(Set at the end of "It Doesn't Have to be Like This". Two waits by Five's bedside to see what memories she will have lost and what she will still remember when she wakes.)
I sit and wait and remember. The last is rather funny I suppose because the whole reason that I am waiting for Five to wake up is to see if the program has successfully isolated and blocked her memories of the time before we all awoke from stasis. Too many because she not only carries her own but those of all five of the rest of the crew, including mine. They've been helpful, it was reliving one of Ryo's memories that led us to the research station but now she's drowning in them. Unless they're removed she'll fall into a dream state in them and never come out.
That can't happen. I've never prayed in my life. I have no idea how or to whom I could even direct a prayer. But if there IS someone or something listening out there I hope that they can see what a special person is laying here and help her. She once told me "I want you back" and now I want her back just as much.
The android says there's a possibility that she will lose all of her memories but she will do her best to save the ones from after we woke from stasis. I hope so. But faced with losing her for good and her not remembering me at all I pray for the latter. I would still have her and what developed between us once could happen again. I will still have those memories to share with her.
I remember sitting by her before, when we lost gravity escaping from that first attacker and she bumped her head. Me and Six that is. I can't help but smile. He dotes on her almost as much as I do, although in a different way. He definitely feels like her big brother; that she's someone to protect. I just reminded him while we were in the Marauder that she can take care of herself, not to make her a damsel in distress. She's so much more than that. She's tough when she needs to be. Just ask Chief Inspector Shaddick of the Galactic Authority. Oops, I forgot. You can't unless you can talk to the dead.
Funny, that one of the few memories of us before that she shared revealed that I voted against her becoming part of the crew. I do think it was reasonable at the time anyway. What we did back then was nothing that a child should be involved in and that was how I thought of her. I'm glad I lost that vote.
It seems like she began to recognize there was something special between us first. When I had been bitten by one of the infected space crew of that ship and was waiting to die behind the force field it was Five that was the most upset. Even more so than me I think. Her plaintive "I don't want you to die" was more desperate than my "I don't want to either."
But it was when we had our set-to with Wexler and his team that things began to get revealed for both of us. I had just, surprising everyone including myself, made it back into the ship after being blown out of the airlock. Vons didn't seem to have had the same luck it seemed after I disconnected his mag boots and tore his air line loose. Creeping down one of the corridors I saw Tash screaming at Five and then slap her, knocking her to the floor. The anger that welled up inside of me fired me as I hurled myself at her.
When that fight was over I just stood for a moment looking at Five. When she threw herself into my arms I wrapped her up and held her. It couldn't last, we were under the gun and time wasn't there but oh it felt so good. And I even surprised myself (again, what a day for surprises!) by touching her hair. It was just a moment, all we had but it stirred something in me I never could have imagined.
As for her being a damsel in distress, she showed how wrong that was when Cain had the drop on me and he was gloating about seeing if I could survive a bullet between the eyes. I didn't have to find out as Five shot him. Shot him until he fell down and was dead all the while keeping herself as much under cover as I could. Then she stood side-by-side with me as we confronted Wexler.
When Alexander Rook captured me Five completely lost her temper with the rest of the crew for leaving me. And the only way that Six was able to convince her to stay on board was to tell her, and it was the truth, that it's what I would have wanted. When they returned with me she was waiting at the airlock to rush into my arms. She had been frantic; as frantic as I was when I found out she was missing from that space station. Those guys are lucky Three found them first. He just killed them.
When the neural link had me revert to my pre-stasis personality she didn't give up on me. She even told me she understood why I acted like I did; that is as an asshole out for me and me only. "No one ever showed anything but the worst we had to offer. They made you this way." This after she had looked at the metal bar she had been using as a weapon like it was something she couldn't believe was in her hand.
So many memories. If she loses all hers I have enough for both of us. Then she's stirring and I hold my breath.
She opens her eyes and she smiles at me. My heart leaps for somehow, even before she speaks I instantly know that her memories of what we have shared together, what we mean to each other, are intact. I haven't lost her.
I may have been built as the android once said to me. So maybe I'm not completely human and I didn't give birth to her. But I can love and what this teen and I share is a love that never in my wildest imagination thought I would ever have. I almost can't believe it even when she whispers a little three letter word that makes me want to start crying. Me crying. Absurd. But I want to and they will be tears of joy. For she's back and we know what we are to each other.
Amazing. And thank you for whoever listened to me. For now I don't have just a friend anymore. I have a daughter.
Who would have believed it?
(The End)
(Note: A special shout out to FiresofAnarchy whose story "Ship in a Bottle" (what a marvelous title with more than one meaning) Chapter 14 showed me I wasn't the only one who saw Two and Five as mother and daughter. And now I can FINALLY go read that story because I didn't dare until I finished and posted this one.)