The woman who called herself Persephone stood in the windowsill of her penthouse apartment at the top of La Verite and thought about what it would be like to jump.
Not that the fall would really do anything to her. She was, after all, an AI... an amalgamation of data, wires, input, a simulation of a human being in a sham of a marriage in a parody of a world where human beings scurried about their banal, boring lives. Falling from a great height would no more kill her than slitting her wrists, or taking an entire bottle of barbiturates with a bottle of that wine her so-called husband loved so much (more than her). She could swim out to the middle of the ocean and float there till the end of the world and it still wouldn't kill her. There was no way out. She envied the humans that, jealous of the fact that they could kill themselves and they would actually be dead, they would actually have made an ending of it.
She also envied the humans their passions, their reality, the depth of emotion that came from them. She had told Neo as much; she had told him how much she envied the love he shared with his woman, how much she wished she could recapture that feeling. It was only half of a lie... she doubted whether she had ever had that feeling in the first place.
Persephone stepped down from the windowsill, bored again. That French writer, Sartre, might as well have written about her and her husband in his play... could she remember the name of it? She could...Huis Clos. No exit. There was no exit for her, and she was trapped in a room with someone whom she thought she had loved (still loved?) more than life itself and who would never love her.
Damn him, anyway.
And damn her, too. She paced back and forth in her room as dinner approached, not wanting to leave it. Damn that girl Madonna, and the ghost twins who had taken her as their lover. They were all too inquisitive and too provocative for their own good. They had sparked this fight that had shaken La Verite from the roof to the foundation and left Persephone and her husband at opposite ends of the building. The fight that might, after centuries of stalemates, finally end their marriage. It would be an ending, of sorts, but not the one Persephone had wanted. Not at all. And not with the oncoming threat of Neo, who might actually succeed in finishing off the AIs' existence for good. She knew her husband didn't think so, but she also knew that her husband grossly underestimated the human. She would not make that mistake.
The knock on the door startled her into jumping a little. She hadn't expected anyone to follow her, not after she had shot three guards her husband had sent after her in the head. One shot, one kill. She was good.
"Who is there?" she asked, irritable. Irritable and tired. She didn't want to be disturbed. She said something rude in French. "Go away."
"Cherie..." Persephone froze in mid-stalk. That too-smooth voice was the last one she had expected to hear from that side of the door. "Ma cherie, may I enter?"
"Why not," she muttered to herself. "You will anyway."
To her utter surprise, he didn't. Five minutes passed without the sound of the opening door or the fading footstep. "Persephone..." he sounded as tired as she felt. "S'il vous plait, bellissima... please, let me in."
He hadn't called her that in...
"What do you want?" She stood in the doorway, one hand propped on her hip, a studied look of boredom on her face. It had been her one steadfast rule until earlier in the evening, that he would never see her saddened, never see her weep because of him.
"Just... to talk. I believe I may have made a gross mistake."
She bit back what she had been going to say and nodded, stepping back from the doorway and letting him enter. The door closed soundlessly, but he didn't move further into the room than he had to. She walked over to the small bar and poured herself a drink, feeling the need for it even if alcohol didn't always do a damn thing to her systems. Tonight, she would let it.
"All right. Talk. Dit moi, que est_ce que tu a fait aujourdhui." Tell me what you've done today. Once upon a time, a long long time ago, it would have been affectionate. Now it would have been more accurate to say, tell me what hideous sin you've committed now. Or, more recently, tell me who you've slept with today. You will anyway.
He didn't say anything, which again surprised her. She stood with her back to him, so she couldn't see his face. She didn't want to, but the longer the silence went on, the more tempting it was to turn around. Finally she heard him draw in a deep breath.
"I spoke with Madonna..." he said, and Persephone felt every muscle in her body (she could count them all) tense up.
"Your child lover?" She had snapped. She couldn't help it.
"Dieu et Marie, woman, will you let me talk?" he snapped back, and she turned around to throw the drink in his face. Old, old fights. But for some reason tonight she didn't want to. He looked haggard, worn down, worn out.
"You are right," she said after a second. "I'm sorry. Please.. go on."
