Five Ways Neil and Eva Never Said Goodbye

Summary: Five ways that Neil and Eva never said goodbye.


1. The Drowned and the Saved

She's not Eva. Neil knows that, knows that, but it's hard to tell himself that, when the guilt rises, and it feels like he's drowning beneath fifty metric tonnes of seawater, and he can't breathe.

The pain, by now, is an old friend—stabbing through his skull like a corona of barbed wire, overlaying the entire simulated reality in a tracery of red. It isn't quite real, and it is; welcome to simulation sickness, where his body is screaming that it's in pain, but the pain isn't real, it's all in his head, in more ways than one.

"Talk to me, Neil," Eva is saying, and he's even gotten that part right: the crease of concern between her eyebrows, that sharp, brittle edge to her voice. "What's with the painkillers? And what's with the…"

Except maybe Eva would never ask, would never have prodded and pried. Neil doesn't know, and the more he tries, the more he's acutely aware that he's painting from the canvas and colours of his memory, and each attempt only further muddies the waters, that it is hope and desire and a certain kind of love, as much as it is reality, and only further distorts who Dr. Eva Rosalene really was.

"You have to let go," the therapist had said, firmly, and Neil'd walked out of the mandated sessions and then started working on his own, illicit version of Sigmund's equipment right after.

He didn't know why, not precisely. He felt, perhaps, a sense of obligation, knowing that it was his fault, knowing that he had been driving that night the car crashed. Knowing that he had somehow been pried out of the smoking wreckage, while Eva had died that same night.

How did you even come to terms with something like that? There was no sense to it at all. It could've just as easily been him—should've been him, really, if there was any sense of justice in the universe at all. It's the meaninglessness of it all that chokes him, that sticks, like memory fish-bones in his throat, like thorns.

Each circuit, each wire, each piece of code was a plank in a wire-and-metal bridge he was building, one that would take him to some form of atonement.

"I'm fine," Neil says, lightly, and he smiles, and it feels odd to, but he needs to sell it, and he's never been all that bad an actor. "Just ate some spicy food that disagreed with me, that's all."

"You?" Eva scoffs. "You thrive on spicy food; you say so at least a dozen times a week." Her voice softens, just a little. "Seriously, what's wrong?"

He stands up, reels, and almost throws up right at Eva's feet, as the room rolls and pitches about him and there's a tight, squeezing pain in his head and for a few seconds, Neil doesn't know where he is, doesn't know which way is up and which way is down.

"Neil. Neil!"

There's that note of outright worry in Eva's voice now, with a hint of panic, and he's almost never heard that, in all their years working together. Yet another slight divergence point.

He fumbles for the painkillers—not real painkillers, but they work just enough to trick his brain into forgetting the simulation sickness, just for a short while. Not like this, Neil thinks. Not like this.

Hands close on his shoulder, and guide him to his swivel-chair, and he all but collapses into it. He doesn't know where the painkillers are, and he has to force himself to breathe past the pain, to somehow keep functioning when all he wants to do is to leave, to curl up in a ball in reality, and not fight the simulation sickness any longer.

"Neil," Eva says, frowning down at him. "Damnit, Neil, you're not alright. What's wrong? You're scaring me."

"Everything," Neil chokes out, but then he stops, because he won't break, won't, and he surely will if he starts blurting it all out to Eva, who just looks extremely taken aback right now.

"I've always thought we were friends, Neil," Eva says, and now her voice has a gentle, coaxing quality, as if she's talking to a frightened animal. "I'm just going to sit here. You can talk to me, if you want to. If you don't, that's fine too. But promise me that if it's a medical problem, you'll seek help for it."

"Yeah," he manages. "Sure."

You have to let go, the therapist had said. But each time Neil tried, and tried, he choked on the guilt, and he could never force himself to say goodbye. And now here he is, crippled by simulation sickness, barely able to hold himself together, with Eva sitting cross-legged on the floor of his office, close enough to touch, and he can't bring himself to say anything at all.

"Eva."

"Hmm?"

"What would you do, if you did something bad? Imagine if," and damn it all, he isn't going to sob, it's just the pain talking, right now, still raw, still fresh, "—if you did something so bad there's no way to make it better."

Eva frowns. "What kind of bad are we talking about here?"

"If you killed someone. Like, if I went out and killed Rob right now." Like when I killed you.

