Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

She dreams of the other woman. She can’t ever see her face in the dreams. But it doesn’t matter. They’re holding hands.

She’s drawn to the woman, and the woman is drawn likewise. She leans down, down, onto her lap. She’s heavy. It’s comforting.

She puts her free hand in the woman’s hair– dark, like hers –and strokes it. It parts easily between her fingers. It’s soft. She’s soft. The woman hums in pleasure.

“Are you going to grow it out?” she asks.

“I don’t know,” says the woman in her beautiful low voice. Her speech, too, is soft. “I never had it long.”

“Yeah?”

“Military dad,” she says. “Wanted his son to grow up right, you know? Follow in his footsteps.”

She smiles. “How’d that turn out for him?”

She can feel her smiling back. She doesn’t need to look. “Pretty well at first, actually. He had me do football and hockey in school.”

“Oh, right,” she says. “I knew that… Sorry.”

“Don’t be.” The woman turns her head toward her. She’s gorgeous; that’s obvious from the way her heart seems to warm up in her throat. “It means I got to meet you.”

She can’t resist. She leans down and kisses the woman.

With her eyes closed, she doesn’t need to worry about not seeing her face. Their lips fit together, interlocking as if they were made for one another.

The woman is the first to separate; the position is clearly not the best suited for the occasion. Her thumb rubs back and forth in their held hands.

“I used to have mine long,” she says. “Really long.”

“You didn’t like it?”

“I liked it,” she says, “but it got everywhere. Everyone on the Neb was begging me to lose it after a while. It would get caught in the jack and tangle, people would get it caught in their ports, and one time–”

The woman fakes a retch. “Talk about a fourth world problem.”

A laugh suddenly escapes her. It takes them both by surprise, it seems, and the woman chuckles, too. “God,” she says. “Where were you all my life?”

“Playing football,” the woman hums. “And hockey. And then college, and then Metacortex. You ever skate?”

“Once,” she says. “I was a kid. I was on the rink, but it was mostly my ass skating.”

“I’ll teach you,” the woman says.

“I can get Link to load it for me,” she says, but she knows she won’t.

The woman knows it, too. She rolls onto her back, bringing her face-to-face. “Well. Maybe I want to see you on your ass,” she says. She’s–

She’s adorable. She can feel a grin stretch her face. “Maybe you will.” She’s addicted to her. The feeling of their hands entwined, her weight on her lap, her big, pretty eyes–

She remembers something. Her grin fades.

“Trinity?” the woman asks.

Trinity squeezes her hand tighter. “Where are you?” she asks.

“I…” The woman sits up. They’re in the dark together. The dull light from outside can’t place them. “Trinity.”

“I can’t see your face.” The warmth in her throat is turning to a tugging, aching heat. “How am I going to find you?”

The woman squeezes her hand now. “I’ll find you,” she says. “I have to find you. I’m not alive without you.”

“This isn’t living,” she says. “But can’t we stay like this?”

Her hand loosens. She sits up and wraps Trinity in a hug. “I wish we could.”

“Neo,” she says, and her voice breaks.

She squeezes her eyes shut…

…and when she opens them again, she’s in a strange place that she’s been in before, red and bone-cold and suffocating…

…and when she opens them again, she’s in bed. She can hear rain pouring outside.

She thinks about waking up Chad. But he’d look at her like she was crazy for wanting to run in this weather.

It isn’t wanting. It’s needing.

She doesn’t bother with a raincoat, nor boots. She changes into dirty clothes from the hamper and goes out barefoot. Thunder rumbles as she shuts the door. Her feet splash on the sidewalk.

Now it’s the soles of her feet that burn as they scrape against the concrete, still rough despite the weather. She must look crazy. She feels crazy. It’s a quiet, desperate need for something, for freedom. It’s a desperate need to do something that would make her a monster. Something crazy. Something callous.

She heaves into the humid air. Her ribs are starting to hurt. Her feet are burning hot. She’s passed her house, and she’s not stopping, not until her legs give out. Maybe she doesn’t have to ruin her life on purpose. Maybe her family will see her sanity slipping and just throw her into a mental hospital for having psychotic delusions.

A delusion, huh? Is it a delusion to know her place in life, her place in the family, and hate everything about it? Is it a delusion to hate her children strictly because they’re her children?

Lightning flashes. There’s a silhouette. A person, an umbrella, a leash. She means to run past.

But it flashes again, and her face is clearer. Familiar.

It isn’t Leslie. This woman dresses differently– a dark dress, clinging to and accentuating her figure. Her hair– equally dark –flows loosely in the wind. As Tiff draws ever nearer, the details of her face refine themselves. Blood-colored lipstick. Haughty eyebrows, dark eyelashes on dark eyes…

She stops. The woman continues walking– at the end of her leash is a little dog, trotting along happily but staying well in the umbrella’s shadow. When she reaches Tiff, she stops.