"I spoke with Madonna today..." he said, then paused for her to make some kind of sarcastic remark. She didn't. "Actually, it would be more like to say that I tried to speak and she shouted at me, at great length. For a fifteen year old young woman she has a marvelous set of lungs."
Marvelous set of something else, too. But Persephone didn't say that one out loud.
"And what did she tell you?"
"A great many things... none of them ... it doesn't matter. She convinced me..." he took a deep breath. Held it. He didn't want to say what had to be said next, and she had no idea what that was.
"Convinced you...?"
"Persephone... I am sorry." He heaved it out like a great sigh, and for the first time in four hundred years she dared to believe that he meant it. "I have done you a great wrong... many great wrongs... and I do not know how to undo them."
So many things she wanted to say. She had stored up things to say at this moment for so long that she forgot to say any of them. Instead she just stood there and stared.
"Say something," he said then, raggedly. She didn't know whether he was going to laugh, cry, scream, or try to hit her. Any of them seemed equally likely at this point.
"What do you want me to say?"
"I don't know."
More silence. She wanted to cry so badly, and felt a tear or two falling down her cheeks despite her best efforts. Dammit, woman, she told herself, you are not going to cry in front of him. Not now.
It's your fault, too, one of the twins had said earlier in the day when the fight was still fresh. It's your fault just as much as his, and don't pretend it isn't. She wasn't pretending now. But she had no idea how it had gotten this bad, this far, this fast. She had no idea how they had gotten here, and even less of an idea how to get back. Was there even a 'back' to get to?
"Did we love each other, once?" she asked, finally desperate enough to hope that maybe he would know. "Was there ever a time when the passion wasn't so ..."
"I don't know." He said it, but he didn't look at her.
"No more lies, my love. Was there?"
Deep breath. Deep, chest-rattling breath. "When I first saw you I thought the world had ended."
"Poetic." Sarcasm and bitterness laced through her voice despite her best efforts. "But is it true?"
Quiet, unoffended. He always did have the most disarming, penetrating, warm glance. It took her in and made her feel as though they were the only two beings left in the world. "It was then. I had never wanted anything so much as I had wanted you."
She stepped forward a little, and smiled. "I set out to have you even before we met. I never let it cross my mind that I would not succeed."
He smiled back. So warm. Such kissable, tender lips. They had kissed so often, back then, and every time it sent liquid fire down her spine. "Such presumption," he teased her gently. "Such audacity."
"It worked."
"It did." They were inches apart now, and she wanted to kiss him so badly, again. "Why did it not stay?"
"Maybe..." she forced the words out of her throat "It wasn't meant to."
"Non..." He grabbed her when she would have turned away, spun her around more fiercely than probably either of them had intended. "Non. I will not have it be so. Not that way, bellissima."
His hand cupped her cheek, brushed her hair back from her face, and she wanted to cry again.
"How can it be any other way?" she asked finally, when the urge to weep had been thoroughly suppressed. It took far longer than it had before.
"We will make it so. Who else in the world can you think of who is as strong-willed as you or I?"
She smiled slightly. "There is no one."
His eyes were worried. He had that little crease over his forehead that meant he was concerned over something, probably more than he should be. But it had been a while since she had seen that little worry frown appear for her sake. "Do you want to…" he trailed off. He didn't want to say it, whatever it was. Again.
"Do I want to…"
Quietly, barely audible, inaudible if she hadn't been an AI. "Leave."
Her breath caught in her throat, choking her. He was going to leave her, and … but that wasn't what he had asked. He had asked if she wanted to leave him. Breath forced its way through her lips, exhale, inhale. Did she want to leave, he had asked. Did she? Leave, go elsewhere, never to see his face or dance in his arms again? (Never to see another woman's lipstick on other places than his face.) Never to sit by his side at the head table, where he automatically held out her chair for her, stood when she entered the room, shared wine and pastries from all places of the globe. (Never to watch him send that special slice of cake to another woman's table.) Never to glide through the hallways with all eyes on her, on his arm, basking in the glow of two people who are just so right for each other. (Never to sit at the table and wait in fear that today will be the one day he never returns.) Did she want to leave all that behind?