"…Well, you should probably turn yourself in to the police. You didn't kill someone, did you?"

"I as good as did," he admits. A fitting almost-confession, to the almost-ghost sitting across from him.

Eva exhales; a quiet sigh escaping her lips. "You sure about that? You not being overdramatic again?"

"I'm dead certain, Eva," he says, gazing over at her. "It is…it was my fault." And he has to let go, but he doesn't know if he can ever bring himself to do so; to say goodbye.

Except she isn't Eva. She's only a shadow of the real Eva, the Eva he knew; a painting of fire and grace and starlight, rather than the fire itself. He hasn't captured more than a fraction of her complexity, and her perfections and imperfections, and the more he tries, the more she diverges, until he can't even quite remember what Eva was really like.

And maybe that's what gives him the courage to say, words tumbling from his mouth, set free by this realisation, "Eva. I'm sorry. It was you. It was you. You died, and I survived, and I don't know why, I never did," and now they're staring at each other, the drowned and the saved, Eva's mouth gaping in surprise.

"I have to say goodbye," Neil whispers, and for once, his head is clear, despite the pain, and there is just the slightest sense that the load on his shoulders has grown a little lighter. "I can't…I can't keep doing this. I can't keep rebuilding the memories, rebuilding you from scratch. Eva's dead. I dunno if I'll ever really forgive myself. But I have to let you go, somehow."

It's a decaying world, a prison of memories that binds both of them; he's built from layers and layers of memories, assembling them together painstakingly in a composite, and now Neil unravels them bit by bit, strand by careless strand, and it hurts, like breathing saltwater, but slowly, slowly

like air, he begins to rise.


2. Begin Again

The problem is, Dr. Eva Rosalene had always been sharp, and Neil knows it.

Perhaps that's why he's not all that surprised when she all but kicks open his office door one lazy afternoon, as he's spinning a ballpoint pen bearing the SigCorp logo, trying to see how many rounds he can get in before the pen drops.

"Neil," Eva says. "We need to talk."

"Oh, and this justifies kicking my door in? I was about to set a new record for pen-spinning, y'know. I had that flow, it was all coming together. Then you startled me and I dropped it." He bends down to scoop up his pen, and stuffs it into his coat pocket.

"I know," Eva says.

"Well, then why'd you even do something like that?"

"This isn't real," Eva says, and her hands are curling and uncurling into fists by her side. "Is it?"

"What," Neil says, flatly. Realises they're having two separate conversations, at the moment. "Eva, are you alright…?" He trails off into silence at the heat of her glare.

"It was the small things," Eva continues. "The way it felt like someone's been following me over the past few weeks. Things looping on themselves, so subtly that I barely even noticed. Like the bird right outside my balcony. Like the squirrels in the parking lot."

Neil blinks owlishly at her. "Eva," he says. "That just sounds…weird." He makes himself laugh, though it comes out a little shaky. "Squirrels looping themselves? Someone following you? Why haven't you called the police?"

"And then," Eva says, ignoring him. "The other day, I saw it. The person who was following me." She folds her arms across her chest, and looks him in the eye. "Care to explain why it was you, Neil?"

Neil chokes. "Wait, what? Okay, Eva, I don't know what you're doing, but this, this is just so weird, I mean, listen to yourself. I was here all day. How could you have run into me, anyway?"

"'Cause it's strange, but he told me a very convincing story. One that seemed absurd, at first, but that started to make so much sense. Why my entire routine involves nothing but commuting to the office and back, with the occasional dinner at Traci's. Why the squirrels and the birds were looping. Little discrepancies—like that bartender whose face seemed to be made of static, for a moment." She lets out a long breath. "It isn't real. This isn't real. I died, that day, on the road to Johnny's."

He looks at her, really looks at her, the stubborn set of her jaw, the anger blazing in her eyes, and realises that there's no point in further dissembling.

"Yeah, okay, you got me there," Neil says tonelessly, and drops the smile immediately. "You died that day, all right? And you weren't s'posed to run into, well, my memory-trace algorithm. Guess he's more persistent than I gave him credit for."

"You wanna tell me what's with the bullshit, then?" Eva snaps.

He leans forward, steepling his fingers. "You died, Eva," Neil says, and the words still feel like hot ash and salt in his throat; like an admission of failure, like guilt he never quite chokes back. "You died 'cause I wasn't careful and I hit a tree. Our patient died, too. Lisa and Eddie sped all the way down, but they didn't make it before he passed on. You died. I lived."

