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There’s a knife against Sarah’s neck. She could thrash but that would send it digging into her skin, send her bleeding, and so she doesn’t move – she just lies there, listens to the feeling of her heart beat-beating against that silver point. Above her a woman is watching her, curious, mouth slightly open. Her breathing is overly loud in the silence.
“Please,” Sarah whispers. “I don’t want to die.”
Her would-be killer tilts her head to the side, curious, and a smile twists up the corner of her mouth. She doesn’t notice Sarah’s hand snaking off to the side, towards the rebar—
“Cut,” yells the director, and Helena springs backwards immediately. She’s on her feet, brushing down her coat with a frantic obsessiveness; she reaches out a hand to Sarah, and Sarah lets herself be pulled up.
“Hey, nice,” she says. “Thought you were actually gonna kill me for a second there.” She laughs, a slight wheeze.
“Sorry,” Helena says, wide-eyed.
“No,” Sarah says, “no, that’s – the point, yeah?” but it’s too late: Helena is already gone.
They don’t talk that much. Sarah doesn’t even really have that many scenes with her; she’s in high demand, in every scene at once, and Helena is tucked away in one of the sets Sarah never visits.
(Terrible confession: Sarah skips over Helena’s storylines in the script, because they’re terrifying and dark and weird and make her stomach hurt for reasons she doesn’t understand.)
Besides that: Sarah is always always busy. She’s the star, they keep telling her, and she’s feeling it in her exhaustion (she feels like she’s filming twenty-five hours a day) but not – not really anywhere else. The star. Her face on all the posters. S’d never believe her – but then again, S was always pissed at her for running away to do this shit in the first place. She’ll probably skip over the show, once it starts airing. Spike her tea. Sip it and think waste, waste, waste—
And it’s fine that Sarah is thinking about this, because it’s good for her character. Probably.
Anyways. The point is that Sarah barely sees Helena around set except when her assassin’s got a knife against Sarah’s neck (or a gun at Sarah’s head, or her hands around Sarah’s throat, or whatever scenario’s got the director excited this week). She sees Cosima sometimes, sees Alison (somehow even more uptight than her character), sees Paul and Art and Vic – but not Helena. She vanishes.
She doesn’t have a trailer. Sarah went looking, midway through the season – wanted to hash out how her character is feeling, about this connection that Helena keeps talking about in her character’s breathy, worshipful voice. But Helena is nowhere to be found.
In the end, Sarah stumbles on her on accident. She’s at craft services, debating the remains – sad bagel sandwich or even sadder-looking salad remnants? – when a voice from beneath the table says: “Psst.”
Sarah lifts the tablecloth. Tucked away in the shadows is Helena, and also an avalanche of muffins.
“You—” Sarah starts, astonished. “We all thought the breakfast guy quit! You took the bloody muffins?”
“Shh,” Helena hisses. Sarah runs a hand through her hair. Looks left. Looks right. Rolls her eyes, for posterity, in case someone is somehow still watching – and then ducks under the table.
It’s very cramped. Sarah grabs one of the chocolate-chip muffins, which are the best ones. She can’t believe Helena has been stealing these. She says so, but it’s through a mouthful of muffin so it comes out more “Ehr curr burlr ehwher shter dis.” Helena, eating another muffin, just shrugs.
“Why are you under here, anyway,” Sarah says, once she’s swallowed the last bits of chocolate chip.
“Alison is using her set,” Helena says, sounding displeased about it. “And I don’t like the boat.”
“There are other places to go, though,” Sarah says uncomfortably.
“Not really.”
Sarah takes another muffin, because she doesn’t know what else to do. The sound of her peeling the wrapper off is very loud.
“Are you avoiding me?”
As soon as the words are out she regrets them. She stuffs the entire muffin her mouth and then regrets that, so, great track record Manning. Real great job.