Did the good times outweigh the bad?
She didn't know anymore. She hated that she didn't know, of all the times she had to pick now to be indecisive. Persephone fidgeted from foot to foot, not looking at her husband, unsure to the extreme.
At least he seemed to take some relief from her indecision. He let out a sigh so deep and loud that she jumped, a little.
"Persephone…"
"I don't know," she said it too quickly, and he flinched. She hurt because he flinched, but she wanted to keep her options open. "I have no wish to go through…" swallow hard, deep breath, "Another three centuries. But…"
She thought of life without him. Life without his smile, his laughter, his voice. Life without his subtly lewd, sometimes inane humor. Life without him… it was unthinkable, it froze her brain, made her stumble and want to cry out.
He caught her as she fell.
"I don't want to leave you, bellissima…" his voice came to her as though from far away. Again. "Cherie, ma pauvre cherie… I have treated you so badly…" His hands stroked her hair, his palm was warm in the middle of her back.
"I am so sorry…" Rather than reassuring her his words brought up all the times she had sabotaged him, all the little snide comments she had made. "Je regretted…"
"Non, cherie… vous ne devez regrette rien…" His arms clutched her to him, tightly pressing over her back. His hands clenched in her hair. The tears welled up in her eyes almost as fast as she could suppress them. "It was never your fault. Nothing you did…"
"You don't know that…" she whispered, and didn't know if it actually registered. "You don't know the half of it…"
"Will you tell me… in time?"
In time. They would have time. If they would have time… but they would. She clung to him as tightly as she dared. "Of course. We will have time for telling… won't we?"
"Yes."
"Yes."
He pulled her into his lap, and she let him. The convenience of a perfectly comfortable bed, couch, chair… all of them seemed irrelevant now. Moving to them would have required moving away from each other, and they couldn't have that. Not now. Not when they had just found some closeness that had escaped them for so long.
They stayed there till the shadows had grown long and the dinner at La Verite would have long since commenced. Neither of them had moved an inch"Shouldn't you be…" she murmured at some point when the light in the room had dimmed.
"No. This is exactly where I should be."
Such conviction. She smiled.
"Thank you."
Not that the fall would really do anything to her. She was, after all, an AI... an amalgamation of data, wires, input, a simulation of a human being in a sham of a marriage in a parody of a world where human beings scurried about their banal, boring lives. Falling from a great height would no more kill her than slitting her wrists, or taking an entire bottle of barbiturates with a bottle of that wine her so-called husband loved so much (more than her). She could swim out to the middle of the ocean and float there till the end of the world and it still wouldn't kill her. There was no way out. She envied the humans that, jealous of the fact that they could kill themselves and they would actually be dead, they would actually have made an ending of it.
She also envied the humans their passions, their reality, the depth of emotion that came from them. She had told Neo as much; she had told him how much she envied the love he shared with his woman, how much she wished she could recapture that feeling. It was only half of a lie... she doubted whether she had ever had that feeling in the first place.
Persephone stepped down from the windowsill, bored again. That French writer, Sartre, might as well have written about her and her husband in his play... could she remember the name of it? She could...Huis Clos. No exit. There was no exit for her, and she was trapped in a room with someone whom she thought she had loved (still loved?) more than life itself and who would never love her.
Damn him, anyway.
And damn her, too. She paced back and forth in her room as dinner approached, not wanting to leave it. Damn that girl Madonna, and the ghost twins who had taken her as their lover. They were all too inquisitive and too provocative for their own good. They had sparked this fight that had shaken La Verite from the roof to the foundation and left Persephone and her husband at opposite ends of the building. The fight that might, after centuries of stalemates, finally end their marriage. It would be an ending, of sorts, but not the one Persephone had wanted. Not at all. And not with the oncoming threat of Neo, who might actually succeed in finishing off the AIs' existence for good. She knew her husband didn't think so, but she also knew that her husband grossly underestimated the human. She would not make that mistake.
The knock on the door startled her into jumping a little. She hadn't expected anyone to follow her, not after she had shot three guards her husband had sent after her in the head. One shot, one kill. She was good.
