STONE    

STONE's END

          And finally, her apartment again. Though it was not his space, could not be, he found the easing of concerns began almost at the door. The job was finished, he told himself, over and needed remembering only for filing. Now began the disappearing, the waiting for others to discover what had been done, for the ripples to do their work . The changes would come of their own time, and not long a wait, he mused.

          Mike deposited him on the couch, her face distant and thoughtful, and propped him up with the ruined pillows. It was so odd to be back here; flashbacks of the first time hit him, and he half expected to look down at a line of ants across his chest.  Tension crept along his spine, but he could not trace the cause. Mike moved away, her soft footsteps leading to the door, then out of his hearing. 

          Where had she gone? A moment before,… “Mike?,” No answer but the multiple sounds of movement in the hall. A silent curse, and he was armed, his pains making him stagger where he should be steady, his disbelief shaking him, then giving way to  the cold calm this moment always brought. This would be the coda, then? The murder of the accomplice? How many times would he re-play  final good-bys? Even yet, as he prepared the shot, he felt a tearing; it had seemed different this time, in some subtle set of her mannerisms, the expectation of deceit  had not come. Fears, yes. Suspicions, yes. But he’d not been able to make himself believe it would come.

Had he not tried to prepare himself? Should it not be less painful by now? So many before, their names gone to dust already, had followed this pattern. Why then, the hesitation? Was he considering his own  submission? Why suicide now, and not years ago, when he started? The movement changed, a crunch added to familiar sounds. What kind of weapon crunched? One, … two,… three,…

Now.

          Time made one of those queer pauses we sometimes find at the crux of things. Dark eyes rounded the corner, turned down into a blue paper bag. She was three steps into the room before she looked up, directly into the barrels.

          “Deja Vu,” Mike raised an eyebrow at him. At his lack of response, her face stopped, and she looked at him blankly for a moment before re-starting. A more tentative smile held sway for a second. “Is there something I should know? If you aren’t hungry, I won’t force you this time, but I took all the supplies with me when we left, and they most likely remain buried with your bike” she offered, before moving past him to the table.

          The lack of confrontation was almost worse than the events of the past few days combined. His arms shook  as he lowered the gun. Had he been truly prepared to follow through, she should already have been dead. The thought was chilling, yet somewhere he screamed relief for the knowing. He wouldn’t kill her now, or ever, if only for that hesitation’s sake. What it might mean, even if it was a self-betrayal.

          She finished laying out the meal, but did not turn immediately. “I apologize for not announcing my trip to the vendor.”  She half turned, saw the lowered gun, let out a heavy breath. “ I thought for a moment I had missed something. I should have made sure you knew it was me at the stair, I suppose. Eddie does not know about this place to the best of my knowledge, but I  understand you did not know that.”

          Stone marveled at the casual words. No fear, no sign of shock at being greeted by potential END. An instant adaptation to the situation. His head was too full, his frame too tired to question. It was too easy to let her come close and remove armor weight and weapons, and sink to the couch under her guiding hands. A small sting at his wrist, and the pain subsided to a bone-bending ache. She left him a second time to get bandages from the table, and then began rebuilding her previous works. The gaping hole at his waist called up new additions to her vocabulary,  but exhaustion kept him silent. She talked quietly and soothingly between obscenities, the routine familiar to them both, then moved on to other pains, leaning him back against the cushions  decisively.

          “What else?” she asked as the last ant bit down and his flesh closed. He raised a hand to wave it off as done, but couldn’t find the motivation to finish the gesture. Had she drugged him? Or was the damage that much worse this time? She frowned with the understanding. “Will you make it? You Are Forbidden To Die Here,” she intoned with a serious face.

          “I’ll survive.  It’s what I do.” His voice sounded thin to him, but she smiled again. “I just need some R&R,” he continued as she brought him a bowl. He could not lift the spoon himself, and she took it without thought, ladling it to him slowly.

          “R&R? Explanation of terminology  please, sir,” she replied, as she settled on the floor in front of him.

          “Rest and recreation. A military term originally. Out of use in a world where nobody rests and nobody relaxes. Time to heal, without a constant looking over the shoulder will do wonders. But I’d live without that, as well, if I had to,” he sighed. “I seldom see daylight, without  searching for shadows.”

