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shivvroys · 7 months

Text

hold me like water (or christ, hold me like a knife)

shivlina oneshot | severance au

cw: suicide attempt, some mildly dubious consent

around 9k words

read below or on ao3

this phantom life sharpens like an image

but it sharpens like a knife

“Hi, Rose.”

The woman standing in front of her bears no resemblance to Siobhan Roy, save for the way her eyebrows scrunch in confusion. Her shoulders are hunched in on themselves, and she’s looking at Karolina like she’s begging for an extended hand—for a shaky tendril of trust to cling to.

“My name is Karolina.” she continues. “I just want to talk a bit about how you’re coming along. I know everything must still be very confusing for you.”

“Karolina—is that, are you…” the woman looks down at her fidgeting hands.

“No. I’m not.”

It’s the only thing she can bring herself to say. What could she tell the other woman (Shiv? Not-Shiv?) that wouldn’t make what they’re doing seem even more inhumane?

No, my brain hasn’t been torn apart and filed away into neat little boxes. I have a past beyond a cold fiberboard desk and a present that doesn’t stop at a threshold. I can’t even begin to understand what you must be going through but I’m here to twist it into whatever I need it to be.

If you reach your hand out the most I can give you is a pen to sign the press release.

Not-Shiv—Rose—nods absentmindedly, her eyes darting around the grey walls of the room they’re in. Karolina had asked for a private room to talk in, but the whole thing is starting to feel less like a semi-formal interview, and more like an interrogation.

Karolina looks down at the bullet points she’d prepared beforehand, and cringes at how sterile they feel.

Have you accommodated to the working conditions?

How easy do you find it to concentrate on your tasks?

What does a working day look like for you?

Do you get along with your colleagues?

Do you still feel who you are—is it all gone? Does it feel like a void or a locked door? Is there freedom in that?

Sighing, she rearranges her notes.

She’d read Shiv—Rose’s report. Out of everyone involved in the trial, she’s had the most difficulty adapting. A broken pair of speakers, a guard who’d narrowly missed having his eye gouged out. Karolina supposes that must be the remnants of Shiv they hadn’t managed to untangle. A tiny chip could only hold back so much of Siobhan Roy’s stubbornness.

“Rose, I know you’ve had a…rough time adjusting to the program. It’s perfectly normal, given—”

“Is it?” the other woman cuts her off. “How would you know, Karolina? Who gave you your name?”

For a split-second, the glint in her eyes becomes strikingly familiar, sending a shiver down Karolina’s spine.

“Right.” she clears her throat. “Let’s begin, shall we? What does a working day look like for you?”

As time goes on, each visit to the severed floor begins to weigh down on Karolina. Each week she marches into Logan’s office and has to look Shiv in the eye and tell her just how miserable she is. How much fear and pain can still linger in a person even when you’ve stripped everything away. How Karolina’s grown a perpetual nausea watching all of it unfold.

“She doesn’t trust me.” she says, during one of their updates. At least she’s managed to keep herself from glancing at Shiv every time she is mentioned. “Her answers are always neutral or positive, but the defiant behavior is still ongoing. We can’t risk putting out a statement at the moment.”

“How hard is it to gain her trust—she’s a blank fucking slate. Do they even understand the concept of trust?”

Shiv crosses her arms, eyebrows furrowed, and Karolina briefly wonders if Shiv is aware of her own body, if she understands that the person they are talking about isn’t just a shadow, a trick of the light that resides anywhere other than inside herself. She wonders if Shiv can feel her, somewhere deep within herself, if she hears the scratching at the door.

As far as Logan is concerned, he looks at her like he always does—as if the fact that she’s even brought up a problem without immediately providing a solution to it is a testament of her incompetence and a waste of his time.

Between the two of them, Karolina feels like an accomplice to a murder.

“Maybe if we were to bring someone, um— a professional, maybe it could help?”

“What, a fucking therapist?” Shiv scoffs. “How’s that going to work? ‘So, tell me about your relationship with your parents.’ ‘Um, I have no idea because my memory is three weeks old.’”

“I just mean someone who can make her feel more comfortable. Ease the adjustment period.”

“No.” Logan finally decides to join their conversation. “I don’t want more people on this. Tight fucking lid.”

“Well, we have to speed things along.” Shiv declares, with all the finality of someone who doesn’t plan on lifting a finger to help. “We can’t show up to the launch and tell our shareholders our innovative program’s showing great results—if you just disregard the faint screaming coming from the basement.”

Logan nods, two sides of the same cruel coin.

Karolina suppresses an eye-roll, busying her hands with the pen she’s holding. “Okay. Then can I at least suggest a less—formal setting? I think the environment is contributing to the distress.”

Logan shrugs, already wiping his hands cleans of the situation. As if it isn’t his daughter scratching SOS's into her arm with bent paperclips. As if the person whose fate they’re disregarding isn’t at least physically in the room with them, locked away in a forgotten synapse. As if the woman in front of Karolina doesn’t wring her hands the same fucking way when she’s anxious, doesn’t narrow her eyes when she smells bullshit from miles away, doesn’t breathe and sigh and blink the same fucking way as the scared woman begging to be freed from that Orwellian nightmare. Begging to become someone, to become real.

That’s all she’d been talking about during their interviews. Being real. Asking Karolina questions about the real world that Karolina’s had to evade, for fear of interfering with the subject’s perception of their own existence. Asking her for any form of individuality, for anything she can hold that didn’t come in an onboarding package. That didn’t have a filing number or a code to scan.

“Do whatever you need. Just get it done.” Logan grunts, with a dismissive wave. “I don’t want Matsson’s suits sniffing around my fucking panty drawer.”

