re moving to internal investigations,” Gerri says. “We’ll be outsourcing a firm—no word yet on who our lucky match will be.”

“Great,” Karolina says, and even though it’s a private room, she still speaks lower. “Your bases are covered, right?”

“Blindsided by the article,” Gerri feigns. It’s another painful reminder of who they are and what they do, and though Karolina was blindsided, a part of her always knew. The rumors about cruises were inescapable in the PR department and there are no rumors at Waystar that come without basis.

“I don’t know when I’ll be in the office, but there’s no official communication that doesn’t go through me,” Karolina says. “We have enough messes.”

She hates to refer to her current predicament as a mess, because it’s nothing she feels burdened to clean up. Nobody’s forcing her to sit in this dentist's office, and certainly nobody’s forcing her to open her apartment doors, and her bed sheets, and her top left dresser drawer, but she can’t say that. Not even to Gerri.

“How’s our archeologist?” Gerri asks.

“Undergoing a root canal,” Karolina says. “They can save the tooth, so, some good news, I guess.”

“Good,” Gerri says. Karolina can hear papers shuffling in the background, and she’s dreading the amount of catch-up she’s going to have to do just from missing one day in the office. “Where’s her head at?”

“I think she’d like to pretend it never happened,” Karolina admits. Shiv hasn’t said it yet, but she can’t imagine this being the hill that Shiv Roy would choose to die on. Gerri hums on the other end, and Karolina can guess how the rest of the trip is going. She can only hope someone did actually get Logan a fucking Quaalude.

“Logan would be pleased with that,” Gerri says, and even though she says it sarcastically, the sentiment alone is enough to crack Karolina’s outward indifference.

“Well, as long as Logan’s pleased,” she snipes. Gerri’s silent on the other end for a moment and Karolina waits for the usual lecture, that Karolina cares too much and you’re not their babysitter, Karolina, just do what’s in your purview and nothing more, which is always cheap talk coming from Gerri anyway, but it doesn’t come.

“And how’s your head?” Gerri asks.

Karolina sighs, running a hand over her eyes. They both know this call was never about business. “Haven’t had any complaints, Ger.”

“Very funny,” Gerri says, and Karolina can’t find it in herself to be too satisfied, but she can picture the look of fond disdain in Gerri’s silence, and she finds a little bit of comfort in the image. “Seriously, Karolina…if you need the cavalry to step in—"

“It’s fine, Gerri,” Karolina says. “I’m fine.”

Because Gerri knows. She’s heard the stories and she’s seen the remnants herself. She’s the first pair of eyes on Karolina the second Logan’s a little too aggressive and the first voice in her ear when she thinks Karolina’s about to crack, but it’s different this time. It’s not about her, it’s about being there for Shiv.

“She’s not your responsibility,” Gerri finally says. It’s an act of protection, Karolina knows this, and she can rationalize Gerri’s point of view—Karolina inserting herself into a ticking time bomb of a family, putting herself right at the center of something she’s spent her entire adult life trying to escape—but Karolina had never done anything to earn Gerri’s protection. It was something Gerri decided on, something she felt she could give, and it shouldn’t be any different for Karolina. Gerri’s right, Shiv isn’t her responsibility, but Karolina still owes her something. There’s a sense of security that Shiv is now cashing in. If Karolina were to break that, what would it make her?

“I think we both know that’s not true,” Karolina replies.

Gerri doesn’t have anything to say to that.

—

Karolina’s created an entire action plan for monitoring news about cruises and drafted up about four different press releases by the time Shiv gets out (her favorite is the one where she’s announcing Hugo’s retirement).

Shiv seems to be in a lot less pain after the procedure, hunkering down on Karolina’s couch as soon as they get back to the apartment. Karolina’s still trying her best not to hover, but there’s also a part of her that can’t settle down, so she compromises by sitting on the couch adjacent to Shiv and opens her laptop for the first time in over twenty-four hours. She forwards the action plan to her team for review and does a few indirect searches regarding Waystar and the news. It’s not as bad as she was fearing. There’s a bit of a rocky perception from the conference that’s mostly shrouded in inconsistent messaging, but it’s nothing she can’t work with.

