there's a danger in loving somebody too much
and its sad when you know it's your heart you can't trust
When he was gone to his watch and she had none, she took the black box from its resting place. Not a "hiding place", because he hadn't been secretive when putting it away that first morning after his return. She knew him, to the last circuit, and he'd simply put it in an unobtrusive place. Safe, easily located, and nowhere it could torment her by constant visible presence. But she knew it was there. And she knew what it was, and what it could do. That her interpretation was worlds away from his was apparent in only a logical sense. What it meant to his analogous self still was lost to her understanding.
So small, lovely in its way. She fully understood the life's effort that went into its creation, the why and wherefore and what it had meant then and now, to all involved, but only to a point. It meant so much to so many people, and most of all to him.
And she hated it almost as much as she feared it.
Every sure thing that had come to her with him, every absence of doubt and jealousy and human frailty (and mortality) that had kept her safe enough to love him without fearing his loss… all of it was challenged by this tiny distillation of brilliance wedded to technology that even now reflected its power in the sparkling circuits created so far beyond her grasp. She'd become a creature of knowledge here, where before she'd been a creature of belief. Too much was still beyond her simply to believe in it all up-front, so she depended upon knowledge provided by experience to approximate belief in her new world. She knew him, she knew his intentions and his beliefs here and now, but she didn't believe they were strong enough to withstand what this new opportunity to choose might unleash.
She closed the box and put it back where he had left it. Love was uncertain, but what they had now was not. She knew that the hardwired certainty of his devotion to her was a function of his immunity from the capricious emotions that now could be installed with the ease of a flashlight battery. All of the countless times he'd told her "I would love no other", she was as warmed by their absolute certainty as the words themselves. Since meeting him she'd discovered that, for her, certainty was a far more powerful lure than the prospect of his love.
It left her weighing a choice she'd always thought herself incapable of making. Somewhere in the deepest part of herself she knew she needed him more than she needed him to love her, even more than his being fulfilled in his life. She wasn't at all sure that if push came to shove she wouldn't sink to a depth she condemned in others. Alone now with no other to judge her, she knew in the end she could beam that chip into space without a second thought and lie most convincingly.
What lay in the little black box didn't represent emotion, it represented the uncertainty of his power to choose. In all they'd been through so far that was a danger she'd never had to consider. But with the power to choose removed, he could love no other.
Jenna D'Sora was right. They weren't so different, were they?