“I’ll handle it.”

Karolina nods, like she’d ever asked to be involved in this whole inevitable gross violation of human rights. If anything, the only thing she’s glad about is the access to information it gives her, for when she’ll have to put out the fire that’s already starting to smoke up their entire building.

“We apologize for breaking virtually every international human rights convention, but we really would rather employees stop moaning about their depressing lives around the water fountain.”

That had been Shiv’s initial reaction to the project. Karolina wouldn’t dare to ask what had managed to change her mind so radically in just a couple of months—doesn’t spare a glance to the faint shadow on her ring finger, or the striking silence left by Roman and Kendall’s absence, one currently bankrupting their LA studio, the other having disappeared off to some island with warm beaches and relaxed attitudes towards Class-A drugs.

Seeing it from both sides, though, having to take that goddamned elevator and talk to those half-people—Karolina feels something within herself slowly being ripped apart.

Karolina hears it in her dreams a lot—that elevator. A faint hum, then a soft ding, and she finds herself suddenly lost, feels a heavy fog envelop her mind. The walls are too bright, and her reflection keeps melting away as she tries to catch a glimpse of herself on the cool steel of the elevator doors. In the dream, she walks along miles upon miles of empty corridors, and names everything she knows—street names, distant cousins, names of birds and brands of cereal, until the only things she can name are the dark carpet flooring, the bright walls, the feet walking along the corridor. Until she looks down at her hands and wonders whose body she’s seeing.

Each time, she wakes up and checks her alarm twice, then walks into the kitchen and checks that the stove isn’t on. When she gets back into bed, she checks her phone again—just to make sure she hadn’t forgotten to set her alarm.

“Hello, Rose.”

The woman wearily takes in the room.

“What is this place?” she says as she settles down on a couch opposite Karolina.

“I thought it might be nice to have a less—formal place to have our meetings.”

She’d initially asked for a room with warm lighting, maybe a plant thrown in for some semblance of life. Naturally, Logan had provided her with more than enough resources, essentially turning her calming space into a fucking rainforest.

“Are these real?”

They both turn to assess the various plants covering the room.

Karolina huffs an embarrassed laugh, shaking her head. “I’m actually not sure.”

Sensing an opportunity, she gets up, signaling for the other woman to follow her. She does, cautiously approaching Karolina as she singles out a Monstera leaf.

“Rip a bit off. See if it’s real.”

Rose looks at her with wide eyes, reaching a tentative hand to caress the plant.

“Won’t it wilt?”

Karolina doesn’t react at first, but it takes all of her strength not to gawk at the image of Siobhan Roy being concerned about the safety of a house plant. Instead, she gives the other woman a small smile, before pressing a finger into the plant’s pot, feeling the wet soil.

“It’s real.”

“Hm.” the woman nods. “Pretty.”

Before she returns to the couch, Karolina catches a faint scratch mark peeking out from under Rose’s shirt collar.

“Sorry if I sound like a broken record, but how have you been, Rose?”

Rose shrugs, sticking her hands under her thighs and keeping her attention on the various items of décor some intern had probably picked out of an IKEA catalogue.

“I only filed forty-two resignation requests this week, so…”

“Okay.” Karolina jots down forty-two on her notepad, before realizing she isn’t here to actually act as a therapist, and the only thing she needs from Rose is confirmation that whatever bullshit she’ll put in the press release won’t come back to bite her in the ass. She drops the notepad entirely, crossing her fingers over her knee instead.

“That’s good.” she urges the woman to continue.

“Can I just ask—” she starts, gesturing to the room. “No one else has to have these meetings.”

“Right.” Karolina nods. “Well, seeing as you’ve had a harder time adjusting, we thought it might be beneficial to talk to…” she hesitates, trying to come up with a reasonable explanation. “…someone.” She squeezes her knuckles together tightly, hoping her face doesn’t betray the disappointment in her own lie.

“So, you’re like my counselor?” Rose frowns.

Karolina cuts her off with a tight smile. “No. Just someone…to talk to.” A part of her wants to ask Rose’s monitors if they could throw her a bone and erase this entire day from the woman’s mind, too.

“Good. ‘Cause you haven’t counseled me for shit.” Rose laughs, which might be the first time Karolina’s seen her show any sort of positive emotion, except for one of their first meetings, when Karolina had briefly asked her about the incident regarding the guardian’s eye.

It’s unsettling, how much and simultaneously how little of Shiv she sees in that smile, how much room it takes up on her face, how nicely the light settles in the lines laughter has carved into her cheeks.

Shiv grows restless. As the resignation requests diminish in frequency, and the size of Rose’s behavioral report stagnates, Karolina senses the woman’s weariness at being left in the dark. Knowing that there is a part of her that continues to exist outside of her conscious control is beginning to take a toll on Shiv.

“How’s my corpo twin? Haven’t had to scrub any sharpie off of my torso in a while.”

As usual, she barges into Karolina’s office, feigning disinterest while tapping her fingers rhythmically against the back of a chair or fiddling with Karolina’s pen holder.

Karolina blinks. She’s equally horrified and in awe of how much Siobhan insists on detaching herself from the war being waged inside of her own mind.

“Good. I think we’re making some valuable progress.”

“Uh huh.” Shiv nods. “And—what, is there some sort of observer-lab rat confidentiality?” she frowns, sensing Karolina’s apprehension.

“No, it’s just—” Karolina pauses. She gets the sense that the equation Shiv’s using is a double-edged sword. That her own role in this project changes depending on which floor those elevator doors swing open to. “I thought it might be, I don’t know, a bit uncomfortable—for you?”

