my doomed rarepair is always on my mind. ms. casey exists to imprison gemma scout: if cold harbor is completed, she dies. if gemma escapes, she also dies. she only exists on the severed floor for a brief moment, her entire life is a few days overall at the very most. natalie knows this. she's unsevered; her life is several decades of both lumon and the outside world, the full human experience, including more pain than ms. casey ever had the chance to experience. and a part of her job is overseeing cold harbor to its completion. the company that has full control over both of their lives has basically ordered her to be complicit in ms. casey's death, and to stand by as she's treated as nothing more than another lock on the door keeping gemma trapped.
now imagine if they were in love. imagine if every time natalie was ordered to go down into the severed floor to confront cobel, all she was thinking about was casey, eyes drifting off to where she knew the wellness room was, but she couldn't. not with the board listening. maybe ms. casey would catch glimpses of her every now and then, and feel drawn to her inexplicably; something within her knowing that this unsevered stranger needed the wellness she was created to give more than any of the innies did. "i knew she needed me", while not the healthiest basis for a relationship, is a trope i absolutely adore.
and the thing is. none of that would change the outcome. love can't overcome natalie's existential terror of lumon and what they can do, and it certainly can't change the fact that ms. casey's life is dependent on gemma staying imprisoned. she's, by far, the most dehumanized innie, and she can't get a happy ending. she never could. her very criteria for existence forbids it.