“Who are you?” Tiff asks.

The woman tuts. She looks like she could be Tiff’s age, maybe older. “Look what they’ve done to you,” she says. “So tired. Convinced your life is over.”

Tiff immediately dislikes her. “Who the hell are you?” she repeats.

“Curious,” she says. “I’m curious.” She holds out her umbrella. “Take it.”

Tiff takes it, holding it over herself. When she pulls it to cover her, the dog follows. The woman steps under the umbrella to lift the dog into her arms, and then stays there. “Poor Mietta,” she croons. Somehow, her voice rings hollow. “You’re all wet, darling. I knew this rain was too much for you.”

“What do you want?” asks Tiff.

“Hm.” The woman smiles. “Do you talk to your husband like that? How about your children?” She strokes the dog as she speaks. It’s one of those little crusty-eyed ones that always need grooming.

Tiff tenses. She could punch her right here, right now. Her free fist clenches.

The woman’s eyes drop down to it, drawn by the infinitesimal motion. “No, I suppose not. Who knows what would happen if you treated your men the way they deserved?”

“Tell me who you are,” she says.

“Persephone,” says the woman. “My name is Persephone.”

Tiff doesn’t believe it. Nobody names their child Persephone. Demeter didn’t name her child Persephone. “Really?”

“Really,” the woman says. “But if you prefer, I was always partial to Anastasia. It rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it?”

Tiff says nothing.

“And you find it everywhere. Russia, Spain, Italy. It means resurrection.” She smiles, as though she’s told a joke. Tiff doesn’t. It’s not funny.

“What do you want?” she asks.

“I told you, I’m curious.” Persephone walks around Tiff, her heels clicking on the sidewalk. “I used to be like you, you know. My husband, he loved his arm candy.”

“I’m not arm candy,” Tiff says. Chad has never made her feel like an accessory. She’s needed. She’s useful. (Like a tool.)

“Neither am I,” she says. “But he was powerful. He was a man, so it was only natural that I let him run around and do what he liked.”

“I don’t do that,” Tiff says.

“No, I suppose not,” Persephone says. She stops in front of her, rocking the dog in her arms. “You don’t care what he does.” She smiles. “Maybe you’d like it better if he was with another woman, because then he wouldn’t pay attention to what you did.”

Her heart seems to shiver.

“He didn’t love me,” says Persephone.

“Chad loves me,” Tiff says.

“But it doesn’t reach you.” The dog yawns. Persephone strokes its ears. “It’s worse than feeling nothing. He didn’t love me, and I felt nothing. You hate it when he loves you.”

She shudders. The rain has put a chill under her skin. “Stop.”

“I must be frank. It breaks my heart to see you like this,” she says. “It does. So crowded, yet so alone. You have so much love to give, but nobody to give it to…” She smiles. Again, it’s hollow. “Hatred always was the stronger emotion. And when it’s the self you loathe, you can keep doing it forever.”

That’s not true, she thinks. She could die. But people would notice. Her children’s life would fall apart. Don’t parents have to make sacrifices, too?

“But I believe,” she says. “I know for a fact the person of your dreams is out there. The life of your dreams.”

“But my life is perfect,” Tiff says. Her voice quavers.

“Yes,” says Persephone with a sad smile. “It is.” Their fingers brush as she takes the umbrella. Persephone’s are cold, colder than Tiff’s. She walks on.

When she gets home, she turns the shower on hot and stands under it until her skin stings. She still feels cold.

The same woman is always there when she orders noodles. Chunky red glasses, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, a playful smile. She actually seems like she likes her job.

Or maybe she likes people-watching. Tiff eats alone, scrolling if there are texts she missed, looking around if not. More than once, she’s caught the eye of the noodle woman, and she smiles a little wider.

When she’s not watching Tiff, she’s watching the man in the corner, also eating alone. He sort of stares into nothingness, doesn’t even notice one, sometimes two pairs of eyes boring into him. Tiff often thinks he looks the way she feels– completely dead inside. The difference is that he doesn’t have to pretend he’s not.

She realizes she knows him, or at least knows his face. He’s the man from the café, the one with the sad smile.

The gorgeous one. The one she’d, in that mad daze of memory, wanted so badly.

She realizes with horror that she still does.

She does something crazy. She stands up and moves her shit to the corner table with him.

He looks up, and she remembers how wrong it felt to call him a man. The stranger, then. She becomes aware of an odd sensation surrounding him, almost aura-like. Everything feels a little less real around him. His eyes are dark and wide, and he looks as scared as she feels.

He doesn’t speak. So she does. “I’m in love with you,” she says, “and I don’t know why.”

His eyes flicker over her. “I’m in love with you, and I know why.” There’s almost no color in his face. “You’re beautiful.”

“You see a hundred beautiful people in a day,” she says.