It’s a while before Shiv stirs, and Karolina doesn’t take the time for granted, ordering soft groceries and panic-searching everything she can about root canals and molar splinting and if there’s somehow still a risk of concussion even though it’s been a full twenty-four hours and Shiv has never even once complained about a headache.

She left a pair of pills out on the coffee table, a light prescription from the dentist should Shiv need it, and she pretends not to watch when Shiv finally sits up and analyzes the display as Karolina types away. Shiv takes them, Karolina glad that she’s no longer participating in whatever emotionally charged abstinence she was displaying earlier in the day. Shiv leaves the room wordlessly, and Karolina distracts herself with work while she waits for Shiv to return, careful to listen out for any signs that might make her needed. She’s about to give in and check on Shiv when she appears back in the living room, a pillow from Karolina’s bed in her hand, and she lays down right up against Karolina. Karolina instinctively drops a hand in Shiv’s hair, scratching lightly as Shiv gets comfortable again.

“You need anything?” Karolina asks.

“Just this,” Shiv says quietly. “And to not have wires poking my cheeks like I’m fucking fourteen.”

“I can only help with one of those things, unfortunately,” Karolina says, brushing back a lock of hair.

“Really?” Shiv hums. “You’re supposed to be a fixer.”

It’s not meant to be a jab, but Karolina can’t help the way it hits her. Fixing something like this is out of her depth, no matter how much she wishes it wasn’t.

“How’s the rest of it?” Karolina asks. The dentist checked out Shiv’s jaw, figuring it was most likely just sore from the hit, but did refer Shiv to a specialist in case there are any lasting issues. Karolina, naturally, is on edge about the possibility of another complication, but Shiv doesn’t need that from her. She needs reassurance, a strong hand to hold. Not shaky.

“Hurts,” Shiv says. “Maybe Dad’s true calling was the ring.”

Shiv can’t see Karolina, so she doesn’t even attempt feigned amusement. She doesn’t think that’s what Shiv was going for anyway, what, with the deadpan tone and the fully deepened bruise. It’s then, that Shiv’s phone rings from the coffee table. They both look at it, Dad, popping up in big bright letters on the caller ID. Shiv’s knuckles pale as her hand clenches into a tight fist, her thumbnail worrying itself into the skin of her fingers.

“You don’t have to answer it,” Karolina reassures. Shiv nods, digging a hand into her eyes. She must hit her bad eye the wrong way, because she yelps out in pain before her entire body goes rigid under Karolina’s hand.

“What is it?” Karolina asks worriedly, sitting up. Shiv exhales slowly, her body releasing some of the tension as she does so, but her face still clearly expressing the discomfort she must be feeling as she attempts to breathe through the pain.

“I just—moved too fast,” Shiv says.

“Okay,” Karolina says. “That’s okay, let’s just take it easy. I’m going to get some ice.”

Shiv nods and Karolina carefully gets up, once again pushing back the immediate concern that comes with Shiv not denying care. She returns to the living room with the ice pack and kneels in front of the couch, brushing a thumb across Shiv’s forehead as she hands it over. Shiv hesitantly holds it against the side of her face, and Karolina continues to brush Shiv’s hair, waiting patiently for her breathing to return to a normal pattern, and she’s relieved when it does.

“Why don’t we get comfortable in bed?” Karolina asks, and Shiv shakes her head lightly right away.

“No,” Shiv says. “Can we—will you stay here?”

“Of course,” Karolina says. It’s not often Shiv asks her for anything—she’s barely asked anything of Karolina throughout this entire ordeal—and even if she did, Karolina would never say no. “I’m wherever you want me.”

She gets back on the couch, and Shiv settles against her once more. Karolina draws light patterns along her side, only pausing when her laptop dings with an email, and she closes it before they have to hear any more.