Shiv sizes her up, zeroing in on her face like a microscope lens twisted into focus. She crosses her arms, perching on the edge of Karolina’s desk. Her hip almost bumps into Karolina’s laptop.

“Why would it be?” she asks.

Although her brain is intact, Karolina feels her own mind being split apart. She looks up at Shiv, her head illuminated by the harsh neon light coming in from the hallway while her hands are tinged amber by Karolina’s desk lamp—a half-frozen, half-burning divoženka.

And Karolina would answer her call, which is what scares her the most. She’s gone too deep, dove headfirst into this cruel experiment and now finds herself enticed by the prospect of taking a closer look at the thread that separates Shiv from Not-Shiv—wants to follow that stitched line and see where the two cross over and where they break apart. Where the medical technician had carved out who gets the anger and who gets the fear, who laughs and who scowls.

Do the lives inside this woman stumble over each other, strain and push against the other for space, like twins in the womb? Or do they lay curled in on themselves, picking at the wound where another half should be—aching with the phantom pain of the other.

Would Shiv know to follow the same trail along a Monstera leaf? Would her fingers instinctively know to hold it lightly?

“Right, sorry.” Karolina clears her throat. “Here are the notes I’ve been keeping. We have some promising answers about the workflow, though there’s still a lot of questions about their tasks, which seems to be a collective issue—most subjects have asked why they’ve been assigned the work, and what the gathered data is used for.”

Shiv narrows her eyes but decides to drop the subject, choosing to halfheartedly leaf through Karolina’s notes instead.

“Nice handwriting.” she murmurs.

“Thank you.”

“What’s it like up there?”

Karolina sighs. They’ve had this discussion too often lately, and she’s began to find it increasingly hard to put up any defense in front of those sad, crystalline eyes.

“Come on…” Rose whines, puffing out her cheeks. “All I have is that stupid fucking calendar. Aloha from the world’s fakest beach!”

It’s a lighthearted comment, but it stirs something dark and uncomfortable in Karolina. Down here, she realizes, there aren’t even any windows to let some fresh air pass through. The staff has had to switch out a plant every week, as they’ve kept on dying. The only light Rose has ever known has come from a bulb, a wire in the wall connected to the living beast that is the Waystar enterprise and its newly acquired parasite, Gojo.

Rose, like her above-ground twin, drives a hard bargain.

“Can you at least give me something? From out there?”

“I think it’s best if we just focus on right here.” she tries to convey as much sympathy as she can without revealing too much of just how fucked up Rose’s out there is.

Rose doesn’t let her continue. “Please, Karolina. You said you were someone I could talk to…so talk to me.”

“Of course. But I’m here more as a listener, than—”

“And what do I have to talk about!?” she crosses her arms, throwing daggers at Karolina. “I know how to sort files into boxes and that whoever owns my body won’t let me fucking die. That’s about everything I have to talk about—everything I know about the world.”

Karolina bites her lip, avoiding the other woman’s gaze. “I’m sorry, Rose.”

The apology only seems to fuel her frustration. She rises from her cross-legged position on the couch to start pacing the room, occasionally stopping to assess one of the plants.

“You work for them, too, right?”

Karolina nods. “Yes, I do.”

“And they pay you?”

“They do.”

“What’s the first thing you buy when you get a paycheck?”

Karolina laughs without meaning to. It’s almost…endearing—to have one of the world’s richest people ask her what she buys when a paycheck comes through, as if it’s an event she believes should be celebrated.

Rose tilts her head, frowning at Karolina. “What?”

“Nothing, sorry.” she looks down, trying to suppress a smile. “I don’t really keep track of that, I couldn’t tell you.”

Rose lets out a disappointed huff, running her finger along the braided trunk of a pachira. The money tree. She contemplates Karolina’s answer, carefully preparing her next approach tactic.

“God, I fucking hate that constant buzzing.”

Despite the tiny speaker blaring soothing nature sounds, the humming of the lights is the only thing bouncing off the walls. They both turn their heads to look at the neon light fixtures and the colonies of dead flies trapped in them.

Were those the only animals she’d ever seen?

Unlike Shiv, Rose wears her misery right on her sleeve, and the shadows under her eyes seem to grow in waves as another drop falls into her already overfilling bucket. When she lowers her head to meet Karolina’s gaze, there are tears gathered in the corners of her eyes.

“I can’t live like this. This isn’t a life.”

All Karolina can do is stare at the other woman. Clutch her hands together in repentance and give her the smallest grace she can manage—to look at her and acknowledge the living, breathing person standing in front of her. To make Rose as real as the plants surrounding them, and hope that the fact that life is slipping away from them both is proof that there is life there to begin with.

She only tears her eyes away from the other woman when she feels her phone buzz in her pocket. It isn’t anything important, but as she dismisses the notification pop-up, she remains still, weighing the device in her hand. The audio speaker in the corner of the room lets out a high-pitched noise as the audio loops for the hundredth time.

“You’re right.” she says, looking up at Rose. “That noise is driving me crazy. How about some music?”

Rose’s eyebrows shoot up, her mouth falling slightly open.

“Real music?”

Karolina nods, letting out a shaky breath. She opens her music app, before extending the phone out towards the other woman.

“Your pick.”

Rose tentatively grabs the device, cradling it in her hands and carefully moving her fingers across the screen. It only lasts a moment, though, before her teeth grab at her bottom lip, and she’s furrowing her brows in concentration as she scrolls away through the app.

“I don’t know any of these.”

“Just pick whatever looks interesting.”