          But  she had stopped eating after the word ‘recreation’. She set her plate aside, and kneeled in front of him. “How about recreation, then rest?” Her smile was soft, but her hands firm as she reached for his waistband. The buckles he managed with practice she  worked with ease as he froze beneath her fingers.

          Was this conditioning or kindness? How many times had she done something similar to this, for him, for others? He’d been weak once, twisted her twice in necessity, and then the dream….  all with trepidations of the possible consequences.  Was this it? There should have been no memory to instigate such behavior, no lingering effects of  prior commands. A response to a comment made without thought?

 Wildly wishing it so, he tried to order his thoughts before she could progress further. She was not the automaton Eddie had become, he told himself desperately. To have created such a being, from one he wanted so badly, would have been the one step to far. His mind raced with implications. If he had altered something deeper, had somehow caused this repeating submission, could he resist allowing her to remain that way? His earlier actions, however vile, he could and had, many times as a younger man,  rationalized away as a victimless crime: no memories, no hurt, no harm. But if … he sickened at the memory of music and softness in the dark, a moment treasured, despite the guilt, to be held against the solitude surely to come again later. This shredded the remembered joy, made his hopes and precautions laughable.

Struggling to be casual and calm, he grasped her hands as firmly as she had held him earlier. “Mike. Listen to me. This is important. I want to apologize for anything suggestive I might have said or done in our recent association,” he said evenly. ( Recent? his guilt screeched at him. There is no past to temper this with!) I hope I have not offended you, nor caused you to feel indebted or obligated to me. I do not expect you to perform for me in any way. Do you understand?” Let it be enough, please God; I cannot survive this, if I have done her the harm I fear, and I can’t swear to try hard enough to fix it.

Her face stopped again, as it had at the table just nights before. How many times had he seen this look? It meant something, he was sure of it , but it was beyond him to know what. But now, there was nothing at all to differentiate between Mike and his Lady; the hair, the makeup… She kneeled before him now as then, dead  and silent inside, no wall between them, just an echoing emptiness inside. A flawless echo of  when he’d first sinned against that face.

   Her head tilted as if listening to something far away; he leaned forward in an agony of hope, his physical pains forgotten. Minutes passed. As the seconds pulled like taffy, he found himself more certain of his guilt. This was wrong, this break in her…aliveness. He had damaged her, that was certain. And still she sat, motionless, no flicker of thought within her for him to hear.

As he sat forward, his despair reaching its crest in her dead face, she blinked.  “If you are apologizing, …” and stopped again, a pained frown creasing the smooth brow.

I swear I will kill you, painlessly and quickly, before you realize what has happened to you, he whispered inaudibly to himself. I will not keep you. I swear it. I swear. But her blinks were coming more rapidly now. Yes, he decided, better that she be fine but hate me when she realizes what I did than that she be… that. She looked up at him, a slow pain crossing her face.

“I was worried for a moment there, Hon,” he lied. Worried? Your hands could already feel her neck. “Have I offended you? … Mike?” She returned to herself, and looked at him. The restrained, cool detachment he remembered from their first meeting had returned, and he rejoiced in it,  if only in comparison to the alternative.

“If you are apologizing for your earlier actions, if follows that you regret your earlier actions. In light of this information, my falling in love with you was an inappropriate action;  it was the ‘wrong’ thing to do. Please forgive me; I will begin making the necessary changes immediately. Please excuse me.” Her words were so precise  as to have been rehearsed, her manner more so. She rose with a fluid motion, and he watched her move across the room- efficient, controlled, and silent. She settled on  the bed and opened the small drawer, pulling a light headset from it’s resting place. 

He found himself unable to move, unable to think. He, also, seemed to have stopped. Is this where she goes?, the stray thought wandered through. How nice for her. The words had entered, but he could not make sense of them. In love? Why? Earlier actions? She shouldn’t remember any. Inappropriate action. It rang familiar, yet made no real sense.

Necessary  changes. As if it were a faulty line of programming. How odd. And how far away it all was for this blissful moment of overload. Yet…

 Necessary Changes. And the donning of the headset.

