One Separated into Two

by MinaMauveine

Starts with Helena's indoctrination and follows up to the point where the twin's lives converge for a brief moment. Helena was willing to throw away all she believed in. The one tracked mindedness willingly unrailed for the betterment of her family. Why does Sarah not understand that they were meant to be? That she would freely be the shield against the world's madness?

Title: One Separated Into Two

Author: MinaRobins

Fandom: Orphan Black

Pairing: Helena/Sarah Manning

Rating: T One-Shot

Warning: Triggers left, right and center. Mentions of abuse and torture from Thomas. Focuses a lot on what Helena has endured. Incest. Incest? Because they are clones… Is this still incest if they were clones but carried by the same mother?

Summary: Start with Helena's indoctrination and follows up to the point where the twin's lives converge for a brief moment. Helena was willing to throw away all she believed in. The one tracked mindedness willingly unrailed for the betterment of her family. Why does Sarah not understand that they were meant to be? That she would freely be the shield against the world's madness?

A/N: Canon divergence, some events were switched so that the twins end up together for a night before heading to see their birth mother.

…

The razor's edge once felt as an unjust punishment.

Thomas's favourite method of cleansing was first and foremost by submersion. He would use his meaty, book dried hands to drag her up and out from her cocoon of scrap blankets. At the beginning she had still attempted at escape, something integral and self-preserving in her subconscious knowing that this kind of agony should not be tolerated mutely. She would fight with everything her scrawny body could deliver, nails dulling onto the cold cement floors as her screeches destroyed the youthful innocence from her voice, turning it into a desperate, animalistic plead. She could yowl like a creature caught in its dying breath, she could cry and yell until she made herself hoarse but at the end he would still haphazardly dunk her into the clear, frigid waters. He said that her misdeeds were but a reflex action triggered by the imbalance her clones had caused, the gaping scabrous pit where her soul had been fragmented and shared to others. In its place sat an unwelcomed, festering evil, it resided in the dilapidated cavity where her spiritual self once grew.

Thomas would chant endless choruses of God's condemning code and she would listen with bated breath, readying for the oncoming plunge. Her physical presence broke the waters calm, causing it to gush out the sides, sloshing down the dusty white porcelain basin and onto the tarnished brass clawed feet as she gripped her fingers onto the lip of the tub. She instinctively thrashed against the gelid waters that soon festered into a searing heat as hot and angry as a wild flame. She would choke gulps full of the collected water, the ice eventually stalling the seething and ferocious rage that shrieked at the unfair treatment. But her growl, her threats, her voice that soon tasted of copper from her damaged vocal chords would just be another mark waiting to bruise her skin.

She learnt to mutely suffer under the hands of her monstrous tamer.

The frost seeped through the membranes of her soaked skin, glacial needles struck into every inch of her blemished body intent on stealing her evaporating ferocity. The freeze would fade, as would the warmth that seized up her body like lava. The molten scorch would settle into her raw, aching flesh and tilter consciousness to the fuzzy peak between wakefulness and inky oblivion.

When she was more a drowned rat than human in the trap of Thomas' fingers he would drop her onto her knees, naked and quivering as a lamb just born into this world. He would take a razor blade in one hand and the other would clasp onto the back of her neck. He would shove weightily earthwards until her frail and tiny body curled into submission. She would watch with tearless eyes as water dripped down her straight, dirt coloured tresses and pooled onto the always filthy grounds.

Then the leisurely paced and excruciating laceration of her skin began. The trenching, lengthy strokes of metal through her fragile and trembling canvas of purified skin caused a serrated agony to blister away any coherent thought and throttle the rising fury into a bland tasting static. The thin, harmless metal signaled the cessation of Thomas' words and the beginning of the fog. She was allowed to attain a form of avoidance, a languid dash into the loving arms of adrenaline; her pulse would be the lub dub drumming she could focus on. Her heart pumped as if she still had a life worth living. It pushed her essence through the wounds throughout her shivering form. Her body frantic to reach the designations of damage, to heal what was already tattered remains of a human being, for whatever regeneration accomplished would only be ripped apart hours later.

Her blood caked over her lesions and blotched through the paper thin shirt that was thrown at her quivering carcass.

She dubbed it the dull, it cottoned her ears to Thomas' mantra and her fountaining blood chased the frigid torpor that wanted to claim her entire being.

Maggie called the splashes of crimson streaks; Helena's wings.