She watches her scroll back and forth for a few minutes, before standing up and taking the phone back.

“Here, let me.”

Unfortunately, Karolina finds herself facing the same kind of pressure, as she realizes this is the first time Rose has heard any real music, save for the occasional droning instrumental they use for ambiance. In these conditions, it’s easy to understand one’s urge to gouge someone’s eye out. Sighing, she opens a random suggested playlist and hits the shuffle button.

Let fate and malicious algorithms decide.

Whatever moment she’d imagined as Rose’s first exposure to real music, it doesn’t exactly come to life as the fucking Eurythmics start blaring from her phone’s speaker, moaning about angels playing with hearts.

“Shit, sorry. Let me find something better.”

As her hands move rapidly to look for something more appropriate, she feels Rose’s fingers wrap around her wrist.

“No, leave it.”

As the music swells, Karolina watches Rose close her eyes, quietly humming along as she learns the words to the chorus, her hand still wrapped around Karolina’s. It breaks Karolina’s heart to watch how such a small and insignificant of a gesture can light up the other woman’s face like a divine act.

When the song reaches its bridge, and a loud saxophone takes over, Rose finally opens her eyes, mouth widening into a shocked grin.

Karolina can’t keep the corners of her own mouth from rising up into a wide smile.

“You like it?”

Rose nods, grin not leaving her face until the song fades out, returning them to the chorus of neon lights and AI-generated chirping.

She flashes Karolina an exaggerated frown, even pouting slightly. “Another one?”

A very hard bargain.

As Karolina looks down at the phone, trying to pick another song, she realizes Rose’s hand is still wrapped around her own.

It all starts to fall apart on a Friday.

The date isn’t the significant part, except for its marker as the end of an interminably long workweek, and the beginning of a wasted weekend.

Logan had been riding her ass all week, demanding a first draft of the launch presentation for his precious project. On top of that, he’d also expected her to make a very scathing expose disappear, while also putting out some of Gojo’s fires, now that their own comms team had been left with an Ebba-shaped hole to fill.

What begins the end of it all is a glass of water. Perilously perched on the edge of a coffee table, Karolina doesn’t even notice it until it’s too late. She’s listening to Rose talk about how frustrating the repetition involved in her tasks has become, while Nina Simone croons softly in the background.

Since that day, Karolina had let Rose fiddle with her music app during every meeting, choosing a couple of songs that she’d then dissect with Karolina, before they’d let the music keep playing in the background while they carried on with their mandatory discussion.

“I really don’t get it. Why would they need people to have no memories just to sort some files into boxes? It’s all bullshit.”

As Rose continues to pour out her anger, thumb worried between her teeth, Karolina finds an unsettling feeling of déjà vu wash over her. She’s not sure if it’s that, or the mountain of pressure building on her temples that prompts it, but as she starts to drift away from the conversation, sinking into a mindless buzzing, her tapping foot bumps into the table, knocking that damned glass of water down.

She only gets startled back to reality when she sees Rose rush across the table to catch it. She misses it, and the glass shatters into tiny shards, the water splashing Karolina’s ankles.

Before she can fully comprehend what’s happened, she sees the other woman lean down to pick up the broken pieces of glass, her knees almost touching the mess on the floor. She reaches a hand out to stop her, grabbing her arm.

“Don’t, Shiv, there’s glass—”

“Shiv?”

She drops Not-Shiv’s arm like it’s scorching coal.

“I meant there’s shards everywhere.” She clears her throat, not daring to meet the other woman’s eyes as she busies herself with picking up the biggest pieces of broken glass.

“No.” Rose cuts her off firmly. “No, that’s not—you said Shiv.”

“I must have misspoke. I meant to say there are shards of glass—”

Roses fixes her with an incredulous stare. “Bullshit, Karolina!”

All Karolina can do is shake her head and try to suppress the dreadful heat rising up her neck. She can mould her face into whatever mask is needed to placate Rose, but she can do very little to stop her hands from shaking.

“Is that me?” Rose whispers. “Is that her? Shiv?”

Whatever mask she thinks she’s wearing crumbles as Karolina looks up to meet Rose’s wide eyes.

She’s had to deliver bad news thousands of times during her time at Waystar. News about world wars, about deaths and lawsuits and every kind of fucked up event in-between. But never like this, never to the person that’s been wronged. Never having to face her own guilt, staring down at her own fingerprints on the bloody knife.

“I’ll get someone to clean all of this up.”

She doesn’t give the other woman time to reply, heading straight for the door. Before she can open it, though, a slender had wedges itself between her and the threshold.

“I’ll tell them.”

“What?” Karolina frowns.

The fractured image of Siobhan projected inside of Karolina’s mind grows even blurrier as she takes in Rose’s sharp glare and set jaw.

“I have a feeling this was a major fuck-up for you, Karolina. I’ll tell.”

They stand there, locked in a stalemate, unmoving for what feels like ages. Karolina quietly runs through every possible scenario this could evolve into, and the only conclusion she reaches is that she’s fucking exhausted. That if Shiv wants to invent new and creative means of self-flagellation she should do so without collateral. That one million a year is really only minimum wage when you’re in the devil’s pocket.

She takes a deep, steadying breath, her chest almost bumping the other woman’s. She’s never noticed just how many freckles are scattered across her face, from the bridge of her nose, and all along her temples. There’s a tiny one, barely visible, just above her lip.

“It’s Siobhan. Your—her name.”

“Is she planning a coup or something?”

“I’m sorry?”

Shiv shakes her head, throwing the file back on Karolina’s desk.

“What—two weeks ago she was biting security guards, and now she’s mindless drone of the month?” her eyes narrow as she scrunches her face. “It doesn’t make sense.”