“You don’t see the same beautiful woman a hundred times,” he says, “without falling in love with her a little.”

“You don’t know the first thing about what I’m like,” she says.

“I know so much about you,” he says. He leans in over his noodles. “Why?”

“Why, what?”

“Why do I know?” His voice is melodic, a song he doesn’t know he’s singing. Tiff is drawn to it, literally. Steam tickles her chin. “Have we ever spoken?”

“Only in my imagination,” Tiff says.

“On your tooth,” says the stranger, “the second molar from the back, on the bottom left, you have an extra cusp.”

Tiff shivers. This time, she can’t say anything.

“You don’t style your hair, either,” he continues. “It falls like that naturally.”

“How do you know that?” she asks.

“I keep dreaming about you,” he says. “They aren’t good dreams.”

“I die,” she says. It isn’t a question.

He looks at her.

“My dreams are bad, too,” she says. “I die. I jump. I pull the trigger. I let go of the handlebars.”

“Trinity,” he says.

She takes no heed. “They’re bad,” she says, “because every time, before I can die, before I can be free, I wake up.”

“You want to fly away,” he says.

Tiff closes her eyes. “God,” she says. She imagines it. Vanishing, leaving behind her life, letting everything fade away. 

Exhilarating.

Her eyes open.

She’s back at her table. The stranger isn’t there. Her noodles have gone cold. She feels pins and needles.

A seizure.

She can’t move. She wishes she were dead. More than ever, she wishes she were dead.

There are eyes on her. She glances over. The woman with the red glasses. Her smile is gone. Nobody else is in the shop.

Tiff leaves.

Her emotions must be frozen-over, supercritical, under outrageous pressure. She’s always had a tight cap on them. She feels so much that she feels nothing.

Somebody bumps her from behind. She feels a hand on her backside.

“Sorry, hon,” she hears. A man passes her, tall, burly, clad in a button-down and slacks. As he passes, the hand slides off her.

She grabs it.

He stops and turns. He opens his mouth to question her.

She punches him in the throat.

He doubles over, and she yanks his wrist forward and drives her knee into his diaphragm. His face drops into reach. She hits it, then hits it again, then hits it again, and again, and again, and again, and–

Somebody’s dragging her away, and she moves to headbutt them. She needs to get her hands on him. Not just him– anyone. She needs to beat someone until her knuckles tear open– no, until her phalanges break. She needs to cover her skin in blood until it’s so slick that her fists simply glance off. She thrashes, and the grip on her loosens, and she falls–

…

She doesn’t remember much in between that and opening her eyes, dizzily, to a dim room that isn’t hers. Her hand is stiff– wrapped. Her head is killing her.

Her phone is ringing on the table next to her. She reaches over for it.

“Wait, wait, wait!” says the nurse, whom Tiff hadn’t noticed. Ah. She’s back in the hospital. “You took a pretty nasty fall on that wrist. You’re not gonna want to use it.” He picks up the phone and places it in her other hand. “Here.”

Pins and needles. She looks up at the nurse. “I remember you,” she says

He grins. “Hi again.”

“What did I do this time?” she said.

“You–”

“Am I going to jail?”

“Whoa!” His eyes go wide. They look huge behind his thick glasses. “No, it’s nothing like that. The eyewitness report is that you had a seizure.”

She remembers that. “Absence?” she says.

“Nope, the whole shebang. Tonic-clonic.” He shrugs. “Hit your head pretty good on the way down, too. I figure the nasty thing you thought happened is just your brain trying to fill in the gaps.”

“So I didn’t beat that guy senseless?” she says, silently lamenting.

“You sound like you wanted to,” he says.

Does he have to sound so condescending? “Thought he touched me.”

“Ah.” He clears his throat, reading off the clipboard he’s holding. “Anyway, we do have it on record that you have a history of seizures, although they’ve never been tonic-clonic, and never of this scale. So, given this new development, Dr. Angela has recommended you start taking an anti-seizure medication. I have the prescription here.” He hands it over. “You’re a biker, if I remember right?”

“Yes,” she says. “I’m not going to stop.”

“You could kill someone,” he says bluntly. “If you ride without a safeguard against these seizures, you could get hurt, you could kill yourself, or you could hurt and kill someone else. So, it’s the medication or giving up driving altogether.”

“You’re a nurse,” she grouses. “What do you know?”

“Doctor’s orders,” he says. “Sorry.”

“Give me the meds.”

It isn’t long before he’s placed a Styrofoam cup of water and two pills on the table next to her. “The blue one is the medication. The white one is just Tylenol. I figured you had a headache, so, you know.”

She takes both in her hand and swallows them. “Where’s my family?” she asks. “Where’s my husband?”

“They’ve been notified,” the nurse says. “Don’t worry. Get some rest, okay?” He holds her free hand. His is soft, smooth. Cool.

She wants to cry.

She falls asleep instead.