He looks down at his hands, because if he looks at Eva, he might just see the faintest trace of pity in her eyes, and pity will break him, like the fool he is.

"But memory-trace algorithms are just copies of a person," Eva says, slowly. "Which means…"

"You're more than a copy," Neil snaps, and now he does look up at her, stung. "I worked for months on the machine. I made it better, and I made it do all sorts of things it couldn't do. This one, the one we're in? It could run circles around our previous equipment."

"Neil," Eva says, not-unkindly. The anger is still there, but buried—just as he remembers her. And that's the problem; that has always been the problem, hasn't it? "You know better."

He does. And he doesn't.

The pain and the guilt and the self-hatred has never gone away, and Neil doesn't think it can ever be exorcised. He's crushed it into a tiny, tiny package at the corner of his mind, but it threatens to break open; to bleed afresh at Eva's words.

"If Eva—the real Eva—died months before you made this new machine, then it was always too late, wasn't it? I'm not her. And I can never be. I'm just…" she smiles faintly, and it's laced with regret, and resignation, and that cuts him to the quick, even deeper than the anger, perhaps. "A ghost in the machine, kept alive by your memories of her, and your regrets, and your guilt."

"But you aren't just that," Neil protests, immediately. "You have a life. I've given you back your life, Eva. We still take on patients—just like we did, once. You went for Rox's party. You sent me those photos of Jamie's play."

"Do you know if I have friends outside of Sigmund?" she asks. She doesn't wait for him to answer. "Because I don't, Neil. And that's only because you don't know." Each word is an uppercut that flashes past his guard, and he's reeling, staggering back. "Whoever Eva Rosalene was, she had a life outside the job. She had friends. She had an entire history and life you weren't always privy to."

"Even if you're not Eva as she was—"

Eva cuts in, mercilessly. "Even if? You can't have it both ways, Neil. If I'm not quite Eva, then all that talk about giving me her life back means nothing. It's bullshit, and you know it, and I know it. And if I am Eva…" she swallows, hard. "Well. We both know I'm not."

"How do you know that?" Neil demands, hotly. "You're just…just another version of Eva. It doesn't mean you're nothing."

Eva scoffs at this. "Stop lying to both of us, Neil. I'm not just another version of Eva. I'm Eva as you saw her. And to tell you the truth, knowing that is kind of creepy."

This time, Neil does flinch. He realises his breath is coming out in ragged tatters.

"Are you really that unhappy?" he asks, desperately.

Eva doesn't back down. "My happiness doesn't matter, Neil. Like it or not, this isn't a life. It's not good for me, and it's not good for you. Do you even know what's been happening outside of the machine? I thought not." This time, her glare is pure Eva: all fire, and steely determination. "End it, Neil. That's all I'm asking of you."

"Sorry," Neil says. He refuses to meet her eyes, because he knows she wouldn't approve, but he can't, he just can't let go, can't switch it off, can't let her throw her hard-won life away like this, and because, perhaps, he is a selfish, selfish bastard, and he won't flinch away from that knowledge, so:

The world freezes, time unspooling like a ribbon, running backwards like reams of magnetic tape on a cassette; and then with a click and a whir, it stops, and then the world begins again.

It is an almost-death, and that fragment of Eva Rosalene fades away, as if it had never been.

The world begins again.


3. Burn Brightly

In the end, it is Eva who suggests going up to the roof. Neil cocks an eyebrow at her. "Why, that's almost transgressive of you, Dr. Rosalene," he murmurs. "What happened to walking the straight and narrow, hmm?"

Eva arches an eyebrow back at him. "Yeah, but the view's worth it."

So they make their way up to the roof, still feeling the pleasant, warm buzz of alcohol in their veins. The access door to the roof is padlocked, but Eva deftly works it open with a hairpin.

"You're a regular delinquent, I swear," Neil mutters, as he watches her at work, tries to ignore the way strands of her dark hair gently frame her face as she bends towards the lock. The stairwell isn't particularly cramped, and his voice, unsurprisingly, carries. After a while, the padlock clicks and Eva glances over at him, and smirks.

"There we go."

She pockets the padlock and pushes the access door open, and almost immediately, a cool evening breeze wafts into the stairwell. "I still can't believe you know how to pick locks," Neil says, disgruntled.