Karolina doesn’t answer, letting Shiv run herself ragged coming up with as many theories as she needs to, before settling on whichever one she finds most satisfying. Over the past few months, she’d unwillingly come to learn much more than she’d ever wanted about the inner workings of Siobhan Roy’s mind—both sides of it. When Shiv found something to toy with, it was best to let her tire herself out, before quietly stepping in to unravel whatever tangle she’d gotten herself stuck in.

Karolina continues working, occasionally nodding or humming along to Shiv’s rambling. She almost wishes it was harder to hide the reason for Rose’s sudden complacency from Shiv. That there was some deep, visceral connection between the two, and Shiv could feel the quiet misery slowly draining the life out.

She knows it’s all temporary, this state of suspended existence—that feeding Rose morsels of her life above ground will only sustain her for so long. That Karolina only has so much information to give her until she’ll hit something raw and ugly and painful. Things she doesn’t feel she has the right to share—that she’s only ever been a passive observer to.

“Are you fucking her?”

“Excuse me?” Karolina’s eyes snap up to meet Shiv’s smirk.

“Oh, so you were actually listening, and I wasn’t talking to myself like an idiot?” she frowns, twisting a pen between her fingers.

She doesn’t wait for Karolina to respond as she gets up from her chair and drops the pen back in its holder, narrowly avoiding knocking the whole thing over.

“Keep your eyes on the prize, Karolina.”

She silently watches Shiv strut out of her office and only lets out an incredulous laugh when she’s back home, wine glass in hand and staring dumbly at the tiny digital clock above her stove.

Goddamn self-fulfilling prophecy.

It’s her own goddamn fault, for letting Rose drag her up to dance. Rose’s song of choice doesn’t leave much room for actual movement, but it’s nine pm on a Tuesday, so Karolina decides to indulge her. That’s how she finds herself holding the other woman while lazily swaying to Steely Dan like two drunkards refusing to leave the bar after everyone’s already gone home.

As the song slowly starts to fade out, Karolina starts to pull away, until a soft hand settles at the base of her neck, keeping her in place. The look in Rose’s eyes spells trouble in bright neon letters, yet the only thought Karolina can conjure as the woman leans in to kiss her is that her cheeks turn the warmest shade pink when she’s flushed.

“Rose, we can’t.”

Karolina lowers her head, though she makes no move to break the embrace, her hands resting on Rose’s hips, Rose resting her forehead against hers.

“Says who?” she whispers.

“It’s not right. Siobhan—”

Rose scoffs, raising her head. “Do you know how many bruises I’ve found on our hips? Do I have any say in that?”

“I can’t—” Karolina sighs.

“I love you.”

Karolina snaps her head up, staring blankly at the other woman.

“What?” she laughs softly. “No, you don’t.”

“I do.” Rose presses. Her brows are furrowed, but her face is the most open plane of life Karolina’s seen. “I think I do.”

Karolina shakes her head. She brings a tentative hand up to cradle Rose’s jaw. “You barely know me.”

“I know you more than I know anything in the world.”

“Rose.”

What a terribly small world to live in.

Karolina knows her words might have more of an impact if her hands could let go. Instead, she turns her gaze as her fingers grip Rose tighter—all her conviction tangled somewhere among the green leaves surrounding them, fading away like the tail-end of a love song.

“Fine, I don’t love you. But I want to kiss you. And I think you want to kiss me.”

There it is, that familiar look of untamed resolve. The shiny pin to their homemade bomb.

“It doesn’t matter what I want.”

Rose shakes her head, eyes narrowed in confusion. “Yes, it does, Karolina.”

She knows it’s only the size of the room—the shoebox of a life they’re keeping this woman captive in, that’s made her cling to Karolina like this. That’s made Rose see her as this big figure, this center of some imagined Universe.

In a way, they are both only as alive as they’ve made each other—only as alive as these four walls will allow them to be.

It’s never going to survive those elevator doors, anyway.

Karolina leans forward.

With the stress of the project’s impending launch, Siobhan’s frustration heightens. It doesn’t help that Karolina suddenly finds it nearly impossible to maintain eye-contact with her, and some important meeting seems to spring up every single time Shiv steps foot into her office.

What she fails to consider, in her flawless avoidance strategy, is Shiv’s determination, and her willingness to track Karolina down all the way into Waystar’s execute suite communal bathroom.

“Hey.”

She turns her head sharply to see Shiv hovering near the sinks. “Shiv, hi.”

Karolina side-steps her, feigning focus on washing her hands. Stalling, she performs the task as if she were scrubbing in to perform surgery.

Shiv pretends to make for the door, before turning around as if remembering something. “Oh, just real quick—how long have you been fucking her?”

Karolina freezes, hands clutched together under the water stream, praying for some form of divine intervention. Some perfectly timed rapture.

“I’m sorry?” she doesn’t look directly at Shiv, staring at her reflection in the bathroom mirror instead.

Shiv takes another step towards her, reaching to close the running tap. “Mhm. Are you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Siobhan.”

Shiv reaches behind her to grab some paper towels from the dispenser, which Karolina rips out of her hand with more force than she intends.

“See, I thought that might’ve been the case for a while, too.” Shiv tilts her head. “But it all makes sense now—the resignation requests suddenly disappearing, all those cute little quotes you’ve been feeding my dad. All quiet on the severed floor, sir!”

“I’m just doing my job.” Karolina swallows a nervous tremor.

“Uh huh. Well, you’re doing something.”