“I’m sorry,” Shiv says, her voice thick with exhaustion.

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” Karolina says. “And you don’t have to talk to me right now, either.”

“It’s fine, I just—forgot about my eye,” Shiv says. Forgot. As in, Shiv’s not used to having shiners that she has to be careful not to touch, and she shouldn’t be. She shouldn’t even have one to be careful with in the first place. Karolina tries not to dwell on that part of the conversation, doesn’t want her anger to seep through the comfort that she’s supposed to be supplying.

“Just, don’t push it, Shiv,” she ends up saying.

“That’s my big skill, Kay,” Shiv says. Karolina’s heart lurches at the nickname, Shiv’s voice far too frail and far too defeated.

“You did what was asked of you,” Karolina says. What I asked of you. “You tried to make things better.”

“I don’t even know why I did,” Shiv says. “I should’ve just let Kendall have his fucking moment.”

“With that plausible deniability bullshit?” Karolina asks. “You said some hard truths, Shiv. That isn’t a crime.”

And the punishment certainly didn’t fit the bill.

“Still, I should’ve known better,” Shiv argues lightly.

“Should’ves won’t get you anywhere,” Karolina says. “You could’ve read a script Logan had written himself, and this still would’ve happened.”

Shiv is silent as she mulls over the words. They both know Karolina’s right, that nothing is good enough for Logan Roy unless it’s his words coming out of his own mouth. Shiv removes the ice pack and Karolina reaches out to put it on the table for her. She intertwines their hands, shivering slightly at how cold Shiv’s is.

“I don’t know where to go from here,” Shiv eventually says. “What to say to him.”

“You don’t have to say anything,” Karolina tells her. “This isn’t your mistake to fix.”

“You don’t know what it’s like with him. Everything is our fucking fault.”

“I know what it’s like—”

“To work for him,” Shiv interrupts. “Not to have him as a dad.”

Karolina brings Shiv’s hand to her lips gently. Shiv’s skin still smells like the lavender body wash she likes to steal out of Karolina’s bathroom, and it’s nothing like blood, or sweat, or angry fathers.

“I had my own dad, Shiv,” Karolina says. “Nothing was ever good enough for him, either.”

Shiv stills, her fingers fidgeting in Karolina’s hand.

“I mean, but did he…” Her voice trails off, but Karolina doesn’t have to work very hard to figure out what the question is supposed to be.

“He did,” Karolina says quietly. “And thinking about everything that I should’ve done—it never made anything better. There’s no world where he wanted to be anything other than what he was. It took me a long time to accept that.”

Shiv sits up and Karolina meets her troubled eyes with a calm gaze. Shiv looks her up and down as if she’s inspecting her, like she can’t quite imagine the Karolina she knows ever having any man-made imperfections. Karolina knows when a light scar catches Shiv’s eye, remnants of a thinly split brow in ’98, one that’s difficult to notice unless you’re searching. It was a humiliating affair that left her facing reality for the first time when she was a doe-eyed intern at Waystar and a certain member of the legal department who’d taken her on as some sort of mentee inquired why she came back from the Thanksgiving holiday roughed up. Karolina said she had brothers; her background check didn’t add up.

(Then came a small note on the inside of her planner reading that she’d have to get better at cover-ups if she wanted a future in PR. The next half was an address, and an open invitation for the winter holiday should she choose not to spend it with her brothers.)

Shiv brushes her thumb across the scar, faded and not Karolina’s biggest takeaway from that period of her life, and Karolina grabs the hand, bringing Shiv’s knuckles to her lips once more. Shiv’s eyebrows are furrowed in a pitiful sort of sadness that she doesn’t mind too much coming from Shiv. Coming from someone who understands.

“What are you thinking?” Karolina asks.

Shiv shakes her head lightly and sniffs. “That I’m tired of this bullshit,” she says, attempting to keep the tears at bay. “That I don’t know if I can walk away.”

