OWARI?…
Fourteen years later…
Heiji looked with her in the mirror, and met Jen’s eyes once again. Jen, the slim woman who once had been Deannah, and still was, and wasn’t. Jen, with her deep dark eyes and long, white-lashed brown hair. Jen, with her Cheshire Cat grin and odd ways of speaking, Jen who was always the first one to jump into the worst situations, Jen who had always had herself killed so many times that she didn’t even count them anymore. Jen, the one he used to make cry so often when they were alone, only both of them, trapped within the pool of memories. Jen. The one that used to make him feel so bad.
Ah, yes, she had become a fine woman, though her quirks usually contributed to prevent most people from noticing it at first. And when she put off these Keelarr glasses of hers, her eyes… Her eyes were even deeper than one could have expected, deep and somewhat sad, also, as if she could never, never completely get rid of the feeling that, maybe, he wouldn’t come back.
Such a fine woman…
In her mind, Heiji slightly frowned for himself. He couldn’t really blame the–this other man (he couldn’t resolve to call him by his name, at least not yet) for having fallen in love with her, in fact. Neither could he blame her for wanting to answer his love, so desperately that she would cry for hours and hours, night after night, cursing their fates, cursing the way things had gone, terribly astray. But she was staying loyal, despite her own feelings. She loved them both, yet though she knew Heiji was only but a ghost for the moment, though not being sure she’d see him alive again someday, though not knowing how long this would take, she remained loyal to him. And she cried so much, when she was alone at home, knowing that whatever she decided to do, he’d make her pay, sooner or later.
It was so hard, for both of them. So hard to be aware of her feelings, of her guilt when she was looking at ‘the other’, thinking that it would be so good to touch his warm flesh and let him hold her in his arms. So hard to be aware that she was more and more often balancing between her desire for himself, Heiji, and her desire for… the other. So hard to be in this pitiful state, half a mind trapped in her flesh, entangled with her thoughts to the point of not always knowing if the feelings they were experiencing were hers or his. So hard.
“I’m sorry, Heiji,” Jen suddenly whispered, closing her eyes to escape her reflection in the mirror. “Sorry if I never could find ‘im… Sorry if…”
“You don’t have to be.”
“But mebbe he’s dead. Mebbe they killed ‘im, after all. Mebbe he was erased… with all the others… that night…”
“I’m sure he didn’t. Cyrus was able to bring you back, remember. So he surely wouldn’t have let himself be killed like this. Don’t worry. Maru-1 was with him, anyway.”
She kept silent for long seconds, not able, or maybe not wanting, to give an answer to this, and he knew that she was thinking exactly the same thing as him–his own words sounded too much like a plea, like something people used to say to comfort themselves, like a false hope he was brandishing to prevent her from being even sadder than she already was. They had discussed it so many times already. And she had been looking for the Engineer for so many years, so many years, now, that with every passing day, the hope of finding him again was becoming thinner and thinner. If things were to go on like this, one day, hope would simply vanish. And then…
“… I’m goin’ to bed. Sweet dreams, Heiji-kun…” Jen finally muttered, before turning away from the mirror and switching off the lights. She didn’t need them to find her way in the appartment–she knew where each thing lied, she even knew where she had left this pile of wires, and there, the broken term she had been tinkering with, and the junk of discs lying on the couch, waiting for her to try to get some data out of them before throwing them away. She knew it all, even in the mess, a mirror of her own inner maze, of the very mess that was her mind. A mess–inside and outside, Heiji’s and Deannah’s and Jen’s memories melting within each other, all the time. All the time.
But he couldn’t sleep. He needn’t sleep, after all. He had all the time he could wish for to think and ponder, although he would have liked not to. Thinking was becoming awfully painful, in the end, when all one could do was to think and not act. There was the Grid, of course–the Rift, where his mind could escape sometimes, and travel while linked with hersttyet it wasn’t the same than being alive.
Being alive. Being aware of his own body again. Being aware of the time fleeing between his fingers, instead of pursuing one thought, then the other, then realize that a whole day had passed… or, on the contrary, to think so fast that Jen herself couldn’t follow him. Even after fourteen years spent ‘together’, this wasn’t an easy process, and his mere presence was sometimes confusing her a lot. It was better when he monitored the Grid for her–a part of her mind setting itself at another task, so that the other part could concentrate on the matters happening around her. But there were moments when it simply wasn’t possible.
“I’m sorry too, Jenny…” he thought, before realizing that one more hour had passed, while he had been lost in his ‘own’ thoughts, and that she was deeply asleep now–a long, dreamless sleep, after all these days and night spent to attend the department meetings, running across the whole terraformed area of Rubi-Ka, and working on all the decryptions, inquiries and various other jobs that were her duty within SPARTA.
“I’m sorry”, she said, and he abruptly stopped thinking. He was certain he had said these words, not her. She was still asleep, though; after long, troubling seconds of the uttermost silence, listening to those slow, measured breaths that simply couldn’t be his, Heiji raised a hand. Looked at his hand. At her hand.
“Ya can, Heiji-kun. Really. I allow ya to…”
The dead Fixer who was no more than a shadow gave a start. The little girl was back in their shared mind–Jen-chan, smiling, her little hand holding his tightly, not seeking protection, but… showing him the way, maybe?
“I know yer always alone in here. It must be hard fer ya, ain’t it? So mebbe–mebbe ya can go out like this. Jus’ a little, okay? Just… Promise… Promise ya won’t do it too often, Heiji… Promise?”
Heiji stared at her for at least a minute, maybe even two, and all of a sudden, started to laugh. He laughed with all his mind, with all his heart; he laughed with her voice, too.
Her body had to take some sleep though; he knew it, and despite the sheer need of running around, jumping, laughing out loud again and again, he did his best to refrain himself. What happened once, could happen twice, and so on, and so on, at least for someone like him. This was definitely becoming most interesting.
In their shared mind, Jen-chan gave a childish yet mischievous smile, and held his hand more tightly.