He wasn’t aware of having left the chair. He was simply before her with his hand on the frail wires crossing her head before he had time to consider consequences.  Holding  them, he recognized the Programmer clearly. The pauses, the willingness to commit ‘un-social’ acts, the strange phrasings she used in response to his requests; he hadn’t considered the possibility that he might be the sane one. The battle between nature and conditioning  would have been fierce, and visible in any other scenario. But in a survival situation,  without time to notice, what then?

Then this. And nature had won, with his help, and the ‘damage’ was deep, wasn’t it? If she returned to Central Health now, would they bother to try to fix, or just wipe her clean for a fresh start? 

Her reaction, for once, was immediate. Hands shot out to retrieve and protect the object of his scrutiny. The surprising strength she’d shown before was nothing to this as she held his hands immobile in hers. Her eyes were not vacant now, but neither did they meet his clearly as she regained possession and replaced the speakers.

“Mike, …” Stone looked at her passive, closed face, then reached for the connective wires. Again, her hand intercepted his. “I cannot make the necessary changes if you disrupt the source. Please stand away.” Expressionless and cool. The voice of the damned she must believe herself to be. And she would remove that part of herself to become what she had been told was acceptable.

So what he had feared had already been done by a colder power than his.

This was his place, his strength, his gift. If the change had been made, so be it. But he would  and could  undo what this had wrought on her, and be sure of his conscience. His crimes were lost in such magnitudes of wrong.

This time, the ‘source’ was terminated at a stroke, left steaming and twisted as he swelled with his gift. This was what he had been born to do. He took the last moment available before ‘altering’ her forever to kiss her, knowing that she would be Here for it. And  he hoped it was not rape this time.

Through the walls, shattering the barriers that had barred his way when he’d had less time, he peeled her shields away, exposing her thoughts to his. Everything she was, he saw, and was master of. And the Wall, standing like an ebon beacon, cutting across her sub-mind, a line beyond which she would never go, except for him. He recognized it without remembrance, knowing it in a part of him he’d forgotten. To it, and through it, everything in her telling him that the key was hidden here. It collapsed with  the scream he’d heard on the bike, and he braced himself for whatever demons she’d hidden there.

And he saw himself.

 An image of himself, much younger, less careful, and the casual use of a half-aware body. He was beautiful and wild to her eyes, to be scorned for what he was, yet envied for being what she’d hidden inside her walls. He had freed her, wiped her, and handed her to them in one selfish action,  the momentary filling of his needs then, as now, a mindless driver of an unremarkable car… The sound of the beast resolved itself into several, sirens, squealing hydraulics, an overworked engine on an under maintained machine. Huge jaws revealed themselves through a red haze, reaching for him, the working end of a gravel digger. Images and bits of memory rained down upon him, and he reeled under the onslaught of what he saw.

His Lynn, his Michlynna. His Lady.

The wall, the trauma, a head wound sustained when he’d sent her out into the gravel pit, trusting the  machines to finish what he’d begun.  And when she’d survived, in body, they assumed it had been the accident that killed her mind.

They’d kept her, a mindless doll, and the years had passed.

Until the Programmer. Or more correctly, it’s conception.

She had been the necessity that gave birth to the invention, a need by a family with money, at the end of an era when people still thought, and felt, loved, and demanded what was not easily given for those they loved. A family with the resources to get what it demanded, the founders of Central Health, and the earliest of the City Planners.

Eddie’s oldest living relative.

What had been created to re-start the stilled mind of a Planner’s daughter had become the greatest weapon against the attacker that had had taken it. The Programmer, meant to heal her, used over and again, each lesson, every instruction and reproach becoming an absolute, her teachers not knowing at first how concrete their words became. And by the time it was known, those who would care were gone, victims of the years that no longer affected her.

It was the lack of age that was her final undoing. One Sir steps down, another takes his place. But with her family gone, and her longevity becoming evident, there was a new interest in what she was, and a new use for her. She became Eddie’s greatest obsession, the Quest for Immortality. And whatever service she could be beyond that was just gravy, wasn’t it?