Karolina takes a deep breath, attempting to not let the conversation get to her the way it feels like it is, poking and prodding at her gut.

“You don’t have to,” Karolina says. “You don’t have to do anything. All of it, it’s your choice.”

“But you walked away?” Shiv asks, as if Karolina has the right answer. She wishes she did.

“Shiv, my father…there was no room for conversation,” Karolina says, unable to control the slight shake in her voice. “If I kept going back—”

She doesn’t like to think about it, the way his anger kept building the less it seemed she needed him. Just like she doesn’t indulge in should’ves, she doesn’t like to think about the what ifs. Staying just wasn’t an option.

Logan seems to carry the same propensity for rage, but with a level of regret that sucks everyone back in. She doesn’t know what she would do in Shiv’s position either; it’s not hard to go back to someone who understands that they’re supposed to say sorry. And maybe that’s why she’s put up with Logan for so long herself. It’s nice to imagine a father who knows what he does is wrong, even if that doesn’t make it right.

“I’m sorry you went through that,” Shiv says, but the words sound wrong coming out of her mouth.

“I’m sorry, too,” Karolina says. Then a nagging question appears on her tongue, one that’s been eating away at her from the moment she stepped into that bathroom. “You said—that he meant to hit Roman?”

Shiv looks away then, as if guilty of something.

“He wouldn’t—I mean, it wasn’t often, but he—” Shiv stumbles through her words. “I mean, we were kids. It wasn’t like this. It wasn’t me.”

Her voice cracks at the end, and Karolina gently pulls Shiv into her, holding her tightly. She can imagine how confusing it must be, to go your whole life feeling some sort of distance from the violence, even if it was occasional. It’s not like Shiv has been spared any of Logan’s mind games, but even then, there’s a level of comfortability that she most likely reached in it. Whatever her normal was with Logan, he destroyed that.

“Have they just been carrying this with them their entire lives?” Shiv asks.

It’s a loaded question, one Shiv deserves an honest answer to. Karolina doesn’t like to believe it’s something she’s always carrying. It’s there, and it affects her in ways she wishes it didn’t, but she doesn’t think it has total control. She laughs, and she cries, and she still can’t stand the scent of Lucky Strike Reds without it making her skin itch a little, but she loves the scent of the Marlboros Shiv loves to pull out at the end of a long and drunken night at a Waystar event. It’s give and take, things come and go, but she’s still her, regardless of what she’s carrying and how much.

“Shiv, it all fucking sucks. Whether he’s spitting your name or spitting in your face,” Karolina says. She rubs a comforting thumb along Shiv’s arm. “Haven’t you already been carrying things your entire life, too?”

The question brings a discomfort to Shiv that she can Karolina immediately. It’s not normally her place to point out the flaws in Shiv’s upbringing, and it’s not a topic they’ve ever broached until tonight, but it needed to be pointed out. Shiv thinks this is the first time she’s suffered under Logan’s hand. Karolina would argue that Shiv doesn’t know what it’s like to not suffer under him.

“What do you think I should do?” Shiv asks, ignoring Karolina’s question. Karolina hates when Shiv does this, when she looks at Karolina like she has all the answers. Like whatever thing she’s about to say is an absolute that Shiv will let herself be ruled by, despite acting like she doesn’t ever really want anyone’s input at all. That’s where her responsibility lies, in being honest with Shiv. She thinks Shiv knows that, or at least, Karolina hopes she does.

“I think that wounds heal and scars fade,” Karolina says, piecing together her thoughts. “I think…that your father isn’t someone who’s going to change, but I think he might say that he’s sorry. It’s not a bad thing, if you’re willing to let it go. It’s not a bad thing if you can’t forget it, either.”

“I’m tired of being terrified of him,” Shiv whispers through a teary breath.

“I know,” Karolina says.

“If—if I walk away,” Shiv swallows, “What happens to this?”

This. Karolina’s not even sure she can define what this is in the current moment, but she can still recall her life without Shiv in it, and Karolina knows one thing is certain.