Eva tucks the hairpin back into her purse. "I didn't know you were jealous."

"Oh, so very jealous," Neil replies. "You're going to have to teach me someday." He follows her through the door, shutting it quietly behind them, and breathes out a sigh of relief at the cool evening air on the roof.

He's never been fond of heights; something about them makes his fingers tingle with a sudden onrush of pins and needles and the pit of his stomach drops away from him everytime he looks down, but as long as he doesn't, as long as the knowledge is distant, he's fine. Mostly.

Overhead, he can see only a few stars. Too much light pollution here, Neil thinks, and remembers childhood camping trips with his grandfather, where the stars thronged the sky, where the Milky Way ran across the sky like a river of stardust and clouds. "You don't like heights, I know," Eva says, as they make their way across the roof.

"Yeah," Neil mutters. The things he does for friendship, really.

"It's the best place to catch the fireworks, though." It's almost an apology; Neil accepts it for what it is.

"We could've gone down to the park, perhaps," he says, by way of response. "Or the river."

Eva shrugs. "They'll be crowded. Everyone wants to celebrate and get a look at the fireworks."

"True," Neil admits. They both share a shiver of dread and a look of amusement; neither of them are terribly fond of battling the press of the crowd, just to get a look at the upcoming fireworks. He briefly wishes they'd brought a cold beer with them, or something.

Eva peers over the metal railing at the very edge of the roof, and then flashes him a bright smile. "Look! I think it's starting!"

His stomach churns as he forces himself up to the railing, but Neil discovers that she's right. There's a series of sounds—deep rumbles, like the sound of thunder—and a bright display of incandescent fireworks unfurl themselves in the skies overhead, like flowers of flame, like stylised letters calligraphed onto the heavens, like burning, glowing lines of light, bursting out, blossoming forth in a kaleidoscope of colours, and he forgets about the height, forgets about his own discomfort, and just enjoys the show.

Somewhere in the middle of everything, his hand finds Eva's. There's a moment of hesitation—Neil half-wonders if Eva will smack his hand away—but then she allows the gesture and their fingers interlace like two pieces of an unsolved puzzle.

Eva sighs, quietly. "They're beautiful, aren't they?"

"Yeah," Neil agrees, his voice just as quiet. "They are."

"Sometimes…" Eva says, but then falls silent.

Half the trick of friendship is knowing when to press, and when to allow an utterance to pass, and the truth is, Neil has never quite mastered it, and sometimes they let each other be far more than they should, perhaps, but here, lulled by the glory of the fireworks and the pleasant light thrum of alcohol in his veins and the tactile warmth of Eva's hand in his own, he prompts, "Sometimes…?"

"You ever think we're a lot like fireworks?" Eva asks.

"Dunno," Neil drawls. "I mean, I'm certainly pretty smokin' hot, and I dazzle everyone with my brilliance, but that's hardly news, I'm sure."

She ignores that comment, which in itself, speaks volumes. "We've only got so much time, Neil. Maybe that's what it's about. Maybe the best we can hope for is to burn brightly and fiercely before the end—to live without regrets, and to give off as much light and joy as we can."

"Whoa, whoa, there, if this is a way of saying we should get together, Eva—"

Eva releases his hand, abruptly. "Yeah, I'm gonna have to say no to that one. Nice try, though."

It stings, a little, but Neil has never expected anything like that from their friendship, in any case, and he makes himself affect a lazy shrug. "Your loss, dumpling."

"Right," Eva says, and sucks in a deep breath. "Alright. Maybe this wasn't the best way to bring it up, but, Neil, I'm leaving."

He'd slipped on a hidden patch of black ice enough times, over the years; the most vivid memory, though, is of that heart-stopping moment in childhood—a sudden lurch and jolt more emotional than physical—when his foot slips and all of a sudden, he's falling and his back is against the concrete pavement and there's a sudden, sharp ache, and the sky is a thin, faded grey overhead.

"What do you mean you're leaving?" Neil says, more sharply, more fiercely than he'd expected to.

Eva shrugs, and this time, Neil discerns a tiredness underlying the gesture. "I submitted my resignation letter. It was accepted."

"But…" He can't quite find the words. Too many thoughts, crowding his brain like pigeons flocking a dropped sandwich. "But you like the work."

"Yeah," Eva nods. "Or I thought I did, anyway. You remember the talk we had that Christmas?"

