Deus ex Machina

by K Alexander

  "Loud and clear." Turner clears his throat again. "That all?"

  "Yes." The man reaches up and straightens his tie. "Send my regards to the Senator."

  Conclusion

  Exhausted, Claire lets a slightly limping Ryan lead her into the bedroom and settle her on the double bed. "Your leg okay?"

  "I'm fine." Ryan quirks an eyebrow at the blonde's expression. "Seriously. You look worse."

  "Luckily I don't look half as bad as I feel." Smiling slightly Claire leans back on her arms, watching as Ryan slips off her shoes and puts them to one side before she lifts the blonde's legs onto the bed, gently forcing her onto her back.

  "You need some sleep, Walsch."

  Ryan is about to turn and go when Claire's hand wraps around hers. The doctor's blue eyes beckon her back. "Ryan, can you sit down here with me for a moment?"

  "Sure." She perches on the edge of the bed carefully, her eyes shrouded. "What's up?"

  "What's going to happen next?"

  "With Turner?"

  "With us."

  "Us." Ryan looks at Claire steadily. "I didn't realize there was an 'us' yet, Claire."

  Raising an eyebrow the blonde cocks her head. "Well, there you are, and here I am, and together we're an 'us'." There's a shadow of an ache in her eyes. "I thought you didn't play games, Ryan."

  The soldier tears her gaze away to stare at the door blindly. "I don't. But I also don't make promises I can't keep. That could hurt."

  Withdrawing her hand quietly Claire shakes her head. "This is awfully close to hurting already, Ryan. I'm usually pretty good at reading people. Was I wrong with you? Can you tell me that you don't care?"

  "We've just gotten back from the hospital, Claire." Ryan stands up and stretches her neck. "Can we discuss this at another time?"

  The blonde stands her ground. "Was it lust? Was that all it was?"

  With a sharp breath Ryan turns around and the fire in her eyes burns right through Claire. "I don't know, Claire. I don't know. I've never had anything more!"

  "And you don't even want to stay to find out?" A slightly skew smile flickers over Claire's features. "Do you think you've changed at all?"

  "If you have to ask me that then obviously I may not have!" Ryan snaps before she drops her head and rubs her temple. "What do you want from me? I told you once that I couldn't offer you anything, Claire."

  The only sign of the blonde's distress is the slight quickening of her blinking lashes. Pushing herself up, she stares into the other woman's eyes evenly. "I want to know whether you're going to be around when I wake up, Ryan. It's an easy out."

  The soldier meets her gaze for a long moment, her face blank, before she turns away. "No, I don't think I will be." Her bearing is as straight and proud as always. "I'm sorry, Claire. I don't think I can be what you want me to be."

  "Okay." The sound of the blonde swallowing painfully almost drives the soldier to her knees, to turn around and take the woman in her arms. Clenching her hands into fists she forces herself to stand still. When Claire speaks next her voice is throaty and on the verge of tearful. "It's not the answer that I wanted, but if I ask I suppose I do have to be contented with the truth. Can't change that. You really don't lie, do you?" She shifts, pulling the cover up over her body. "I can't have you this close and not have any of you after this. I'm going to go to sleep, Ryan. When I wake up you either need to be all here, or you need to be all gone. Okay?"

  "Okay." It's a whisper.

  "Okay." Claire swallows. "Thank you for everything, soldier. There are parts I regret - but parts that I never ever will. Take care of yourself. Tell your cousin I'm sorry." She turns around, in part to shield her teary eyes, and wraps her arms around the pillow under her aching head with an abrupt finality.

  With one last glance at the blonde head Ryan turns and walks out. In the living room she stops and stares out sightlessly through the open sliding door for a long time before she approaches.

  "Shouldn't you be in bed too?"

  "I can't sleep."

  "I didn't realize that you smoked."

  Andy takes a deep drag and exhales slowly, the pleasure only marginally spoiled by the ache of her face. "I quit a few times already, and very successfully, may I add - but if any time's a good one to start again, it's now."

  "Those things'll kill you."