As the days turned into weeks filled with years of zealot like devotion to the true rightful word, her wings grew. The scars, new and old stretched as a grotesque and unnatural tattoo across her bony back, until she was deemed ready to take flight and begin her vengeance onto the real demons.

Her entire body is so used to the constrictive pain caused by being cloned. They were the cause of it; they were unnatural, vile abominations. Detrimental to her health as vines were to a sapling. The constriction of their existence was unendurable, thorns that coiled around her reality. Their deaths justified her entire life of hurt and suffering. She saw light in The Book's choruses and they sang of salvation, of a path that she had earned through her hardships.

She'll buy her passage back into the gardens.

She will complete the task set onto her shoulders.

…

She disliked her blade straight hair, the boring, muddy colours that so many of the wretched atrocities managed to mimic. She danced her fingers over the many boxes of hair dyes, frivolous human concoctions. She imagined her nails as the hooves of a horse, pounding down on the boxes of artificial creations. Her hands are the tools of God, the clackity clack of her nails are that of the horsemen of Death from the sacred scripture. Her imaginary stallion ran through the sin filled alleyways, freely announcing her presence to the world. She gave no slack to an Earth that held no hold or right on her being.

Such evil filled this world, they were all so proud to reject the gift that God had painted onto each person. They were so ready to taint the perfection that she was forced to share with the monstrosities that had stolen her rightful place in heaven. With each creature she killed she envisions another fragment of her soul making its way through the gates in the clouds; floating up up up. Right through heavy and unmoveable bars of shimmering gold that unbolted and gave her entrance to the rest she rightfully deserved. She saw pieces of her entity just converging in the lands of milk and honey. If she closed her eyes she could almost feel the gossamer clouds ghost against her rippled and fresh wounds. The softness twined with her blood and hardened into a framework for a pair of skeletal outlines. Burgundy feathers would sprout until drooping wings donned her back, her blood would still leak and pulse into the favours she had earned. She'll no longer need to wear her scars as penance for the wrongs that were not her own. She was justice; she was solace for the deranged and lost sheep Thomas sent her after.

Her hooves cantered onto the very end of the aisle and clamped onto a box of bleach. She took it and tossed it into the hand basket Maggie was holding. Her other caretaker blinked down at the container and doesn't even blink as she continued down the linoleum, in search of actual essentials.

…

Her roots are showing through and she doesn't like it, she doesn't like the dirty, gross, symmetry peeking up from beneath the glowing sun like colour. Maggie was dead and Beth had been the one to slay her caretaker. Maggie was never kind to her, never understanding but also never the one to initiate any sort of correction. Maggie had been a sole entity of stagnancy. Monotonous Margaret Chen saw her as the tool that she was, and yet, sometimes something maternal would stir in that woman's withered heart and she would sit behind Helena. Her wiry scientist hands would stroke through a trained feral lioness's mane and temper the razor's edge into frizzled discord.

Helena liked to entertain such girly games herself. She even used Katja's toys to play with her hair. She patiently pressed her golden locks between the sizzling metal plates of the hair curler, releasing each wavy strand of her mane with a giggle. The slippery little Russian had gotten away, or so she thought. Not under her watch, never under her surveillance. While she liked the hunt, Thomas didn't like to wait. The thought of his name was enough to curve her crooked back into more of a bend, her fingers spasming to intertwine over the ridges of bone at the back of her neck. The involuntary reactions a coping method for the pain she could likely endure.

Patience was his virtue but tardiness on her part was sin.

When she had first snuck into the hotel she had been delirious with anger that Katja was not present. She bit her lip as her fingers slid experimentally over the plastic card, the pads of her fingertips skimming over the lazered on protrusions that spelt out a maid's name. She brought the card up to her mouth and nibbled on the rounded corner as she twirled about the room, cackling madly when she fell down. How dare that clone scurry away from her righteous light?! She bounced off the bed and slunk into the washroom, watching her reflection wearily before calmly slugging her fists down onto the porcelain sink. The cement and tiles cracked and while the plastered rippled and peeled from the walls. It was all just a guise, some mirage, cosmetics for a detritus building. She gleefully jumped onto the shiny ledge and hopped up and down like a rabbit that had tried to run but she had caught and gorged on back before the long boat ride.

