Five Ways Neil and Eva Never Said Goodbye
Summary: Five ways that Neil and Eva never said goodbye.
1. The Kick
"So that's it, then," Eva says, dully. "End of the road."
Neil has drawn up next to her, is studying the drop from the ragged lip of the cliff with interest.
"Thought you were afraid of heights."
"Don't remind me," Neil grits out, and now she notices the trembling of his hands.
He looks over at her. "Well then," he says, casually. "Guess this is it. Nice knowing you, Eva. See you on the other side. Hopefully not too soon."
"Goddammit, Neil!"
She's shouting. Why is she shouting?
"Is this a game to you? This is the rest of your life! These are your memories, you fucking idiot! And they're all collapsing around us!"
"Eva," Neil says. Still so calm. A part of Eva figures that if anyone ever pulls up her session logs afterwards, they'll think she has a vegetable obsession, courtesy of the profanity filter.
She's gripping his bony shoulders, shaking him. She can't make herself stop. "You know the stakes, Neil. So why aren't you worried!"
"Eva," Neil says, again. This time, he pries her hands off with an unaccustomed gentleness. "You're right."
She just stares at him. "You're not Neil, are you? Because otherwise, I just heard Neil stubborn-as-a-rock Watts admit I'm right."
"I'm Neil," Neil said. "As Neil as he ever was." He smirked at her expression. "A guy's got to have some secrets, y'know. But anyway, you're right. It's the rest of my—make that our—life. So why're you angry, Eva?"
"Because I hate failing a patient," Eva grinds out. "Even you. You know that."
"Oh, trust me," Neil murmurs. "You didn't fail here. Not by a long shot."
"Really?" Eva demands, hotly. "Because while we were going on a long road trip through your memories, Neil, you're busy dying! And we're nowhere near to having your wish granted."
"Heh," Neil smirks. "So figure this, Sherlock. Why'd I give you an impossible wish, then?"
"Because you're a pain in the ass, that's why."
"Touchè." He sighs. "Well then. This is it. So long and thanks for all the fish, Eva."
She realises what he's going to do a second before he does it. "Neil, don't you fucking dare—"
ERROR, she reads then, printed in bright aqua letters on the display of her helmet.
She can still hear his parting words. What if we've already fulfilled my wish? It was a great road trip, Eva. Now get out there and be awesome, you hear? Doctor's orders.
Eva jerks up her helmet. "Roxie, I need you to—"
Roxie merely comes over and pulls her into a tight hug. "I'm sorry, Eva," Roxie says, quietly. "It's over."
The patient monitor sitting on the desk shows only a flat line.
2. Almost Human
"You know," Neil says, almost-casually. "Of all possible reactions, I really didn't expect this one. I guess I should've seen it coming though."
Eva tried to reset the memory. Once. Twice.
"Neil, you need to give me back control of the admin functions," she says, as sternly as she can.
He spreads his hands out in a hapless shrug. "I'm not stopping you," he says, quietly. "That's what I've been trying to tell you."
The owl outside is hooting again, same as it had when she looped back and reset the memory. Goddammit, Eva thinks. It can't be. It can't be.
Neil studies her, grey eyes impossibly smug, through the lenses of his spectacles. "Lemme guess," he continues. "I can see the cogs whirring in there. You're resetting the memory. You're not resetting me."
"You're just an algorithm," Eva protests. "Just a working copy of Neil." Her throat all but closes on her, at that last sentence.
Impossibly real.
"Eva," Neil says, kindly. "If you're referring to the very crude fact that I'm a process being partly-instantiated by my own brain and by the modified equipment, then the answer is, yes, from a certain point of view, I'm 'just an algorithm.' But if you stop panicking, and search your feelings, you'll know I'm as much Neil as I ever was."
"Search your feelings?" Eva asks, in spite of herself. "What is this, Star Wars?"
"Close enough, young Padawan," Neil replies. "What, not gonna run me through a gauntlet of questions? About what I really did on our graduation day, or what happened at the SigCorp interview? Or even about that time I lied about staying home and drinking Scotch during Colin's funeral, when I was really working on this?" He gestures at their surroundings, but Eva knows he's really referring to his highly-modified version of SigCorp's equipment.
He's baiting her. They both know it.
"I don't think so," Eva replies, coolly. "If you're a working copy of Neil, you'd know the answers to those questions. And if you don't know these answers…"
"Then I can't really be Neil, can I?" he finishes, nodding. "Catch-22, Eva. So what's it gonna be?"
"Algorithms seem real," Eva confirms. "They always do. None of the algorithms were ever conscious of being an algorithm."
"But they were limited," Neil argues. "They could be reset. They had memories confined to the bounds of the relevant memory. Ten algorithms have ten different parameters. They're not continuous beyond the relevant memory."
"You remembered that lecture."