  "So will everybody else, apparently." Andy draws on the cigarette again, wincing at the pain in her lip and cheek. "So. You walking out on my sister?"

  Ryan casts a wry sideways glance at her before she walks up to the railing and drapes her forearms over it. "Yeah."

  "Don't be a bastard."

  The comment is so casual that it pushes a slight cheerless chuckle from Ryan's throat. Turning around she leans against the rail, her long legs stretched forward a little as she looks at Andy. "I'm trying not to hurt her any more than I already have, Andy. As her sister you should be able to understand - and welcome - that."

  The blonde puffs a wobbly smoke ring into the air and then rolls her eyes dramatically. "As far as I remember you were the one saving all of us, Ryan, flying into windows like friggin' batman. If it weren't for you things could have been much worse."

  "If it weren't for me you wouldn't have been there at all."

  "And yet there we were!" Andy flicks the cigarette sharply over the railing and gets up angrily. "It happened, Ryan - you can't take it back, no matter how much you may want to. But if it weren't for you, Claire wouldn't ever have met you, and now you want to take away the one positive thing she found in all of this? What kind of fucked up logic is that?!"

  "I'm going to hurt her." It's so soft that Andy almost can't hear her. Ryan stares down at her feet. "You think that it all stops with the end of Turner, Andy, but it doesn't. Not for me." She glances over. "You won't understand."

  "No, I really won't if you don't even bother trying to tell me!"

  The soldier sighs. "When I was chasing Turner these last few months, tracking him down and setting him up for the fall, it was the sole focus point of my life, Andy. I was fighting a battle to survive. I thought that once I'd taken him down things would be resolved miraculously. That suddenly my entire history would prove to be hinged on this, that I could sit back and say 'let's start again, this wasn't my fault'. But my life has always been like this, Andy. People told Claire that - they told her that I was wild, that I was bad, and other things beyond that. She chooses to see the good in me, but that element is a bigger part of me. I want to be different. I want these last few months to have changed me into something better than I was before … but wanting is no guarantee. Deep inside I'm not worth it to her. With or without Dex I still am somebody who did what I did. It's written in my history and that's something I can't erase. For the want of a better cliché," Ryan grins miserably, "she makes me want to be a better woman - but I don't think I have that in me. I don't want to hang your sister's hopes on a maybe, Andy. I've been strong enough to save her from everything but me, and I don't want to fail her at the last turn. She deserves so much better."

  "Yes, she does." Extending a hand Andy wraps it around Ryan's face and twists it upwards, a little startled to see tears in the bright green eyes. "For everything Claire's been through in her life she deserves exactly what she wants, and that happens to be you." When the soldier opens her mouth to speak Andy shakes her head. "Listen to me. And I mean really listen." Her blue eyes are fierce. "This is just how it is. Your life is a river, Ryan, and you are the leaf that drifts down it towards whatever may be coming your way. In front of you may be waterfalls, or rocks, or the most peaceful waters you've ever seen, but you'll not know until you get there. Behind you is the wake you're leaving in the water. It is attached to you, a history of your passage through, and yet, brilliantly, it's not what propels you forward. It has absolutely no relevance to where you are drifting right now, beyond a transient memory of your past, a reminder of where you drifted previously to reach the here. What you were once, Ryan, is not the driving force beh
ind what you are now. Assigning blame for your weaknesses to your past is a means followed by people who can't take responsibility for the present, and somehow I can't see you as somebody like that. You know who you are at this very moment, Ryan. You're someone strong and solid and devoted, being loved by someone wonderful who wants you for you. Take that with both hands. Don't keep glancing back."

  The soldier looks at her helplessly, her eyes filled with unshed tears. "How do I do that? How do I know that I won't fall back?"

  Andy grasps both of her hands and presses them gently. "You do that by keeping something extraordinary ahead of you that you can keep your gaze fixed on."

  Lifting her hand to wipe at the tear spilling down her cheek Ryan half-chuckles at the realization that she's using Andy's fingers, before she speaks again. "Do you really think I can do that, Andy?"

  The blonde leans forward and pulls the soldier into a tight embrace. "I've seen you do a lot more, batman. I think you can do absolutely anything you set your mind to."