Stone felt her watching, the memories falling into place, dominoes in a line. He stood back, watching with growing incredulity as the story he’s set in motion became a greater tragedy than he’d ever imagined. Act 1 had been his, the rest,… but the play was his, in total, wasn’t it, because he’d picked her for a quick ride. The simplest of actions, taken to it’s far end, becoming a greater threat to the species he’s wanted to save than the Planners themselves.

Full circle.

The cause then, the salvation now. But the lost years he could not replace. He gave her the memory of who she had been, added the intervening years memories under that light,  and offered  her who he was. Her choice then, to remember or no, keep or remove him. And she remembered. And cried for the lost time, and screamed for the changes she had accepted. And returned to herself for the last time.

Nothing had changed since he’d kissed her. It was always amazing to find that centuries had not passed on the outside, when so much had occurred inside. Even as he looked at her, he could see the realization in her of where they still were. As time took hold of them again, she blinked and breathed and heard her heartbeat, and knew herself. 

And she knew him.

The understanding was full in her eyes, her face a mask of shock in the dimming light of the window. She sat heavily on the bed, the Programmer still  smoking beside her. Stone waited for her accusations, the recriminations that must surely follow, wanting to give in to the exhaustion that hit him once more, overwhelmed by the new understanding of what had happened.

“If I’d known,” he began, then stopped. What would he have done? Crept in by night and killed her before they could chain her mind down with their technologies? Waited, and hoped with the rest  that she could e saved? He would have been useless then, not knowing how to repair what he’d done, and he knew it. The best he could have offered was death.

But perhaps he’d owed her that. 

Look at what they’d done, because they could. If he’d known she’d lived, he’d have had to known the end result. He’d have waited. And hoped. And she’d have suffered anyway. But perhaps he would have been able to help once they’d fixed the initial damage. He might have restored the memories that were lacking. She could have … Wasted time to think such things. It was done.

“Tell me what to do,” he asked her, wishing for something more than the stunned glaze of her eyes. Some reaction, some sign of what he should do. He swayed, reaching for the wall to support him, and she glanced up.

“Sit down. I’ll get some…” she started, then paused, confused now that she had no directives to follow. She turned to him, unable to act, uncertain whether to rejoice or regret. “Stone.. I .. “ she crumpled on the bed, sobbing, and he felt relief as strong as any fatigue. Tears were normal. Tears were human.

He eased onto the bed, pulling her close, and marveled at the turns that had brought her back to him. For so long, so much regret, and now to have her here, battered and ill-used because of him, but here, alive; he’d accomplished the thing which might redeem him, and found that he’d still had a chance to beg.  Everything she’d known was gone to time, excepting only him, and unworthy as it was, he was willing to take what advantage he could get in this final battle. She was alone in the world.

Unless you counted Eddie, but he was pretty sure Eddie didn’t count. Now he understood the full extent of what she’d done there, as well. It had not been a lack of knowledge at what she was doing to him. This had been cold, clear revenge. Stone shuddered at the thought, realizing what he’d unleashed, but didn’t regret Eddie’s imprisonment any longer. It was hers, by right of blood.

He was cold. The pain was returning, and he felt sleepy. Mike’s sobs were quieting, and he hoped she would be tired enough to wait until tomorrow for whatever revenge she saw fit to dispense on him.

She stirred, and he pushed the hair from her face, giving himself a view of the face he’d longed for over a space of decades. Now it was here. He looked at her, seeing now what he’d not known to look for before. The tiny scar here, a mistake with Dirtyface.  A mark there, a mole her mother had had as well. This was the woman for whom he’d saved a world even after the will to live had passed, and for whose memory he’d grown a garden from the ashes where he thought she’d died. How to win her now, that memory had become flesh, and truth stood starkly in the way?

“You need food, and medicine,” she told his chest, almost inaudibly. Her voice was rough and her face raw. Stone kissed her forehead, remembering the last time he’d done so, at the quarry. He fingered her hair, shorter now than then, unable to think of a single thing worth saying to her. To have her here, after all this time, and be speechless… No. There was something.

“I love you.