"Yeah." It's his turn to nod, now. It seems years away, really—he'd filed it away in some memory-cabinet and forgot about it. Eva'd talked about how she felt they weren't doing the right thing, maybe, and he hadn't really been able to find the words, but he'd tried anyway, tried thinking about why he was with Sigmund and he'd talked about how the patient mattered, too, but maybe he'd just not found the right words, after all, even though back then Eva had nodded, had seemed to feel a little better.

Had seemed to take a little comfort, from it.

"Yeah, what about it?" he repeats, numbly.

Eva looks; away from the last of the dying fireworks, and out over the railing, at the dark cityscape below. "Well," she says. "I started thinking a lot, I guess. About what I wanted to do with my life. You know my parents have never been…well, they've never been excited about what we do here."

"You mean they've been arses about it," Neil says, sharply, and at her admonishing stare, "No, I'm not gonna soften the blow, Eva. They're being arses about it. No two ways. We do good work. They're demeaning the value of what we do by constantly being on your case about writing fairytales for a living."

Eva lets out a long breath in a gusty sigh. "Maybe they're right," she says, softly. "I think about Johnny and I wonder—did we do the right thing? He died happy, and River died misunderstood, only knowing he'd forgotten her. Forgotten their connection."

"You said it yourself. River's not our patient. Johnny was."

"Maybe that's what we tell ourselves, to make us feel better." Eva looks over at him, now, and he wonders if it would have been better to see any hint of pain, any hint of struggle. If there were signs along the way, he's missed it, and now there's no going back, and Eva's chosen, and on the edge of the numbness comes a howling sense of betrayal and Neil isn't sure he wants to give voice to it. "Look. I'm not asking for—for consolation, Neil. I just thought you should know. I'm leaving."

Whoever they partner me with, Neil wants to say, he's not going to be you, Eva. The thought brings with it an ache deeper than blood or bone, and its intensity surprises even him. He needs her, he admits: he needs her, and maybe it's not love, maybe it's simply getting used to someone, taking them for granted like breathing, and now that she's going, now that she's gone, it's as if all the air has been sucked out of his lungs, and he's falling, staring up at the clean, faded sky.

He doesn't say any of that. He forces himself to sound casual, to sound politely interested. "So, what are you going to do?"

"I've applied for a research position in a firm applying memory reconstruction technology to trauma," Eva says. "There's so much untapped potential there, and it'd be doing serious good if we could find ways of making the technology help veterans and other people. Otherwise, I'm looking at ways of getting other relevant clinical certifications."

Neil swallows. "Well, I guess that's good, then. You've got…" he waves, a vague gesture. "All those options. You know what you want to do with your life." He forces himself to smile, and it just feels like a crack in his heart. "Good for you, Eva. Go get 'em, girl."

She directs a searching look at him. "You're angry, aren't you?"

"Not with you," Neil says, and he hopes he means it, with every single part of his being. "Never with you. I just…It's a surprise, that's all."

"Mm, so I imagine," Eva admits. "Traci was astonished, but happy for me. And Roxie supported it."

"Roxie knows?"

"Mmhmm."

He wonders if he should feel twice-betrayed. He's never quite spilled all his secrets to Eva, but there's been an almost unspoken pact between them; of trust, of honesty, and Neil has always favoured silence or misdirection rather than actually lying to Eva, and maybe it hurts a little, to know that Eva goes to Rox, rather than to him.

"We'll keep in touch, yeah?" Eva says. "Most of the research in trauma applications is done in Melbourne, so I'll probably have to move, if any of the options work out."

"Yeah. Okay," Neil rasps, and he knows how often this doesn't really work, knows how bad he is at maintaining connections to people who've passed out of his life, he just never expected Eva to join them, and timezones are nothing to scoff at, and he wonders if this is what it feels like to watch Eva walk away, and out of his life.


4. Go Solo

Time is running out.

Time has never, Neil thinks, been on his side. He darts through memory after memory, flowing like quicksilver from one moment to the next, snatching up memory links, establishing the vital connections he needs to traverse Eva's memories.

He beats the clock, shifts into the overworld, and there, he's confounded. Absolutely nothing he does triggers the change in Eva's memories. There she is, at their graduation—there she is, leaving the Institute's labs, and there she is, tugging on her labcoat with a quiet pride on their first day working for Sigmund.