She giggled as the ceramic smashed into the ground, the pieces of cooked clay splintering off and dusting around the regularly cleaned room. She covered her mouth and squeaked out her laughter as she sprinted and splayed her body out onto the bed. The sheets here were all one long piece of material, a rich thick duvet. Not her shredded unravelling blankets, greyed and blotched in colours by time, the scent of her own sweat and blood saturated into the rough thread.

She pouted her lips at the package of half opened cigarettes.

"What a filthy habit." She parroted the words of a woman that had been pushing a stroller past a ring of young smokers. "Filthy," She pronunciated with a roll of her tongue and pucker of her dry lips. She burnt the filtered end of one and then lit the tobacco side of another, laying them beneath the naked Barbie doll she had found in the park earlier this morning at the stake out. She created a pyre, but bored too quickly to continue. Instead she took a long drag on the smoke and then hacked up her greyed breath. Why would anyone subjugate themselves to this kind of foulness? She dabbed the lit end of the smoke into the doll's plastic body. The skin sizzled and retracted, curdling to black and gave off the stinking toxin of the self-indulged poison.

She took her knife and gave the Katja doll a nice little trim, taking the faux strands of hair and letting them sit on her blade before twisting her wrist. The flecks of spotchy highlighter pink coloured hair flittered onto the ground. The blonde hair already been coloured by her as she had stalked to this hotel. The permanent marker that sat forgotten at a store counter was perfect for the artistic endeavors. She didn't have black for the monster's eye shadow so she smudged the doll's eyes shut with the blacken ends of the last remaining smoke.

To take out a fire you snubbed out the oxygen. She was going to aim a shot right into Katja's flame red target of a head. She tapped her index finger against the temple of the doll and snickered at her own wit, amused by her imagined plan of attack.

The Barbie's head popped off without much fuss.

…

No, this wasn't Elizabeth Childs. No, this one was different. She leaned close, nose against the other's neck, and took a long drag of air; there was sweat, sweet luscious fear and something entirely familiar and distant. The scent of the girl cooled the spell of unease and slowed the adrenaline that coursed through her veins.

The sense of unity was too strong and the faulting and insistent emotion caused her decisive strike to be weak and uneager. Who was this woman? Why had her assault on this creature's head shuttered her own vision to a blur?

A harsh tearing slotted into her side and she felt her duplicate's thigh twinge beneath her.

A connection could be felt pounding in her entire body.

…

Sarah had come back for her because they were blood. Sarah explained that they were one, spawned from the same womb. The key slipped in Sarah's clammy, shaking hands but she kept trying until the lock and chain clanked onto the grounds.

Sarah unlocked the rusted metal bars where Helena had spent most of her youth and ushered her into the safety of the shadows.

Sarah, Sarah, Sarah.

Sarah was her saviour, her family, her. She understood that she had been wild, she knew that the rage she wanted to unleash on Thomas must have startled Sarah. She wasn't irritated at Sarah for the pounding lump she could feel at the back of her skull. She struggled a little at the zip-ties on her wrist. Sarah hadn't tied her hands in front of her, which was good since it would have been a foolish decision. It's easiest to snap free from a forward hold. Her sister could take care of herself. Good.

But she was here now and she would be a vigilant protector. No longer was driven by her purpose, no longer needing to offer up sacrifices of her clones, she would now be the guard to her precious sheep. She was the wolf to her lamb. She would never leave her twin's side. She belonged.

Helena tucked her legs underneath herself, rocked onto a kneeling position and swiftly stood up, when Sarah turned to look at her pasty smile, her twin nodded toward the ship's entrance. "C'mon."

She didn't stumble, didn't waver as she trailed after her new master, her counterpart. She hadn't had any food since she had been locked in the cage almost two days ago, but she would not be a hindrance to one of the only things worth cherishing on this planet. "Where's Kira, is she okay?"

…

Sarah shouldn't have let Helena wondered behind her vulnerable and unprotected back, but she knew in her bones that Helena meant no harm, at least to her. She could almost see the animalistic wilting in Helena's posture whenever she neared. It flattered and sickened her at the same time, to see her mirror-self cringe and cowl like a beaten dog.

"She's better now, no thanks to you." Sarah couldn't hold back the resentment in her words, she was petty like that and her child would've died if not for whatever mutations they had spliced into her own body.

"I would never hurt, Angel." Helena wiggled her hands and hunched over when Sarah spun around and glared, she tilted her head and swayed, trying to make her body small and unassuming in the space around her.

"I'm not about to test that on my daughter or Fee." Sarah motioned to the back of the Jag, ready to open the trunk.