As Shiv steps even closer to her, Karolina finds herself frozen in place, hands gripping the dirty porcelain sink. Her head feels unmoored, and she doesn’t know how Shiv manages to twist her around until their position is reversed, and it’s Karolina’s back resting against the sink, Shiv’s body keeping her trapped in place.

“I can assure you, Siobhan, nothing is—”

Shiv cuts her off, reaching a hand towards the collar of her shirt. “How’d you get that bruise, Karolina?”

Instead of letting go, Shiv starts trailing her finger along the exposed skin of Karolina’s neck. Where Rose’s touch felt like a cool, cleansing breeze, Shiv’s feels like molten lava, like hot iron branding every inch of Karolina’s skin.

“I—that’s…” Karolina mumbles, finding it very hard to concentrate as Shiv’s mouth replaces her hand, leaving feather-light kisses across her neck, and all the way up to the back of her ear.

“Let me guess, hair straightener? Come on…” Her breath is hot in Karolina’s ear, leaving goosebumps all along the back of her neck. “It’s still my body, I know when I’ve been fucked. And your perfume lasts longer than you think.”

There’s a fleeting thought running through Karolina’s mind that this is fucked up on levels that she isn’t sure even Hell is equipped to handle, but Shiv’s hands are heavy and precise like scalpels as they roam all over her body, and the only thing Karolina can do is let them.

All she can do is stare into Shiv’s eyes and tighten her grip on the sink as the buttons of her pants slowly come undone.

“Muscle memory, right?” Shiv grins, whispering into her hair.

She barely makes any noise as Shiv fucks her against the dirty bathroom sink, her breathing almost lost among the incessant buzzing of the neon lights. As a small act of mercy, Shiv lets Karolina lean her head against her shoulder, their bodies forming a shield over this looming death sentence. This small death.

Karolina comes with a heavy, shuddering breath, a hand reaching up to grab Shiv’s forearm. As Shiv withdraws her hand from her body, the lack of warmth brings Karolina back to reality, and her legs begin to shake for an entirely different reason. Instead of washing her hands, Shiv pops her fingers straight into her mouth, locking eyes with Karolina. Once she’s satisfied with the show she’s putting on, she takes them out and pulls Karolina into a messy, forceful kiss—all teeth and angry grunting.

Finally, she lets go of Karolina, moving around her to actually wash her hands.

“She’s got good taste, I’ll give her that.” she doesn’t spare a glance in Karolina’s direction.

“Siobhan...”

Shiv cuts her off. “You’re off the project.” She dries her hands, waiting for Karolina to meet her gaze before continuing. “You know, you could’ve just asked.”

Later that night she emails Shiv the latest draft of the launch statement, along with firing a text to her assistant to have all of physical her note files sent over to Ms. Roy’s office. She could scan her own damn files. After she’s scrubbed her computer empty of any trace of the Janus project, she empties an entire bottle of wine and stares out her window at the skyline until the sun sets and the only thing she can see is her own reflection on the glass pane.

In a way, she feels grateful for the lack of choice. For the ease with which she’s able to sever all ties to this entire fucking mess. She lets the guilt pool inside of her like a bowl of hot soup, settles into it cozily as she gets into bed—whatever nightmare she has that night, the only thing that lingers from it by the following morning is a gasping breath and a hand grasping at the dark.

She hears about it from Greg, of all fucking people. He corners her in the staff kitchen, practically galloping with excitement. She tunes most of his droning out, until the words ambulance and severed floor tumble out of his mouth.

“Greg, what are you talking about?”

He blinks, gawking at her.

“Oh, man, they—uh, I thought you might have heard? It feels kind of, um, big? In terms—well, from the media perspective of it. It sound kind of…like, an event?”

Karolina resists the urge to smack the stale croissant out of his spidery hands.

“What happened, Greg?” she grits her teeth.

“It’s Shiv. Well, kind of? Her innie, um, she—well she kind of attempted, well—not suicide, but so—”

Karolina doesn’t let him finish the rest of his sentence before storming out, calling every contact she has on the severed floor. She doesn’t have to fish much for information, because soon enough, Logan’s calling her into his office, furious and aghast, ordering her down to the severed floor to tie up any loose ends. Nothing gets out past that goddamn elevator.

She makes the journey like a man on death row heading down for his final sentencing—her head held high and numb hands frozen into fists. She doesn’t expect there to be a bloodbath down there, but the stark white walls burn her eyes as the elevator doors swing open.

She’s greeted by one of the security guards, who talks her through the event in more detail than she feels able to stomach, then makes it a point to say how great it is that there were no witnesses, except for the monitor who walked in on it.

They reach the interview room just as the cleaning staff is making their way out, which eases some of the dread rapidly building in Karolina’s stomach. The room looks just as it had the last time she’d been there, save for some new plants. Life had a habit of desperately trying to escape this god forsaken place.

As Karolina takes in the room, instructing the security guard on how to handle the impending murmur of the rest of the project participants, she spots it. The letter opener. Shiny and smooth, tucked just under the couch Rose would always occupy during their meetings, where she’d last held her, humming Burnin’ for You in Rose’s hair and indulging in some half-baked dream of an easy life, a kinder life for the both of them—just until the song ended.

She barely makes it to the toilet in time for her body to purge all those fucking dreams away.

Later, when her doorbell rings in the middle of the night, her first thought is that it might be the FBI, a thought that washes over her with much more relief than it should.

“Hi.”

Karolina grips the door frame, trying to suppress the shiver that runs through her. It isn’t the police knocking on her door to demand payment for her crimes, but a much crueler executioner.

“How did you get my address?” she whispers, words barely having the strength to reach past her frozen lips.