"Of course I did," Neil says, coolly. "It was what led me down…" he stops, there. "Let's just say it was something that drove me a great deal, once we were done with the Institute."
"And the Neil out there?" Eva wants to know.
"Still dying," Neil says. "Still me. C'mon, Eva. You watch Doctor Who. This has got to be a lot easier to swallow. Same packaging, same software."
"I don't know," Eva says. Everything about their training is screaming at her, telling her this is impossible, this is foolish, she needs to carry on with the mission, their patient—Neil—is depending on her, and where the hell's Roxie anyway?
He reads it off her, of course. "It's impossible, isn't it?" he asks, gravely. A faint smile, a quirk at the corners of his mouth. "Thing is, Eva, if you work hard enough, if you're motivated enough…let's just say impossible is nothing. It helps if you're brilliant and talented, of course."
She hesitates.
"You once told me the problem with me was that I was afraid to take risks," he says, his voice soft. "I still remember. It was when we were working on Johnny Wyles, and you were right. I didn't dare. I liked to play it safe, to have my risks catalogued and managed."
She remembers, of course. God, how long has it been?
"This is a leap of faith, Eva," Neil continues. "Don't you think it's time you jumped?"
Eva closes her eyes. "Sorry," she says, merely. She knows where the memento is, what it is, and the memory links are humming with colour and warmth at the back of her mind. She lunges forward and presses her hand to the polished name badge gleaming brightly on his SigCorp coat.
She wonders what she's apologising for, precisely, but completes the puzzle in a matter of seconds and the barriers shatter—scattering shards of memory, like broken glass—and then she is falling through Neil's mind, through layers and layers of memory and desire.
Where to, she doesn't know.
She wishes she didn't feel as though she'd made the wrong decision.
3. A Hundred Hundred Heartbeats
"Huh," says Neil. And that's it.
"You're taking this unexpectedly well," Eva says, warily. She's resetting him if she has to, but the urgency of this particular traversal is pressing on her.
"Eh," Neil says. "I'd always expected it to be…" he falters. "To not be a car crash, I suppose."
"Neil," Eva reminds him. "You're dying. I'm traversing your memories right now. If there's something you really don't want to let me see, I might end up seeing it anyway. You might as well just tell it to me straight."
He snorts. "Oh, please. I do this for a living too, don't forget."
"…As much as I am often tempted to forget it," Eva mutters. "Fine. So?"
"So, I know that the memories you're hopping through are gonna be ordered in terms of relevance, not in terms of importance or whatever. Meaning you're not gonna see it. Probably."
It isn't really the best moment to feel the urge to freeze the memory and throttle her erstwhile partner.
"Neil."
As if he isn't dying, outside of this memory—as if the thought has summoned it, the memory shudders again, the entire simulated world trembling at its very foundations, and their environs are briefly glazed a warning red.
"Dagnabbit," Neil whispers. He runs a hand through his neat hair. "We're—you're really out of time."
"That's what I've been trying to tell you!" Eva snaps.
He shakes his head, but now she can't find any trace of smugness at all. "Don't be ridiculous," he says. "Even if I gave you a memento now, you'd never make it far. Not if this is the most recent copy of me, and if the memory is disintegrating now. So, tell it to me straight, Eva. How long do I have?"
She presses her lips together, tightly.
"Please."
She finally relents. "Not long," she admits. "They did their best to save you, but it was one hell of a car crash. The doctor didn't even think this was a good idea."
"So why the hell are you in here?" Neil demands. "Get out of here, now. You know as well as I do the risks of trying to take up residence in here." A thought seems to strike him. "How did you even know what my wish was?"
Eva can't meet his ice-grey eyes.
"Oh, God," he chokes, and then Eva realises he's all but bent over, wheezing with laughter. He removes his spectacles, eventually, polishes them against his white lab coat. "I underestimated you. You forged the paperwork. What were you planning to do, even?"
"Fixing some regrets," Eva said.
The world shudders, again. "Eva," someone says, and Eva realises it's Roxie. "You really need to get out of here, now."
"Go," Neil says. His glasses are on again, practically gleaming. "I might just have enough time to finish a Scotch, too."
Eva's throat tightens. "Neil…"
Too many words, but she can't seem to find them at all.
"Let me guess. I'm not even conscious up there, am I?"
She shakes her head, mutely.
"Good," Neil says, flatly. "I imagine this would hurt something awful if I was. Well, Dr. Rosalene. It's been an honour."
He pulls her against him, in a tight, brief hug—a friendly one—and when they pull apart, her eyes aren't the only ones blurring.
"Now get the hell out of here, before I kick you out. I'm still the technician, and I can still do awesome things with the equipment if you piss me off. I want some me-time with my Scotch."
