It’s strange, but a part of Helena almost misses him. Dylan is vulgar and, in most respects, an extremely poor example of the Lumon core principles. But he’s entertaining, in a way. Helena’s days confined in this office have certainly felt less lively since he started to pull away from the group.

I like how much this conveys about what Helena has been taught to want and value in a person and how it conflicts with what she actually wants.

“Well, it’s fine for me to know, right?” Helena asks. She gestures to herself. “I could not care less about whatever worthless family this person has on the outside.”

I bet she enjoyed saying that.

It’s not the kind of thing she’s done before. It takes four tries before she’s satisfied, and she finds herself laughing quietly as she shapes the snow, amused by how ridiculous it is. Dylan asks what she’s doing while she’s hunting for stones for its eyes and nose, ends up helping her look.

I love this description and her learning to do something so sweet and human. Helena feels like the opposite kind of outside regular human experience from Helly - she knows the world, but not things like friendship or real connection or how to let herself have fun without the weight of family expectations, and that's a very interesting and believable take on the character.

She doesn’t like saying it. That night meant something to her; she doesn’t like framing it as someone’s fault, like it’s something that shouldn’t have happened. But there’s a rising sense of sickness in her gullet as she looks at Mark’s expression.

I like how you write her coming to grips with what she did. It's a good example of showing the mindset and rationalizations without excusing it. (Understanding includes understanding that she did something selfish and inexcusable and hurt Mark, and also why she didn't really get the impact of what she was doing until afterward.)

Did she do something to Helly? She can’t have done anything to Helly; Helly isn’t here. “What about her?”

I like the mindset you write her as having.

“She’s gone,” Helena says. She’s upset by the way her own voice frays; she’s not supposed to sound like that. “She got what she wanted.”

This really works as the first rationalization and kind of plausible from her perspective, given the little she knows about Helly.

“I’ll give her some time outside,” she says, “if I can have some of the time in here.”

I love that she asks for this and how and why she gives it up.

It hadn’t really hit her, until this moment, that she’ll probably never see Mark or Dylan or Irving again.

Oh, ow!

From the look of the packaging in the kitchen, Helly has bought and eaten an entire birthday cake. Which probably isn’t the best thing for their shared body, but it could be worse.

I love how much Helly, now that Helena's showing her a little kindness, goes from attack mode to trying to enjoy life outside and not be totally considerate of Helena, but also not deliberately hurt her.

She’s glad. She wouldn’t want him gone. He’s an innie, but it’s hard not to think of him as a person. And a person who matters to her, even if she knows she doesn’t really matter to him.

This is really good at expressing the mindset of someone who was taught to think of innies a certain way and is running into contradictory experience.

Friendly, he says. Not friends. It feels like a careful distinction. But it’s still more than she expected.

Really good and nuanced.

She holds his gaze for a long moment. This is it; this is when she decides if she’s really going to let her company burn for these goddamn innies, these half-people who somehow got under her skin.

“I’ll tell you all that I can,” she says.

Yes! Go Helena! Growth!