Helena twitched closer then further away from Sarah. Knowing exactly where her twin was about to make her go, but still not making a run for it. Sarah almost wished that the pathetic thing before her now would sprint into the darkness. Helena would be consumed by the empty fade, a monster in its natural habitat of night, and out of her life. It would mean one less clone to worry about.

Sarah's voice was rougher than usual when she tried to cover her indecision. "Get in."

Helena swayed irresolutely then placed one leg in then another into the trunk; she rolled her big, pinked rimmed eyes at her keeper. She ducked her head onto the carpeting of the trunk when she expected the hood to come down but it doesn't. Sarah glared at Helena with disdain and something that resembled pity when the other woman only blinked expectantly back, at times bobbing her head down until her chin touched the felt lining. "Sarah?"

When her twin doesn't respond, Helena timidly slid one leg out then waited for the reprimand and when she received none, giddily slipped out the other. Testing her feet on the concrete of the parking-lot like a child would when jumping over imaginary barriers. She stood next to her darling counterpart and nuzzled near, tucking her face into Sarah's neck. She could allow her teeth into the jugular, but instead only breathed in the familiar scent that had mingled with Kira's. Sarah was her only sustenance against the void; she'll allow the evils that lingered around her counterpart, if it meant she could keep this one thing.

…

This hotel was much smaller than Katja's. Dingy would be the word if Helena had the vocabulary to describe it but instead she just ambled towards the bed, happy to sleep by her twin's side.

"Oh no, where do you think you're going, if you're sharing that bed you're showering first." Sarah commanded gruffly as her hand firmly gripped onto Helena's wrist.

Helena dropped onto the ground and leaned her chin onto her knee dejectedly. Water made her uncomfortable. "I don't like the water."

"Yeah, I could tell." Sarah made a show of sniffling her nose as she crossed her arms and leaned against the bathroom counter. "You could always sleep in the bathroom, or the floor; really, I should have just traded you to Lekkie."

Helena doesn't understand who this other person was, another Shepherd? But she knew that she was the barter item and her twin had saved her, another debt to her sister. "I'll shower."

"If I untie you now, will you run?"

Helena solemnly shook her head 'no' and then turned to offer her bonded hands. Sarah snipped off the plastic restraints and then shoved Helena towards the washroom. When the child of a woman turned expectantly at Sarah, she sighed and placed a guiding hand onto the clone's back. She sat Helena down and took out a toothbrush and paste, squeezing some chalky paste onto her own toothbrush but then just shoving her readied utensils to the awaiting clone. Sarah had only ever done this for Kira and now she could put on her resume that she had served a clone of herself through nightly ablations. Hoorah.

Sarah brushed her teeth but kept a wary eye on Helena when the other woman got up and peered at Sarah in the tiny bathroom mirror. Making steady eye contact for a full two minutes. Oh yeah, she was definitely tying the woman's hand back up when they slept.

Helena stuck out her hand and trailed her fingertips over the caulked up mirror, her digits skimming over the reflection of Sarah's cheek.

"Honestly!" Sarah huffed and shoved Helena's hand down and then moved to turn on the shower. Spinning the loose facets until the water hit the guessable region between rain chilled and kettle warmed. "Get in."

Helena instantly shrugged out of her oversized army green coat and then just as casually slipped out of her shirt, pants and underwear, since bras apparently were not a thing for her clone. "Come with me."

Sarah rolled her eyes up to the heavens and knew no answer would come, especially not for a lab rat. She shrugged out of her own garments and kicked off her shoes. Nudity was hardly an issue, they shared the exact body type, and it would be like showering up against a mirror. A mirror her twin had creepily all but caressed and mirror didn't constantly attempt to stroke your hair or touch your body. Then again, Sarah had never taken much time to watch her reflection, maybe her own reflection held a similar puppy like adoration that resonated from Helena.

"I like your hair."

"Shower, then sleep, no more talking."

Helena sadly fidgeted with the lid of the shampoo for a moment before grinning at the sweet smell that wafted out from the opened bottle cap.

"Settle down, its motel supplied soap, stop looking so ecstatic about everything."

Helena gulped and put down the miniature bottle as if it was made from porcelain, shifting to hide her pouting lips.