“I’m sorry for what I did to you, and for everything that happened because of it. You said you loved me, before you knew who I was to you. Before you knew who you were. Do you still?” He stroked her cheek, her chin, her ear, waiting for the answer he was afraid to hear. “Whatever you want, Mike, if it’s in my power to give, whether you want me still or not.” She didn’t answer, staring into the dark. “Tell me what to do. I’ll take care of you forever if it makes you happy. I was rich once, I built a fortune to buy the quarry, and it should still be there. It’s yours. If you want it. Your whole life is still waiting, and you can be very comfortable. You can do anything, go anywhere. I’ll give you Eddie as a plaything,” he threw in, desperate for to find some gift worth her forgiveness. Her breathing was slow and even, and for a moment he thought she’d fallen asleep. He craned his head back to peer at her, and she glanced up at him. Her lips parted for moment, but she didn’t speak, sighing heavily under some burden. Stone closed his own eyes despondently. Placing his chin back atop her head, he whispered to her again. 

 ”I’ll disappear if you want.”

Her head snapped up, glaring at him, and she pushed him away violently.

“You’ll disappear?  After a lifetime spent alone, isolated, excluded from everything by everyone around me, you’re going to leave me? My family’s gone, my friends, hell, even my cat is dead, and you think I’ll be happy as long as you give me a good allowance?

“I guess you haven’t thought about it yet, but as the oldest member of the family business, I pretty much own the world. You think Eddie was afraid of me because he knew he’d get his if I ever got out from under their chains? No, ‘Hon’, He knew that I outranked him. He knew I knew everything there was about him, the Corp, the little side projects he was running, EVERYTHING. And legally, it was all mine. I’m the first in line. I’m the original heir.  He was scared I might remember who I was, and then, who he wasn’t.

“Your little piece of this town isn’t shit compared to my chunk of the globe, ‘Darlin’. I don’t need your fortune,” she spat at him, the tears welling again with her rage. A erroneous thought flitted by – she’s beautiful when she’s angry – but Stone didn’t think she’d care to hear that just now. “I was rich when you met me. My parents were rich. The corporation was rich. Obviously money didn’t do a damn thing to help me, now did it? If we’d been poor, they’d have quietly suffocated me with my bedpillow after a month or two. I might have been better off.

“Go, if you want to. I have half a world who’ll beg for my favor once they know who I am.

“I don’t need you.”

She stalked off to the couch, grabbing what supplies were handy, and began throwing them into a bag. “Go where ever you want. Go back to your lair, go to the Caverns and find a nice hidaway, go find another Ricci, if it makes you happy. Hell, I’ve spent this long alone why not a while longer?” He closed the distance between them quietly, hearing what was not said better than any curse she might fling at him. When she turned, he was behind her, and she paused at the sight of his shadowed visage so far above her. His fingers wrapped tightly around her shoulders, silencing her, and he leaned down to growl softly in the sudden quiet.
          “Do you love me? It’s a simple question.”  He pulled her up to him, and she gasped slightly, reminded of who she spoke to. “It does not require screaming. If that changed when you found out who you are, say so.” 

She hung helpless in his grip, and for a moment, he thought he saw the fear Ricci had shown after she’d discovered his truer nature. Her eyes closed, and he waited to hear her confess her fears, wherever they might lie.

“Why would I love you? You kidnapped me, killed me, then left me for them to play with. I don’t want you to stay here to take care of me like some stray you picked up in an alley.” She glared back at him, watching his expression change as he digested this, and he looked away as he started to let her down. Her toes brushed the ground before he caught the wistful breath of thought and turned back with narrowed eyes.

“That’s not exactly an answer, is it.” Taking a fistful of her hair, he pulled her head back, forcing her to meet his eyes. He brushed his lips across hers, trailing along her jaw to whisper lightly to her.

“I’m not leaving until you tell me. And I have forever. What about you?” He could hear her pulse pound under her skin, and remembered all the things he’d imagined doing to her if he’d not lost her. Now he’d found her. “Or do I need to resort to torture,” he asked softly, biting gently behind her ear. She shuddered, holding her breath, while he discovered a new occupation to busy him now that his Goal was fulfilled.

“Tell me you love me,” he demanded heatedly from beneath her hair.

“Never,” she sighed, the soft smile she’d worn earlier creeping across her mouth. “Not in a hundred years.” Stone was ready to kiss it off.

“Milady, I believe I just might be willing to keep this up for a hundred and one.” 

FIN                                       

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