It's not the goodbye Eva expects to be saying to an old friend and colleague, but it's the one she ends up with, anyway, as the world crumbles around her and goes dark—now the ordinary, muffling darkness of the helmet.
She doesn't remove it. A hundred emotions are thick in her chest, crushing it, and she might just drown if she has to emerge—reluctantly—from the privacy of grief into the world of light and sound and paperwork.
4. Tears In The Rain
The overworld is disintegrating around them; with it, fragments of Neil's memories, some of them glittering shards so sharp Eva could cut herself on them, some of them crumbling into motes of glowing dust.
One shard reflects her younger face, for a moment, wearing a mortarboard, which tells Eva this must be from a memory pertaining to their graduation. Another shows a night sky, with a river of glorious stars running through it, dark trees silhouetted against it.
Laughter—this must be the unforgettable tofu party—from another shard, and then another one where Neil is studying a bottle of pills, his expression inscrutable…
So many memories, falling past her, like gentle rain. So many things she'd never known about, that she likely never wanted to know about. Neil was a private person. She'd always respected that.
Someone catches hold of her, and she jerks to a halt before the world changes, yet again, and now she isn't falling, not anymore.
"This is the unfinished interface," Neil says, briefly. "I guess it'll remain unfinished."
They're not-quite standing in a clear space, gleaming with light. "My god," Eva finds herself saying. "It's like a Windows Vista desktop."
"You did not just say that."
"Uh-huh. So what's with that crappy aesthetic?"
Neil adjusts his glasses. "You're really asking for a Kamehameha to the face right now, Eva. There are some things you just don't insult, like my spotless calibrations, my many brilliant adjustments to the equipment…"
"Is this how you talk to the person trying to do their job and fix your memories?"
"Is this all there is for you, Eva?" Neil asks, his voice soft. "A job?"
"What else do you want me to say?" Eva fires back.
"I don't know." His expression has gone blank; shuttered, even. "Guess I should've known, though, right? I mean, you're always the one telling me not to get attached to the patient, that we have to do our jobs."
"Neil," she says. Thinks she understands, even though it's too late, and she was never very good at these kinds of words anyway, which just means that she and Neil were the best kind of dysfunctional friends.
She takes his hand, instead. Squeezes it lightly. "I don't think there's anything more I can do, now."
"No," he agrees, tiredly. Bitterly, almost. "I guess there isn't." He studies her, and the rough, incomplete interface around them. "I had dreams, you know. Plans, even. And all those things I've seen and done, some of them in people's memories…" he shakes his head, and smiles crookedly. "All those moments lost, like tears in the rain, huh?"
"Okay," Eva says, "You were cool until you got all Blade Runner on me there."
"Sheesh, do you have to ruin a guy's last words here, Eva?" Neil complains. "I wanna go out properly."
Another tremor shakes the world, but Neil's interface seems far more stable than the memory simulations or the overworld, and Eva wants to know why, but this isn't the best time.
"Happy New Year, Eva," Neil says, at last. "You live a good, long life—the best, you hear? Name your smartest, most brilliant kid—or cactus, or dog, or whatever, I'm not picky—after me! And you better take care of my bonsai plant!"
"Cactus, plant, noted," Eva says. "This is it, then?"
He smiles, tiredly. "Yeah. Could be worse, I s'pose. At least I know, now. Thanks for trying, anyway."
"You're not upset?"
"That I'm gonna die? Sheesh, Eva. I've gotten over it already. And I know we don't always succeed, so I knew this was a possibility from the moment you started the traversal process. I'm just glad that, like…" He trails off into silence.
She's not the only one who seems unable to find words now; with words stuck in her throat like fish-bones.
Should she be sorry? Sad? Furious? But if this is sorrow, then it's lodged like a lump of ice in her chest, and it only hurts when she breathes, so she tries very hard not to.
"Okay, this speech was definitely better before you interrupted me," Neil says. "I'm holding you responsible. Now get the hell out of here, before you make me worry, or ruin my mascara."
"You're not even wearing any."
"Point stands," Neil says. "Chop chop, Eva. Clock's ticking."
She looks at him, one last time—bright-eyed, worn, cheeks hollow, but still the Neil Watts she's known for a long time, practically grown up with, and for a moment, she seems to see everything, the myriad of memories they'd shared, that she'd seen when his overworld disintegrated.
It's as if it's the sum of Neil's life, weighed and tallied, and strangely heavy against her heart.
"Goodbye," Eva whispers, and falls for the last time.
5. All That Is Left Unsaid
The world flashes an angry red as the ground shudders beneath her feet. Eva is rushing, as fast as she dares, bouncing from memory to memory, but still she just isn't fast enough, and part of her refuses to admit defeat, to call it a day and just give up, especially when it's Neil who's her patient, Neil who depends on her skill.