Shiv smiles, shrugging almost playfully.

“Maybe I had you chipped as well.” she raises her eyebrows, before crossing her arms and feigning a shiver. “Are you gonna let me in, or what? I’ve got, like, blood loss anemia—I’m fucking freezing.”

“Come in.”

Karolina steps back, almost hitting the wall as she lets Shiv pass through. As they make their way into the living room, Karolina starts turning on every light, not trusting Shiv to not vanish into the cold air of the night.

“Why are you here, Siobhan?” she asks, once they’ve run out of steps to take, and are forced to face each other again.

Shiv tries to shrug nonchalantly, which only makes the bandage peeking out of from under her right sleeve stick out like more.

“Well, everyone keeps saying they don’t know how this fucking mess could’ve happened. And you’re the only one who stuck her finger deep enough in the pie to make it talk, so...” she pulls at her sleeves until her hands are covered entirely. “Thought you might shed some light on the situation.”

Karolina swallows down the shame burning at her core. “I can’t help you, I’m sorry.”

Shiv raises a pointed eyebrow at her, delighting in Karolina’s discomfort. “What, she not that into pillow talk?”

It almost feels like nothing’s changed, and they’re still in Karolina’s office, Shiv toying with her stationery and trying to get a rise out of her. Like it could have ever just stayed that easy.

“Siobhan…” she sighs. “You can’t keep doing this.”

She isn’t sure if she means to Rose or to yourself.

Shiv scoffs, shaking her head and taking an angry step towards Karolina. “How the fuck is any of it my fault?”

She looks smaller, dressed in an oversized sweater and jeans. And younger, her face bare and paler than Karolina would like to see her. There’s an ache in Karolina’s chest that makes her heart skip a beat, as the images of Shiv and Rose keep blurring in her mind. As the stitches start coming apart.

“What did you expect to happen when you force humans to exist in a cubicle?” she sighs, crossing her arms. “She’s miserable, Shiv. She kept trying to tell you.”

Shiv frowns, breathing out a cruel laugh.

“She doesn’t fucking exist, Karolina. That’s not a real person, it’s just—I don’t know, a fucking black hole in my brain.”

Her hand slices through the air, emphasizing her every sentence—each motion flashing the strip of gauze wrapped around her hand.

“Am I a real person, Shiv? What makes me real to you? The fact that your father needs me to clean up his messes for the public eye?”

She knows bringing Logan into the discussion is a low blow, but she’s gone too deep, stuck her hand out too far into the flames to pretend she doesn’t enjoy stoking them.

Shiv shakes her head. “That’s not—”

“That black hole is a part of you, and she’s begging for your help.”

“It’s not really a plea if you’re holding a weapon, is it? Sounds more like a threat.”

Karolina doesn’t know when it’s happened, but Shiv is standing right in front of her, red-rimmed eyes peering into hers like a blind animal—seeking comfort with bared teeth and shaking legs.

“Sounds like you’ve got a lot in common.”

Shiv doesn’t respond, looking down before raising her bandaged hand and holding it out between them.

“Wanna see it?” she whispers.

She looks up, daring Karolina.

“I…” Karolina hesitates briefly, before nodding. “Okay.”

It’s not guilt that makes her accept, but the rapid rise and fall of Shiv’s chest. The shaking force of her set jaw. The way her eyes seem to beg Karolina to say no. To turn her back on this ugly wound and confirm its shame. Make it something to be hidden.

Karolina refuses. Despite the murmuring thrum of her heart, she looks down at the torn, broken flesh of Shiv and shows her she still sees a whole person.

She takes the outstretched hand and cradles it as gently as she can. She ghosts her finger along the angry stitches, trailing the length of it. Then, she continues up the length of Shiv’s arm, up to her elbow—the length of life that still remains untouched.

Shiv looks on blankly, though Karolina can feel the tiny goosebumps erupting along her arm.

“She didn’t hit an artery, so…” she finally says, locking eyes with Karolina. “Still in business.” she gestures crudely with her middle and ring fingers.

The serious expression on her face as she does it sends Karolina into a fit of laughter, carefully trying not to distress the injured hand in her grasp.

“Siobhan.” she admonishes.

They laugh quietly for a moment, before she watches Shiv’s face fall as her shoulders start shaking more frantically. Her breathing falls into quiet sobs, and it isn’t long before she collapses on Karolina’s shoulder, right arm cradled between them. Karolina doesn’t whisper soft encouragements into her ear, or kiss her head, but she holds Shiv until her breathing evens. And when she feels the trembling force in her arms subside, Karolina takes the bandage and gently wraps Shiv’s wrist again, holding onto it for a second before letting her go.

Far be it for a man like Logan Roy to let something as insignificant as his daughter’s near-death get in the way of his project’s launch.

The minor setback gets dealt with swiftly and efficiently, the only trace of it gone with Friday’s garbage collection.

That’s how Karolina ends up being stuck smiling at shareholders and sweating through silk as the bright projecting lights split her brain in two, Logan and Mattson having spared no expenses for their beloved pet project. The giant rotating gold coin stirs a wave of nausea in her gut, a tilt-a-whirl of horror.

She’s managed to sneak backstage, half-heartedly checking the teleprompter for spelling errors, when she spots Shiv exiting the bathroom much more distressed than she’d looked going in.

She doesn’t move from her spot, raking her eyes over the text while tracking Shiv’s silhouette out of the corner of her eye. She convinces herself it must just be nerves, until she hears soft humming coming from where Shiv was getting her make-up touched up.