Helena seemingly doesn’t notice Sarah choking on her own mistakes; she sighs, shifts. “Maybe,” she says. “Sorry. You are – very good actress. Also very nice person, from what I am seeing. The story is just…” she twists her fingers together. Sarah finishes subtly choking, swallows the muffin, coughs a few times. She’s about to answer when she hears the sound of someone approaching the table. The two of them shoot each other looks of surprise and glee, like two kids being caught with their hand in the candy jar. Helena raises a finger to her lips: shh.
“Seriously?” Cosima says, voice muffled from outside the tablecloth. “Are they still out of muffins?”
Sarah has to cover her mouth with her hands to keep from laughing. Helena is smirking, like she knew this outcome was inevitable and is very pleased by her hand in it. Sarah can hear Cosima and what sounds like Paul debating the sad crafts table options before they leave and it’s just Sarah and Helena again.
“Wow,” Sarah says. “I’m really feelin’ the high.”
“Have another muffin,” Helena says. “Tastes like winning.”
Sarah takes another muffin. They are going to have to let her costume out a size, but like she gives a shit.
“So,” she says. “What’s wrong with the story.” Helena stiffens. “You think I’d get distracted? I’m a bloody detective.”
“You play one on TV,” Helena says. “I see you.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
Helena starts ripping a muffin wrapper into pieces. “The director,” she says slowly. “He – he told me something, about why she likes you. Um. Not you. But – he said. So I could get-a-better-grasp-on-the-character. And I think about it, when I see you, but you don’t think about it, because you do not know. And it is…” she waves a hand around her head, in a gesture that could mean anything from confusing to full of fruit flies.
“The connection,” Sarah says slowly.
“Yes.”
“Am I ever gonna find out?”
Helena shrugs. “I think so. Maybe. Near the ending of the season.” The wrapper is fully shredded, but she’s ripping it to smaller and smaller pieces anyways. Sarah nudges her in the shoulder and offers up her own wrapper; Helena takes it mechanically, starts ripping it too.
“Also,” she says, and then stops. The only sound is the ripping.
“Also,” she starts again, “I. Do you ever play a character and think of you. Do you ever sometimes forget where they are and where you are and where you are not them? Is this ever happening to you?”
“Yeah,” Sarah says. “Sometimes.” Her voice is a dry rasp. I wanted a daughter—but she can’t say that out loud, not here.
“She’s so hungry,” Helena whispers. There’s a loaded second of silence, and then she says: “She’s so lonely.”
“Well,” Sarah says, “that’s easy to tell from you, yeah? You’ve got all these bloody muffins.”
Helena nods a little, and then Sarah adds: “And you’ve got me. If you want.”
Helena looks at her through the frizzed-up mess the hair and makeup people have made of her hair. “If you need a friend on set,” Sarah says quietly. “I know it’s – terrifying, yeah? Not having anyone but the person you’re trying to be.”
“Terrifying,” Helena echoes. “Yes.”
“So,” Sarah says. “I’ve got a trailer. Though, I dunno, might move under here. It’s – what’s it, spacious.”
Helena snorts. “No it isn’t,” she says. “It hurts my neck.”
“Great,” Sarah says. “Settled. You can come hang in my trailer. And you’d better, you hear? If I see you under here again I’m gonna actually punch you the next time it says I’m s’posed to in the script.”
“You wouldn’t,” Helena says.
“Good thing you’ll never have to find out,” Sarah says. She grabs another muffin, ducks out from under the tablecloth. God, her spine. She has no idea how Helena has been surviving under there. After a second she lifts the tablecloth, looks underneath it.
“Whatever it is,” she says. “The connection. Won’t change anything, yeah? Between you and me. We’re not them.”
Helena’s face shifts through a rapid succession of complicated things. “Yes,” she says. “No changing.”
“Alright,” Sarah says. “See you on set, then, yeah?”
“See you,” Helena echoes, and Sarah drops the tablecloth and leaves Helena to her pastry hoard in the dark.