Sarah sighed once again and picked up the bottle, squeezing its contents into the palm of her hand and working it into her hair. Helena gently shoved her hands into Sarah's tresses and quickly removed them before getting bitten by Sarah's confusing words. Helena dragged her hand through her thick, unruly mane of hair and in doing so, slowly pushed out her chest to display her meagre breast.

Sarah noticed the numerous scars, some rigged and old, others that were so deep that it made a painful scorch burn in her heart. There were pink and angry lines of white and hidden under the mountain of larger scars, serrations that had healed and stretched with Helen's growing body. But there was exquisiteness in this clone's body that none of the other clones possessed. It was gaunt and hungry, a dangerous kind of beauty like the gaping entrance to an unexplored cavern. Where the silence could only be broken by the steady dripping and flowing of water, its currents carving out an entire dungeon of secrets, the sounds resonating against the hollow out realm. One slip and you would plummet to unknown depths; snap your neck against rock you can no longer see.

The things this woman had suffered just for being who she was.

Sarah's hand moved on its own accord and slid into place where Helena's ribs protruded along her sides. She was so starved and yet the stringy muscle rippled and immediately tightened under Sarah's experimental touch. This monstrosity made by man, tormented and gave off an unease that only a predator could provide.

Sarah felt that this afflicted creature was due some kind of sympathy from her. The water slicked down Helena's collar bones and then over her chest, lastly converging towards her navel. Her hipbones were sharp and when Sarah's hand flowed along with the water to grip onto the left side she could feel the unevenness of a broken bone from a maltreated past.

Damaged bones were a common occurrence in the system and she and her pack of friends had their fair share. Though theirs still got what could be deemed as proper medical care. She did not want to imagine the excruciating cures that Helena had to undergo.

Helena's skin was not soft or lotioned with care like Allison's, but her muscles were taut with eagerness. Touching Helena was a depraved kind of pleasure, something Sarah understood that few were allowed the courteously of. She had tied and fought this woman and Helena was a sure force of nature. The carnal twinges of barely controlled approaches, the lava liquid grace of a hunter that could be deadly if she so choose to be.

But she was supposedly safe with this lunatic? What did it take to keep Helena away? Her hand ghosted right over the still healing wound her self-defence had left behind. She had hurt people before but never to this extent; never with the intent take the other's life, only ever to defend enough to get them to stop. Her light touch caused a breathy groan from Helena and the retraction of her hand.

The trickling water barely managed to rinse out any of the shampoo but Sarah quickly backed up and moved to leave the shower. Helena's hand shot out and gripped her wrist, tight enough to cut off circulation as she tilted her head questioningly. "Why stop."

"Let go."

Helena complied.

…

Sarah scrunched her eyes shut when the bathroom door opened, but curiosity got the better of her and she peeked at her sister. The dulled yellow light of the washroom bathed the dark room in a glow for Helena's entrance; she was still completely naked, the water turning her dyed blonde hair to a wheat-yellow. Her body was slick, cleaned and excruciatingly damaged.

Sarah pushed up on where she was lying, leaning up and onto the headboard, she was obviously staring. What was the point of hiding it anymore?

"Touch me again." Helena loomed; legs hitting the bed and making her kneel to get closer to Sarah. Her eyes wide and animated as she ran them lewdly up along Sarah's body to meet the other woman's gaze. "Again."

Sarah noted the complete change in demeanor. From the cautious, weary, child-like creature that had haunted the seat next to her in the car. This was a hunter on a goal, an animal on the scent of its interest. Helena placed a hand onto the wound Sarah had inflicted and then dragged her nails up to her heart where she closed her hand around her breast and grazed her nipple. The moan she drawled from herself was indecent and completely arousing. "Sarah."

"You don't even know what you're asking for." Sarah spluttered out as she batted the other woman's hands away when they moved for her but the gentle reach jolted into a grab around her throat and a claw in her still soaking tresses. "What the fuck!"

"I've seen you with him, Paul." Helena enunciated his name, emphasizing the 'paa' and then ending it by drawing out 'uuuul'. She was straddling Sarah's lap, pressed close but angled a little taller than her counterpart. She curled her back to bend even closer. "We fit best, we were made together."

"That just makes it worst, you sicko!" Sarah wrapped her fingers around Helena's wrist and tugged hard on the steel like clamp around her neck. Her eyes darted to Helena's harden nipples, to the water that could be wiped off with the tip of her tongue. She could feel heat pool and burn within her, pushing her to just roll her hips into the woman's above her. "Get. Off."