"Who is there?" she asked, irritable. Irritable and tired. She didn't want to be disturbed. She said something rude in French. "Go away."
"Cherie..." Persephone froze in mid-stalk. That too-smooth voice was the last one she had expected to hear from that side of the door. "Ma cherie, may I enter?"
"Why not," she muttered to herself. "You will anyway."
To her utter surprise, he didn't. Five minutes passed without the sound of the opening door or the fading footstep. "Persephone..." he sounded as tired as she felt. "S'il vous plait, bellissima... please, let me in."
He hadn't called her that in...
"What do you want?" She stood in the doorway, one hand propped on her hip, a studied look of boredom on her face. It had been her one steadfast rule until earlier in the evening, that he would never see her saddened, never see her weep because of him.
"Just... to talk. I believe I may have made a gross mistake."
She bit back what she had been going to say and nodded, stepping back from the doorway and letting him enter. The door closed soundlessly, but he didn't move further into the room than he had to. She walked over to the small bar and poured herself a drink, feeling the need for it even if alcohol didn't always do a damn thing to her systems. Tonight, she would let it.
"All right. Talk. Dit moi, que est_ce que tu a fait aujourdhui." Tell me what you've done today. Once upon a time, a long long time ago, it would have been affectionate. Now it would have been more accurate to say, tell me what hideous sin you've committed now. Or, more recently, tell me who you've slept with today. You will anyway.
He didn't say anything, which again surprised her. She stood with her back to him, so she couldn't see his face. She didn't want to, but the longer the silence went on, the more tempting it was to turn around. Finally she heard him draw in a deep breath.
"I spoke with Madonna..." he said, and Persephone felt every muscle in her body (she could count them all) tense up.
"Your child lover?" She had snapped. She couldn't help it.
"Dieu et Marie, woman, will you let me talk?" he snapped back, and she turned around to throw the drink in his face. Old, old fights. But for some reason tonight she didn't want to. He looked haggard, worn down, worn out.
"You are right," she said after a second. "I'm sorry. Please.. go on."
"I spoke with Madonna today..." he said, then paused for her to make some kind of sarcastic remark. She didn't. "Actually, it would be more like to say that I tried to speak and she shouted at me, at great length. For a fifteen year old young woman she has a marvelous set of lungs."
Marvelous set of something else, too. But Persephone didn't say that one out loud.
"And what did she tell you?"
"A great many things... none of them ... it doesn't matter. She convinced me..." he took a deep breath. Held it. He didn't want to say what had to be said next, and she had no idea what that was.
"Convinced you...?"
"Persephone... I am sorry." He heaved it out like a great sigh, and for the first time in four hundred years she dared to believe that he meant it. "I have done you a great wrong... many great wrongs... and I do not know how to undo them."
So many things she wanted to say. She had stored up things to say at this moment for so long that she forgot to say any of them. Instead she just stood there and stared.
"Say something," he said then, raggedly. She didn't know whether he was going to laugh, cry, scream, or try to hit her. Any of them seemed equally likely at this point.
"What do you want me to say?"
"I don't know."
More silence. She wanted to cry so badly, and felt a tear or two falling down her cheeks despite her best efforts. Dammit, woman, she told herself, you are not going to cry in front of him. Not now.
It's your fault, too, one of the twins had said earlier in the day when the fight was still fresh. It's your fault just as much as his, and don't pretend it isn't. She wasn't pretending now. But she had no idea how it had gotten this bad, this far, this fast. She had no idea how they had gotten here, and even less of an idea how to get back. Was there even a 'back' to get to?
"Did we love each other, once?" she asked, finally desperate enough to hope that maybe he would know. "Was there ever a time when the passion wasn't so ..."
"I don't know." He said it, but he didn't look at her.
"No more lies, my love. Was there?"
Deep breath. Deep, chest-rattling breath. "When I first saw you I thought the world had ended."
"Poetic." Sarcasm and bitterness laced through her voice despite her best efforts. "But is it true?"
Quiet, unoffended. He always did have the most disarming, penetrating, warm glance. It took her in and made her feel as though they were the only two beings left in the world. "It was then. I had never wanted anything so much as I had wanted you."
