Mind, Body, and Spirit

Finding Her Place

So I recently bought and played through both Heavy Rain and Beyond Two Souls and enjoyed both games immensely though I thought both games had underwhelming endings. Maybe I'll post something Heavy Rain related in the near future but for now this is what I got. Unpopular opinion that I liked Beyond more than Heavy Rain anyways. I personally never liked Ryan in the game and found Jodie's sudden attraction to him in the dinner chapter very out of place and strange. And his constant barrage of suggestions about a possible future together even after I had Jodie tell him no was very grating. This is my interpretation of that as well as the epilogue and I hope there's still someone out there to read it. I was listening to Scars by Papa Roach while writing this.

They had done it, escaped from certain death and destroyed the condenser relatively unscathed, and Jodie had never been so happy to see miles and miles of ice in her life. They weren't out of the woods yet, they still needed to make it out of hostile territory and back to the States, but in that moment the hard part in gaining her freedom from CIA control was over and Jodie couldn't help the victory dance that went on in her head. Aiden had been happy too, his ingenuity had been vital to their escape, and the positive energy radiating off of him had only added to her euphoria. At least she had been feeling euphoric until the words "I love you" were out of Ryan's mouth and he was looking at her like he was expecting her to say something.

There had been a time where she had thought that she did, before Somalia, before he lied to her, and she said as much after further verbal prompts from the man next to her. She didn't really give it much thought in the aftermath, she was constantly on the run with bigger concerns to worry about. In that moment, thinking back on everything they had been through both good and bad it became obvious to her that no she didn't love him and she again told him as much. He looked like a lost puppy at that revelation and called her bullheaded which she hadn't been sure whether to take as a compliment or an insult in the context but didn't press further.

The conversation dropped and she assumed that that was the end of it until he sprang a continuation of it on her following their debriefing with the CIA. The generals were only interested in the Infraworld as a military resource, perhaps even another world to conquer, and his declaration that he thought they could give it a try on the outside struck her as coming from left field. She kept her calm as much as she could and replied tersely that she could never trust him again and that same sad puppy look returned to his face. Luckily she was saved from further conversation by Cole and his offer to share a drink with the other man. Bidding a farewell to the man she proceeded to follow Cole up to Nathan's office to see what he wanted her for.

Ryan proved his heroic credentials in the end by assisting Cole in helping her escape from CIA custody and again by sacrificing his own safety and giving her his mobile generator in order to assure her success in reaching the control panel. They both survived the carnage that followed and she was too sapped of energy after everything to tell him that his apparent renewed interest in them being together, evidenced by the way he held on to her in the aftermath, was again not returned. It had been good to have someone close after everything she had lost even if it was Ryan Clayton.

She spent a long time alone in a cabin after that slowly losing all of her memories, writing said memories down for the record, and then relearning everything that she had lost that he again didn't come to her mind for a long time. After she decided to rejoin society though she knew that she needed to make her feelings on the matter clear to him one final time. They met in a park and she proceeded to tell him that she saw no future for him and her together. She told him that she had moved on from whatever it was that they had had for that short time and that he should too. He would make someone else happy and she didn't want his idealized version of their relationship to stand in the way of that. He told her that he understood and walked away looking only slightly wounded.

In the end it had come down to a question of words or actions. His words told her again and again how much he cared about her and valued her as a person. His actions on the other hand, excluding those heroic moments in the heat of crisis, had shown her again and again that he hadn't escaped the view of her as a tool that the CIA had put in his head at the very beginning. He had been the one to tear her away from Nathan and Cole, the only real family she had ever had up to that point, under orders from his superiors. He had then sent her to kill an innocent man under the pretense of lies even after they had gotten much closer under similar orders.

They had had something despite Aiden's successful attempt to ruin their first date. She wasn't sure if she would call it love, but it had been something more than friendship, but they had barely spoken after the Somalia incident and she still wasn't sure if his prompts and statements during that time hadn't just been efforts to get her to reveal her location to his CIA superiors who were listening in. Whatever he thought he had no right to spring the words "I love you" on her in the wake of that condenser operation and expect her to say anything other than what she said back let alone do it two more times. He was delusional to think that she would just sweep everything that he had done to her under the rug and come running into his arms.

Throughout her life so many choices about what she could and couldn't do were decided for her by her adoptive parents, Nathan and his scientists, Aiden, and the CIA that she was done doing what someone else thought was best for her. Ryan thought that he was the only one who could understand what she had gone through, but he was wrong. He knew the person that she was before Somalia, perhaps even thought she was still the same person, but she wasn't and he didn't understand a thing about who she was now. The group of former homeless was the obvious place for her to go, it had been with them that she had felt the most at home. They met her with open arms and happy faces and she immediately felt more at ease.

Her place was not with Ryan Clayton despite his wishes, her place was with them and Zoey in particular. The condenser in the CIA's hands had been shut down for the time being, but a future that she had already seen in a vision was on its way and Zoey was its only hope now that she herself was disconnected from Aiden and his power. She wasn't sure if what Zoey had was the same as her connection to Aiden or something else entirely, but it was something that needed to be fostered to serve the forces of good before the forces of evil in the world got a whiff of it. She had done her part in actively saving the world and her role now was preparing the next hero for her destiny. It was a daunting task.

Ryan Clayton never reentered her life again. She supposed that that was what was best for both of them. He was a charming man who would have had no trouble finding someone else to give his love to. Without the CIA and its orders to drag him down he probably lived a peaceful life until the major threat from the Infraworld presented itself. He had thought that her place was with him and tried again and again to make her see it that way, but she had known even at his first love declaration that her place was on a hill overlooking a besieged city with a very special young girl at her side.