Helena licked her lips in a manner far too sensual and then timidly looked side to side before focusing on the quickened, nervous rise and fall of Sarah's chest. She released her hold and the pressed deliberately forward; flicking her gaze up to watch for resistance before pushing an open mouth kissed against the blood vessel she could easily rip apart with just her canines and incisors. She was able to kill Sarah, but she couldn't and wouldn't ever.

Sarah gasped a long draw of her breath, shocked at the uncontrolled rock of her own hips, imagined just moments before and now coming into being. She shoved out her hands onto Helena's shoulders to force the eager woman away. What made this wrong and what made this right? She felt no familial relationship to the whirl wind of insanity on top of her. They had no more history or sisterhood than that of strangers but there was always the tug of a bond. She'll never quite understand if it was just intrinsic sibling connection or a mutation within them that drew her to her counterpart.

It was the shallow breathe she could feel her own lungs draw at the pain of self-suturing. The taste of blood against her own lips as Helena lifted her fingers up to silence a pale child from announcing her presence. It manifested after their meeting, something alive and regal. The bond that held monopoly on both their entities, it twined them into but one, identical threads in a double wick, only together could they prolong the flame of life. It was the visceral thing the pulsed between them that rampaged through notions of propriety until it took Sarah's rationality to the grave.

Sarah allowed Helena's hands to grip onto her face and lean close. To have the other woman's blunted nails to carve down the slide of her cheek, reminiscent of the fish pommel blade that had been held against her on their first meeting. Helena watched as Sarah's pupils widened, felt the unstoppable pull for unity. Even though Sarah's voice was silent to the slant and closeness of their bodies, her heart quickened in anticipation of the indulgence in the forbidden taboo.

"Back. Away." Sarah instructed and this time Helena shirked back, anxious, wanting, but obedient when her deemed master's command was serious.

The famished look in her eyes reflected in the lowered timbre of her voice. "Sarah."

"Shut it." Sarah removed the tank top she had redonned and then kicked the sheets from her legs before moving to kneel on her knees. She hadn't bothered to wear a bra to bed so the only thing left on her body was her panties.

This time the symmetry Helena saw pleased her. "Sarah." A revenant whisper against her sister's skin. Hot and needing as she followed the guidance of Sarah's touch, to wrap her own hands around the back of Sarah's nape . "Sarah."

"Shhhhh." Sarah answered, her tone soft but stern in the now silent room. She let one hand slide down the planes of Helena's body, over the stoic, strong beatings of a ready heart and then ending on the healing scar she had part in creating. Once again her caress enticed a wanting moan from the other woman.

Sarah licked at the droplet of water that had all but dried on Helena's taut nipple.

Helena's eyes widened, a strangled cry fell from her lips, this was the kind of torture she could easily relish in.

She allowed Sarah to shove her roughly into the scratchy comforter upon their bed, her hands encouragingly clenched onto the flex of muscle upon Sarah's back as the other woman wrapped a mouth around her nipple, alternating between each rigid clutch of nerves. It was all tongue and no teeth, something delicate, languorously slow, with a tenderness that Helena had never felt.

Helena gave up her will to this other her, this whole person that she could've been. Who Sarah will continue to be because she'll be there to defend Sarah's life, stand sentinel against the tarnished world and let whatever kind of living come into fruition for Sarah and their angel Kira.

Sarah's thumb pressed against Helena's clit, pulling out a growl that was filled with ravenous want, emotions so strong that it hurt Helena not to unleash it. To just take what was already hers and hers all along. Helena pushed her palms against her eyes, whimpering as Sarah's touch continued to be feathery light.

"Too slow for the big bad lunatic?" Sarah teased, taking a moment to drag her tongue around Helena's navel.

Her fingertips following the livid marks of Thomas's punishment, some were the sad remains of Helena's self-mutilation. Sarah followed each streak left behind by the cruelty of a delusional man. Her sympathetic touch sparked a sensation to electrocute through the mirrored spot on her body. The more she traced the greater the pain became, but she just couldn't stop herself, the scorch made her cry out and in turn caused Helena to whine as if they had both been sliced by the same blade, until all at once the faded scars joint together in remembrance of the abuse, the cruelty of the past transferred over to the unprepared woman.

A festering blighted paroxysm of pain laid siege throughout Sarah's nervous system, phantom blades and metal chains of Helena's memories took to her skin with vengeance, some of the hits so unfathomably deep that the very breath was stolen from her lungs. Her vision spotted in a haze and the thump of her heart increased in motion, her body at a lost in how to deal with the intense detrimental rush of remembered injuries.