Some of the memories bring a strange kind of feeling welling up deep inside him; they're memories of better days, brighter days, yet laced with a sharp but subtle pain. Neil forces the feelings away, because for once, Eva is right: this is the biggest, most important job he's ever done, and if he can't even get this right

He ignores that thought as well.

In truth, wishes are never that straightforward. They're bound up in layers of conditions and significance and desire all braided together in a slender golden cord connecting past and present, and navigating that rope is one hell of a task.

Before this day, Neil would have been perfectly willing to say that he knew Eva well. After all, they go back all the way to high school, and a bit before, and really, after years of working together as partners in Sigmund, that's a lot of time in which to know someone; to accustomise yourself to their quirks and traits, to be able to understand the multitudinous meanings of a tired shrug, the many faces exhaustion and disillusionment - and even, happiness - wear.

Now, as he navigates Eva's memories with their long years of friendship as his compass, Neil has begun to realise that he doesn't really know Eva at all.

He knows that Eva likes jellyfish. He knows that she once dreamed of being a marine biologist, that she joined Sigmund because...well, he doesn't really know that. He knows that she takes her coffee with a travesty of milk, and—reluctantly—at least a spoonful of sugar, though she'll never admit to it. He knows she likes filling in crossword puzzles, that she likes the feel of the rain against her skin, that she likes the texture of her father's pumpkin soup, that she likes to have her fingers stained with soil and bits of plant-matter, that she is soothed by the click-clack of gardening shears.

He stitches all these little bits and pieces of knowledge together to fill out the shape of Eva Rosalene in his heart, but they're stretched thin and it's strangely easy to ignore the gaps; the holes that taunt him with what he doesn't know until it's too late, and he's in foreign territory with a map that shows only half the terrain and speaks in the language of desire and love and lies.

A simple wish, Neil thinks, heavily, even as he sits down for a moment and rests on the wooden bench in the park near their old university. He traces the names that generations of couples have carved into the wood, crookedly, as if mute, aged wood can bear some kind of testimony across the ravages of the years, and idly thinks up a knife and scratches into it.

No Sigmund, Eva had written, and oh, it had hurt, reading the contract in her familiar, neat handwriting, letters looping gracefully across the page. She wanted a happy, simple life as a marine biologist, and part of Neil wonders how he had never seen, how he had never known.

A sparrow pecks at the remnants of someone's sandwich, and Neil sighs, aloud, and the bird darts into startled flight, scattering crumbs. The other shapes in this memory are mostly blurred from time: Eva sits on a different bench, scribbling into the dark blue journal with the concentric Qinghai waves embossed into the cover. She hasn't grown her hair out, yet; here, it just barely brushes gently past her shoulders, and—this is one of Neil's own memories, as he can't quite see from this angle—the sharp, jutting lines of her collarbones. This Eva wears it tied up neatly in a loose bun, strands of hair escaping its confines.

Understanding dawns slowly, like apricity, even as he watches his younger self cross the greensward on his way to speak to Eva, clutching a brochure emblazoned with a familiar logo on top of his lecture notes. Of course, thinks Neil, almost-bemused. Of course, of course.

It's the small things, always, that catch you. Like a knock on his door after an all-nighter, and a thermos of coffee so hot the steam mists his glasses, sin-dark and untainted with anything at all, just the way Neil likes it. Like a colourful origami rabbit. Like a blank journal, with the faintest scent of lemon, like memory. Like a half-forgotten sunny afternoon, with a crumpled brochure in hand.

It's so absurd Neil almost wants to laugh. Eva has never spoken of this to him. Perhaps she never even knew. And there's a sharp, bitter irony to this, isn't there? It's Eva's wish, after all, and he'd walk over hot coals and cut out his guts with a butter knife to make sure she got it.

It just so happened that Eva Rosalene wished she'd taken the plunge; that she'd become a marine biologist instead, that Eva Rosalene had, in fact, only followed Neil to the Institute, and then entered Sigmund after graduation.

And so it is that Neil smiles, even though his eyes are prickling with tears, and with the penknife still in his hand, he cuts and cuts and cuts

and he cuts deep and a chance meeting in the corridors of their high school is elided—"Hi, I'm Neil Watts, what's your name?"—gone, ruthlessly slashed off, and he cuts and cuts and cuts, and keeps cutting until the last few threads fray and part; until he erases every trace of himself from Eva Rosalene's life and memories.