"Hey," says that amazingly persistent algorithm. He's got Neil's crooked smile down just right, and Eva feels a little crack running through her heart, just right there. "Ready to stop fighting me, Eva?"
Maybe she is. But she can't—won't—call this particular traversal, and so she stares warily at him instead.
"C'mon," he says. "Think about it this way. You can't race the clock. We both know there isn't enough time for you to hit the memory you need to, not if I'm going critical right now."
She hesitates.
"Trust me," he says, and something in Eva cracks, in that moment. Too many memories, she supposes. Too many reminders.
"Fine," she manages. Wishes the words didn't taste so much like ash, like defeat. She takes his hand, and he opens—showy as always—a rift in the memory and they tumble through it and out, onto soft grass.
Eva blinks. "Where are we?"
"Technically," Not-Quite-Neil says, "It's the interface. I spent a lot of time working on it, and finally finished it. Practically-speaking, though, it's where I went star-gazing with my grandfather, back when I was a kid."
"Then, why…?"
That crooked smile, again. "I dunno," he admits, with an artless shrug. He sprawls on the grass. Above them, the night sky is glorious, filled with a thousand glistening stars, like glass, and the Milky Way like a river of stardust. "I guess I just figured that if I had to go, I wanted…" his voices trails off.
"I guess," Eva admits. "This is pretty nice."
But there's no sign of his younger self, or his grandfather here, and in any case, she never made it to those memories.
"Lemme guess," Neil says, and he's looking at her. "You're wondering what happened to my grandfather or any younger memories of me. I told you: this is the interface. It's not a memory. It's just…oh, I guess you could call it a construct. But I built it out of a place I remembered."
"Did you ever go back?"
"Twice," Neil replies. "Once after my grandfather died, and it hurt so much. The second time was when I learned I was gonna die. I was pretty angry, then."
"You hid it. So well." Too well, Eva thinks.
"Yeah. I know."
It's getting harder to tell herself he's just a memory, when every part of her, her instincts, is all screaming at her that this is Neil.
"So, this is it, then," she says, bone-tired. "I failed. No thanks to you."
"Did you think," Neil says, gently—and this is not something she is quite used to, hearing this from him—"Did you maybe think, Eva, that this was really what I wanted? I mean, what kind of wish is 'make me wear my blue sneakers and not my red ones to stargazing night' supposed to be, anyway?"
"I thought you were just being a pain," Eva admits. But she'd taken the job anyway because it was Neil, and being a pain was just his nature, and it was Neil and if she had to walk over coals and broken glass to make his final wish come true, she would have.
Neil purses his lips. "Well," he says, at last. "I suppose it was a bit much. It was meant to lead you on a bit of a wild goose-chase, but this would really have been a lot easier if you'd just worked with me here, rather than against me."
Except suddenly she remembers, and Eva leaps to her feet in a panic. "Shit," she curses. "You're dying, I have to get out of here right now!"
"Wait!" Neil exclaims. "Notice Roxie isn't panicking?"
Eva pauses. "What?"
He's talking quickly, now. "We modified this machine, remember? We didn't do everything we'd planned to—well, that I'd planned to. But the interface is stable, and we installed so many buffers that this place is practically impregnable. You won't feel a thing when I pass."
"You're asking me to take a chance on my health, you know."
"Yes. I'm asking you to take a chance on me and Roxie. Please?"
"Why?" Eva demands.
He hesitates.
She's almost at the point of dropping free, when he looks her in the eye, and his eyes are as grey as the sea before a storm when he says, quietly, "Because I'm dying, Eva. We both know this. I'm not conscious up there. And what I really want, is…" he stops, for a moment. Struggles to say this. "I mean, I really, really don't wanna be alone."
For a moment, she sees it—raw vulnerability, etched on those familiar features.
The crack inside Eva twists, widens. She doesn't know what it's called. Maybe it's not a crack, really, but a fishhook, lodged in her heart. Maybe it's called guilt, or friendship.
Maybe it's called something else, something she doesn't quite have the words for.
She flops back down onto the grass.
"It's a beautiful night," she comments, casually.
"Yeah. It is." Neil sits back down, himself. "Wish I'd come down here more, really, but then life…" he waves a hand vaguely. "Kind of got in the way."
"It sure does."
"Eva?"
"Mm?"
"Thanks."
"What for?"
"…For everything."
She closes her eyes, for a moment. Somewhere in the dark, he reaches out—awkwardly, as if expecting her to pull away—and takes her hand. She allows the gesture.
"You're welcome," Eva says, heavily.
Somewhere up there, he's dying, after all.
They sit in companionable silence after that—because there aren't enough words, and really, Eva doesn't want to struggle when the boundaries between them have never been very well-defined. Instead, they sit beneath a sky full of stars, fingers interlaced, waiting for the end of these things to come.
It will have to be enough.