"Sarah?" Helena shifted up, leaning her weight onto her elbows to glance worriedly at the trembling woman before her. Sarah laid still and prone on top of her, the weight was small but completely dead. Sarah felt her muscles and skin tear off from her bone; it was the snap of Helena's concerned voice woke her from her stupor.

"Sarah, are you okay?" Helena snaked a hand onto Sarah's shoulder and shook, too much of her distress coming through to make her touch anymore gentle.

Sarah's irises are darkened with hurt but mostly wrath that she wished to unleash onto that abhorable cretin that still lay prone in Helena's last entrapment. She wanted to leave this room, start her car and drive back to finish what her twin had started, she was needed to complete the damage. She dragged herself back onto her knees, her eyes sharp with barley contained madness from the wretchedness of her twin's past.

Thomas' actions necessitated retribution.

Helena found the signs of danger in her counterpart to be far too striking, the acidic hatred that Helena thought only she had ever felt could now been seen in Sarah. It was an attractive, frighteningly delicious kind of power that enticed her to be the aggressor now, to exacerbate the malevolent desires in Sarah.

She darted forward, straddling the other woman's stiff frame again when Sarah falls onto her back. Helena enjoyed the sticky texture of the skin that clung to her thighs. Sarah felt the ache, felt all that she had, or at least a ghost of what she endured. Helena licked at the clammy flesh between Sarah's chest, where the sweat from her flashback experience pooled. Sarah's movements are stiff, robotic in motion but clear in intent as she fists Helen's hair into her hands and yanked her lover towards her breast. Where her nipples felt pinched, stiffened from the ache she had been forced to experience.

Helena gladly abided, teeth biting down onto the tightened bud. Nothing of the softness which Sarah had treated her too, she didn't know how to be tender, not when she needed it so very badly.

Helena grinded down on the thigh caught between her own legs, a keening growing in the very back of her throat as she tried to articulate what she felt spin from the grasp of her mind. The lighting sort of pleasure as Sarah's hand slid up to her ribs, trailing down to clench onto her hips, encouraging the mindless strive for pleasure.

Sarah let one hand moved further, trembling in her excitement as her fingertips grazed against sweat wetted skin, over the puckered ridges of the wound she had inflicted until finally she reached Helena's clitoris. This time the sounds she managed to bring fourth were soft, barely audible. The closer Helena felt to breaking, the more silent her breathy whimpers became. She had been trained to be a shadow, a death bringer and a mute under Thomas's lessons. She couldn't unravel without gaining an outlet in her voice but she feared the price of letting go, to be raw and too human not to be punished.

Sarah sensed the hesitation and increased the friction created by her fingertips. She let the hand on Helena's hip move to the crooked back, to push and angle her sister closer, to bend forward. Helena submissively obeyed, thus giving Sarah the space for her own fingers to slip in, two at a push interval until only her thumb was left to rub against the tight, throbbing bundle of nerves.

Helena tumbled onto Sarah's body, still stirring instinctively to impale herself further onto the hand between her legs but unable to reach the point of release. The tension meshed and jumbled together until all she could do was hold her breath under the overwhelming submersion.

Sarah felt the unease, noticed the stifling draw of each breath that never seemed to find its way back out from the woman above her. "Helena, let me hear your voice."

Helena's eyes are apprehensive and confused. Caught between pleasure and pain, a torment that she's underwent countless times. It was a familiar convulsion her body remembered, caught in the throes of an infecting pain too great to ever really forget.

"Now." Sarah restated her command, this time firm and decisive. If the order was not enough then the additive of twisting her hand to press her fingers against the ribbed inner walls would force everything to come apart.

"Sarah!" Helena came undone with her twin's name screeched from her lips, tasting the oxygen and bated breath purge from her system all in one drastic explosion that made her body plaster down onto Sarah's. She repeated her twin's name countless times, losing the start and end only to loop the cycle all again, a long hiss of syllables that escape hand in hand with the damages she had once sustained.

It's the fresh bout of air, the coming blow that she expected from her failure to hold it all in but never lands, the unraveling of her blistered and raw insides that only her sister can keep from spilling free that finally caused Helena to shed tears she had thought she had long used up.