The desire has been transmitted. That was the easy part. This—this is what Eva needs. Neil knows, even as his heart clenches in his chest, even as he feels as though there's sea-water in his lungs, the brine dragging him below, caught in the undertow. This is the hard part, finding all the threads that weave their lives together and cutting them strand by merciless strand.

And at last he is left: alone, terribly alone, but a strange light feeling in his heart as Eva's new memories flash before his eyes, and there's that smile, and laughter, so much laughter that he can barely stand it.

"Have a good life," he whispers, choking the words out. "Be happy, Eva. You deserve it."


5. Stay

The bright aqua glow from the machine's screen is blurring into fragments of tumbling glass, and so Neil removes his glasses, rubs wearily at his eyes, and feels exhaustion—temporarily ignored up to this point—descend upon him like a soft pall.

He turns away for a moment, to watch the gentle rise and fall of Eva's chest. The traversal helmet conceals her features from sight, but Neil thinks he's memorised them, in any case. Strands of long hair escape the helmet, draping loosely about her shoulders.

If he didn't know better, he'd think she was only sleeping. The reality, of course, is considerably more complicated.

He needs coffee. No, Neil corrects himself, as he blearily reaches out for the styrofoam cup which is crushingly light. He needs more coffee.

"Neil?"

The aqua letters flash across the screen. The communications channel is still open, though right now, Neil would give anything—his own right hand, his heart, his soul and consider it a bargain—to hear Eva's voice again.

He doesn't respond, at first. Swallows hard and steels himself until he's certain his voice is confident and strong and unflappable. "Hmm?"

"How long has it been?"

They're nearing forty-eight hours, according to the machine's clock, but Neil doesn't answer that question. Forty-eight hours of hell, he thinks bitterly, since their patient passed, since Eva was caught in the backlash and now she's barely hanging on and he doesn't want to know what might happen if the machine shuts down and terminates the session with Eva still trapped and he can't log her out, and that knowledge makes him jam the heels of his hands against his eyes, grinds against his heart like hot ash and broken glass.

He can't do anything. Can't do anything except to wait for help. Can't do anything but stay with Eva, helplessly, as the long hours grind past, fine sand—bone-white, perhaps—trickling grain by precious grain, spilling into the hourglass of life.

All his attempts to slowly dismantle the walls of safeguards and code that have somehow gone terribly, terribly wrong have failed, but he can't tell her that, even though she must surely know by now.

"A while," he says, merely, and forces himself to smile, wonders if she can hear it in his voice.

"Neil."

Funny how much can be conveyed in a single word, Neil thinks. Even without the benefit of tone, of facial expression and body language—all these invaluable little details that make up the context of most human social interactions—he can all but imagine the exasperation in Eva's voice, the way her eyes would flick upwards slightly when she's annoyed with him.

The faint hint of warmth, which she reserves only for him, that makes him feel the faintest tremor of gentle gold inside.

"Haven't been keeping track. You know me, I'm the furthest you can get from Mr. Punctuality…"

"Cactus. Don't give me that cactus. It takes less than a few keystrokes to call up the time display. And I'd bet anything you've been glaring at the clock since all of this started."

He watches the sentence unfurl on the screen, word by word. He can imagine the word Eva might've used, if it wasn't for the profanity-filter. There are no filters for the curses that run through Neil's brain, cutting through the lingering fog of shame and guilt.

"Right, well. Guess you've caught me there, then. What can I say, I've never been a good liar."

"The worst, actually." Classic Eva, he imagines: dry with a touch of acid. The claws only really come out when she's exhausted and cranky. Or terrified. "I didn't think it was possible to feel this much secondhand embarrassment when you told Logan you really, really loved his curry."

"Yeah, well, I didn't want to hurt his feelings." Neil reaches out again—almost by reflex—to the styrofoam cup. Still empty. He could step out for another coffee, he supposes, but…but he balks at the idea of leaving Eva here, all alone. All by herself.

After all, he's already left her behind once, and the thought brings with it guilt afresh, like a wound barely scabbed over broken open once again, like a knife, slicing into nerves scraped raw by fatigue.

He checks his mobile. No sign of a call. Where are the others? He's sent at least five text messages to Rox and all of them have gone unanswered and Neil feels the hum of anxiety at the back of his throat, fluttering in his heart like a hummingbird.