“Must be talking to an angel…”

Karolina’s head snaps up, her eyes immediately meeting Shiv’s in the mirror’s reflection. She tries to blink her doubt away, chalking it up to her own nerves, until she hears the stage manager call out for Ms. Roy two times, before coming up to touch the woman’s shoulder.

“Ms. Roy? We’re ready for you to go up in five.”

She blinks, jumping a bit in surprise. “Oh, sure. Thanks.”

Karolina takes a step towards her. “Shiv?”

The make-up artist disappears off to the bathroom, leaving them alone. As she looks into the woman’s eyes, Karolina feels the same sharp glare stare back, the same clenched jaw, spots the same freckle—barely visible, just above her lip.

“Siobhan.” she tries, though her voice is already shaking. “Rose, don’t. Please.”

The stage manager enters the backstage area again, not sparing a single glance in Karolina’s direction. Instead, she motions for Shiv to be ready in three minutes, then exists as quick as she’s come in.

Rose just keeps smiling at Karolina, red-rimmed eyes daring her to stop her from what she’s about to do. Daring her to let it happen.

“It almost felt like a life—that room, with you. But I have to do this. I’m sorry.”

She doesn’t kiss Karolina, or hold her hand. Instead, they just look at each other for the remaining seconds they have left. There’s a part of Karolina that aches to stop all of this, a pavlovian instinct straining her muscles, wanting nothing more than to call every number in her phone and make this all go away. Start drafting the press release, touch base with her contacts at every major outlet and push their official statement, control the fucking narrative.

Instead, she banks the moment like that shiny gold coin looming over her head. She knows she’ll never see Rose again—not like this, anyway, so she takes in every twitch of her mouth, every shaking breath, every particle of that ephemeral life.

As Rose makes her way out to the stage and takes the microphone, Karolina stares into her own reflection and tries not to flinch. The audience soon erupts into chaos, and Karolina closes her eyes, only to find that the noise echoes in her ears less like an explosion, and more like a firework.

She doesn’t know when it’s become a common occurrence—Shiv showing up at her door in the middle of the night, but she’s loathe to admit that the house doesn’t feel palpably colder every time Shiv isn’t there.

This particular night, they’re sitting at the kitchen island, Shiv bringing a hand to run over her shiny new excision scar every couple of minutes.

Karolina doesn’t berate her, though the look she flashes Shiv is enough to still her movement and bring her hand back to the stem of her wine glass.

“How do you feel?”

“Weird.” Shiv shrugs, eyes not leaving her glass. “I don’t know—feels like I drank too much and I’m starting to remember getting into a sloppy bar fight.”

Karolina busies her own hands by twirling her glass, looking at the bottom of it like it had any wishes to grant. “Is—are all of her memories…”

Shiv cuts her off. “Not all of them.” she clears her throat, still avoiding Karolina’s gaze. “But some random, quick flashes—mostly of you, actually.”

“Siobhan…”

Shiv raises her head, finally meeting her eyes. “Were you in love with her?”

Karolina feels her eyes start burning as she lets the question drip down her throat like bitter medicine. It’s a strange feeling, looking at someone and wanting to hear the truth. Stranger yet, wanting to tell the truth.

“It felt that way.” she finally says.

She isn’t quite sure if the looks Shiv gives her is that of understanding, if there’s some part of her shadowed mind coming to life under Karolina’s confession—some remaining flicker of Rose. But she looks like there’s something she wants to tell Karolina, a half-remembered thought she can’t shape into sentences.

“Sorry for your loss, I guess.”

Karolina shakes her head, taking a slow sip of her wine, letting the cold liquid soothe her straining throat. “It’s not my loss to feel, but thank you.”

Shiv nods, then hangs her head back down. A hand reaches up to rub at the spot the scar is in, which Karolina softly bats away as she rises to open another bottle.

“Hey, uh, I’m also sorry for—the bathroom, a while back? That was kind of fucked.”

Karolina’s hand stills mid-air, the bottle shaking from the effort. “It was a very…complicated situation.”

“Uh huh. Well, sorry if I—”

Shiv raises her thumb to her mouth, teeth biting anxiously at it.

“You didn’t.” Karolina says quickly, before drawing in a deep breath. “Well, it’s…complicated.” she sighs.

She reaches for Shiv’s glass, their fingers touching as she fills it up. Shiv steals a quick glance, before lowering her hand to cup both of them around the glass. Even in the dim kitchen light, the scars on her right wrist shines like the quick glint of a knife’s blade.

Emboldened by Karolina’s admission, Shiv lets a small grin take root at the corner of her mouth.

“Right.” she says, taking a sip of wine. “And it would be very stupid to complicate it further, right?”

“It would.”

“Yeah, I thought so.” she nods mournfully.

Karolina picks up her own glass, but doesn’t back down. Instead, she crosses the kitchen island separating them, until she’s staring down directly at Shiv. The scar on the side of her head is barely visible beneath Shiv’s hair—a tiny thing, thin and red. An angry mark of the soul’s unwillingness to be halved—a mark she hopes will remind Shiv that there is a force within her still aching for freedom. That she is not made to fit in a cage.

Karolina resists the urge to reach out and touch the scar. Instead, she focuses on Shiv’s heavy gaze, the warm flush spreading across her cheeks—the tiny freckle above her pouted lip.

“Shiv, is there something you want to ask me?”

Shiv peers up at her through bare lashes, one hand rolling the stem of her glass around, while the other reaches out to pick at a loose thread on Karolina’s sweater.

“There is, actually. Who the fuck still listens to Eurythmics?”

#shivlina #karolina novotney #siobhan roy #succession fic #severance au #my fics #it is DONE!!!#muAH :X

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