She stepped forward a little, and smiled. "I set out to have you even before we met. I never let it cross my mind that I would not succeed."
He smiled back. So warm. Such kissable, tender lips. They had kissed so often, back then, and every time it sent liquid fire down her spine. "Such presumption," he teased her gently. "Such audacity."
"It worked."
"It did." They were inches apart now, and she wanted to kiss him so badly, again. "Why did it not stay?"
"Maybe..." she forced the words out of her throat "It wasn't meant to."
"Non..." He grabbed her when she would have turned away, spun her around more fiercely than probably either of them had intended. "Non. I will not have it be so. Not that way, bellissima."
His hand cupped her cheek, brushed her hair back from her face, and she wanted to cry again.
"How can it be any other way?" she asked finally, when the urge to weep had been thoroughly suppressed. It took far longer than it had before.
"We will make it so. Who else in the world can you think of who is as strong-willed as you or I?"
She smiled slightly. "There is no one."
His eyes were worried. He had that little crease over his forehead that meant he was concerned over something, probably more than he should be. But it had been a while since she had seen that little worry frown appear for her sake. "Do you want to…" he trailed off. He didn't want to say it, whatever it was. Again.
"Do I want to…"
Quietly, barely audible, inaudible if she hadn't been an AI. "Leave."
Her breath caught in her throat, choking her. He was going to leave her, and … but that wasn't what he had asked. He had asked if she wanted to leave him. Breath forced its way through her lips, exhale, inhale. Did she want to leave, he had asked. Did she? Leave, go elsewhere, never to see his face or dance in his arms again? (Never to see another woman's lipstick on other places than his face.) Never to sit by his side at the head table, where he automatically held out her chair for her, stood when she entered the room, shared wine and pastries from all places of the globe. (Never to watch him send that special slice of cake to another woman's table.) Never to glide through the hallways with all eyes on her, on his arm, basking in the glow of two people who are just so right for each other. (Never to sit at the table and wait in fear that today will be the one day he never returns.) Did she want to leave all that behind?
Did the good times outweigh the bad?
She didn't know anymore. She hated that she didn't know, of all the times she had to pick now to be indecisive. Persephone fidgeted from foot to foot, not looking at her husband, unsure to the extreme.
At least he seemed to take some relief from her indecision. He let out a sigh so deep and loud that she jumped, a little.
"Persephone…"
"I don't know," she said it too quickly, and he flinched. She hurt because he flinched, but she wanted to keep her options open. "I have no wish to go through…" swallow hard, deep breath, "Another three centuries. But…"
She thought of life without him. Life without his smile, his laughter, his voice. Life without his subtly lewd, sometimes inane humor. Life without him… it was unthinkable, it froze her brain, made her stumble and want to cry out.
He caught her as she fell.
"I don't want to leave you, bellissima…" his voice came to her as though from far away. Again. "Cherie, ma pauvre cherie… I have treated you so badly…" His hands stroked her hair, his palm was warm in the middle of her back.
"I am so sorry…" Rather than reassuring her his words brought up all the times she had sabotaged him, all the little snide comments she had made. "Je regretted…"
"Non, cherie… vous ne devez regrette rien…" His arms clutched her to him, tightly pressing over her back. His hands clenched in her hair. The tears welled up in her eyes almost as fast as she could suppress them. "It was never your fault. Nothing you did…"
"You don't know that…" she whispered, and didn't know if it actually registered. "You don't know the half of it…"
"Will you tell me… in time?"
In time. They would have time. If they would have time… but they would. She clung to him as tightly as she dared. "Of course. We will have time for telling… won't we?"
"Yes."
"Yes."
He pulled her into his lap, and she let him. The convenience of a perfectly comfortable bed, couch, chair… all of them seemed irrelevant now. Moving to them would have required moving away from each other, and they couldn't have that. Not now. Not when they had just found some closeness that had escaped them for so long.
They stayed there till the shadows had grown long and the dinner at La Verite would have long since commenced. Neither of them had moved an inch"Shouldn't you be…" she murmured at some point when the light in the room had dimmed.
"No. This is exactly where I should be."
Such conviction. She smiled.
"Thank you."