"Shhhhh, you're safe, I've got you." Sarah wrapped her arms tightly around her sister, as if her touch alone could keep everything from reaching them. Against the scientist that had given them life to the mad man that had pummeled every essence of rationality from the woman before her now. "It's alright; it's going to be fine."

Helena's hand slid up and gripped onto the flesh laid on top of Sarah's fragile heart. This was hers to protect from harm with whatever the cost.

This was it.

…

She hadn't thought that their birth mother would arrive at Sarah's abode. She had wanted to surprise her sister, to show that she could be civil. That she could dress and act like a normal person, like how she had done in the police station. Sarah would soon be proud of her. But then she entered into Sarah's home. The woman was a violator of her youth and a trespasser of Sarah's domain.

And once again the vile mother of theirs was ruining everything, she had broken them up once in their youth and was now causing another divide.

Why didn't Sarah understand that she could never truly take her twin's life? She would never plunge a blade into her beloved sister's body.

She wanted to show Sarah that she couldn't actually take her life. Helena twisted her head as Sarah approached, her boots made slippery by the surrogate's blood, slurping and squelching under each heel. Thomas had trained others along with Helena, they were never duplicated into a beast, into monsters, but they were trained and bathed in the cleansing waters of the gospel. Helena was faster, stronger and smarter. What they had on her of years she had over them in insanity. She had no intention to take her comrade's lives but she did by accident. When she fought it was backed by sessions the others had never endured and by their god himself. She bit, growled, every practice skirmish hallucinated into a battle with the diseased and lost sheep.

Couldn't Sarah tell that just like their first meeting her tools held no true strength behind them? Back then Sarah had mortally wounded her and yet it has been all forgiven. Sarah should be able to see that her limbs were mortal and her hands gentle in her teaching. Helena dropped the coal black chains onto the ground and spluttered out a laugh, spreading her arms open and wide as she ambled towards her lover, to her sister, to her Sarah.

Sarah rose up the hand that didn't tremble in pain, that hadn't been injured by the lioness in her den. "She was our mother!"

Helena's eyes became piercing and dangerous. "She threw me into Thomas's cage, he made me like this, we were one separated into two, and I can't hurt you as you can't hurt me." She stumbled closer, the excitement of being cherished splitting her lips into a deliriously thrilled smile. "We'll be family, with Kira, you can even keep Paul, he is a good guard for us."

Sarah's finger smoothed onto the trigger, her thumb pulling the hammer back.

"Sarah." Helena crept closer, mindful that she didn't startle her twin. She stretched out quivering, familiar hands and tentatively reached out. "Sarah?"

The voice was that of a child, one that had been abused and tortured.

Kira was but a child and Sarah had no want to ever see her daughter in either situations.

The gun fired bright in the muted surroundings.

…

The shot missed vital organs and even bared flesh, but the notion of being so close to more pain was enough to slam Helena onto her back. The ground was almost a comfort to feel, so simply hard and familiar. Sarah crawled towards her prone body. Sarah was crying, the gun heated but forgotten on the pool of their mother's blood.

"Sarah." Helena's lips were wet but her throat felt parched.

"Why did you have to push me?!" Sarah's hand moved over to Helena's heart, the pulse beneath her palms erratic too strong to stifle. "You fucking idiot."

Helena grinned but could not move her arms up to embrace Sarah. The world was a blizzard of frost, the planes of her vision fogging over as the wetness on her lips spilled out red as the stain that blossomed on her chest. "But you missed?"

Sarah doesn't answer and instead pressed down hard, futilely hoping to slow the flood of heat that escaped through the bullet she had lodged into Helena's chest. The moment the shot had ringed out she knew it had hit its mark. The spider web of pain that crunch her heart into dust was a clear enough signal.

Helena was delusional, skin clammy with encroaching death and barley conscious but still aware enough to force her eyes open when Sarah had called her name. Dutifully compliant to her other part's demand.

"Don't," Their bond pulsed strong for a moment, drawing them together once again in shared injury and this time heartache. "Don't go." Helena's lips tasted metallic and the warmth soon left her twin's body as a mess flattened out onto the cement as their bond was unravelled like strings to an aged piece of cloth. The last thing keeping Helena breathing was no more and thus so spelled the end of her.

Sarah kissed Helena's crown of hair, the lovely rivets were muddled in parts by blood. In the barely lit room the colouring could almost be made out as brown.

Their bond flickered on its last strands until those too snapped and crumbled under the perpetuity of death.