  Ryan rests her forehead on the shorter woman's shoulder in an awkward stance and just breathes, letting the unknown and the fear wash over her until the clamoring in her head dies down. Then, straightening up, she presses her cheek to Andy's in an uncommon expression of affection. "I hope to have you in my life."

  The blonde's skin shifts against hers in a grin. "I'm immune to your charms, Captain Ryan. Or so I'll keep telling myself." Stepping back out of Ryan's arms she nudges her lightly with one hand. "You know what you have to do."

  A nod. "Yes." Ryan turns away and then freezes before she turns back to lock silently curious eyes on Andy. "You called her Sophia … before I said her name."

  There is a moment when Andy looks as if she is going to deny it before she cocks her head, her blue eyes cautious. The soldier raises a dark eyebrow.

  "Care to explain?" The slightest glimmer of amusement plays at the edge of her features. "Don't leave out the co-incidence of arriving at just the right time. Sounds like a good part."

  Straightening up Andy takes another cigarette out of the box and slips it between her slightly swollen lips. Taking a deep drag she winces slightly before she exhales. There's a slight smile on her face.

  "I'm sure that if you think back a little you'll realize that you're mistaken, Captain Ryan."

  Ryan nods slowly. "Now that you mention it I'm sure I will."

  They share one last look of unspoken complicity before the soldier turns away.

  Returning to the bedroom Ryan just looks at the figure in the bed, back turned towards her, the blonde hair she knows from experience to be so silky and the neck's she's seen bent in such an intimate arch, before she steps closer.

  "Claire?"

  The blonde turns around, a painful flash of hope surging through her blue eyes before she manages to shutter them. "I thought you were gone already."

  "So did I." The soldier meets her gaze and for the first time Ryan's face is naked and raw. "I have to tell you something. I told you that I would never lie, but I realize now that I have."

  Claire's eyes close in sadness. "Don't."

  "I lied when I told myself I could walk away from you, Claire. I lied when I told myself I was doing it for you. I lied when I assured myself I'd make it intact." Ryan studies the blue eyes opening in surprise, the red rings around them, the cut over the eyebrow and the gash bisecting the bottom lip, and her own mouth spreads into a melancholy smile. "The demons inside didn't come from some chip, Claire, they came from me. All this time I thought I was fighting some injustice, to save the world, and what I was actually doing was just trying to save my sanity. All this time I thought the worst hurt could be the bullet in my shoulder, the glass in my hands, the pain in my head, and it turned out to be the fight against letting go of my darkness. If I could have held onto that chip I could explain away my whole history. I could say this is what I am, and this is what you get, and this is the way it will be."

  The soldier shakes her head.

  "But if I hold onto that excuse as tightly as I need to, I don't have a hand left to hold onto you."

  Claire's fingers twist in the cover restlessly. "Which are you going to let go?"

  "Well," Ryan cocks her head, "I figure that if you still want to, I'd like to let you be the force that pulls me forward instead of having the old demons push me. The view would sure be better." A self-deprecating grin flits over her face. "Not the most romantic bid ever. I'm sorry."

  Sitting up the blonde swings her legs off the bed and looks up at the lean woman, standing so uncertainly before her. "Have you ever heard the Chinese saying 'If you've saved someone's life, you're responsible for them forever'? Well, when those soldiers were shooting at us from above and you stepped in front of me and shielded me, Ryan, that's when this stopped being your choice."

  Smiling a little, Ryan shakes her head. "You think I saved you, but you're wrong. It's the other way around. When I asked you to stop reaching out to me… and you didn't. When all the signs pointed to crazy and you wouldn't let go. You saved me, Claire."

  Raising an eyebrow Claire purses her lips. "So I suppose this means, for all intents and purposes, that we'll have to be responsible for each other for a very long time. Hmmm. Okay. Can you shut up and kiss me now? Would that be fine?"

  Leah Ryan's face radiates into a complete, sparkling, whole-hearted smile as she opens her arms. "More than just fine, Walsch. It would be a start."

  FIN