"You know, maybe Logan breaks down and cries in front of everyone. I'm a true hero, I am. I'm saving you all the sight of a grown man sobbing like a baby."

"Pretty sure Logan's tougher than that. And you were the one practically sobbing as you told him how much you loved his curry, and then cringing when he shoved another Tupperware at you. And I know what you're trying to do, Neil."

"It's not good curry if it doesn't bring tears to your eyes, Eva. Everyone knows that."

"Neil."

He stares at that word, and exhales a long sigh.

"You don't want to talk about this. I get it. You've always been very clear about not-answering the questions you don't want to answer, and I've always respected that. But this is about me, Neil. And I want…and I really want to know, and I need you to respect that as well."

"Fine," he croaks. "What is it?"

"How long?"

"Almost forty-eight hours."

He waits, knowing what the next question must be, dreading it.

"What aren't you saying, Neil?"

Because friendship is a double-edged sword, and Eva has always been good at two things: at reading him like a book, and pretending she can't do that. Now, though, they've both agreed to call an end to lies, an end to pretence.

Neil doesn't want to. He wants to pretend everything's going to be alright.

"The machine is damaged," he tells her, solemnly. "That's why you can't log out. I've been…" the words catch in his throat. He has to pry his fingers away from his palms, to unclench his fists. "…Trying some fixes. I've contacted Sigmund, and backup's on the way."

"Almost forty-eight hours," and he can just imagine the edge of resignation to her voice, driving a bright, verdant wedge, like new shoots, into the cracks in his heart. "I know the machine is damaged, Neil. How bad?"

"Could be worse."

"Could be better."

The aqua-illumined panes of glass now seem painfully bright, but Neil can't make himself look away. "Yeah. Could be. Isn't that always how it goes?"

"And how much worse is it?"

He inhales; takes in a deep breath, and has to force himself to say it, hating himself for these words. Saying it aloud seems to make what he has known all along more real, and less like a technician specialist's worst nightmare on steroids. "The machine's currently running on auxiliary power. It's connected to the main power supply and I tried to rig up a bypass but that just made things worse."

She understands, of course. Eva has always been quick on the uptake.

"How much longer?"

Neil stares daggers at the secondary display and wonders if the numbers will haunt him for the rest of his waking life. "Just under two hours."

"God."

As if so much could be encapsulated in a single word; half-curse, half-prayer. Yet, wasn't this the trick of life? Condensing entire galaxies and universes of meaning into words, uttered simply.

"Rox and Maintenance are on their way," Neil says, with confidence he doesn't feel anymore. He's not sure which of them he's trying to reassure. It's been a long almost-forty-eight hours, and he's barely eaten, barely showered, and barely slept. Words are glass pebbles scooped up and cast away from the depths of his numb brain. Words are like birds, scattering into the clean blue sky, with an orchestra of wings as soon as he opens up his hands. "Everything's going to be all right."

Eva's reply takes a long while to come. "Yeah. It will."

"Yeah, well, you're awesome, Eva," Neil replies, firmly. As if it's beyond question. "You just hang in there. Help is on the way." He resists the urge to check his mobile again. It doesn't make a difference, he tells himself. But he wants to know why, why they aren't here yet, why he's still the only one, and so damned helpless.

It's the helplessness that gets to him, that lodges under his skin like a splinter, in the end: the frustration colliding with guilt, the inability to do anything but to sit back on his heels with folded hands; all his attempts to free Eva winding up futile and failed.

"Neil?"

"Yeah?" he croaks.

"Could you...Do you think you could stay with me?"

It's the request that breaks his heart, all over again; in part, at least, because he knows what it costs her to ask, and quietly, in his mind, even though he knows it isn't quite fair, Neil curses out both Rox and Maintenance. "What do you think I've been doing for the past hours, eh?" he says, keeping his voice light. "Seriously, Eva. You could've asked before you made me clear my schedule."

He can almost see her roll her eyes. "Uh-huh. You had someplace to be?"

"There's a pretty sweet girl at the coffee shop in my neighbourhood. We had a date. You're going to have to teach me how to grovel and make it up to her."

"Does she know you have a date?"

"Eva, life's too short to plan everything out in detail. Where's your sense of spontaneity? Of adventure?"

"I'll believe I'm not the only one with a sense of adventure and spontaneity when you actually agree to go skydiving."

"Eh. I'm a busy man, Eva. I can't be wasting all my time on these things."

The minutes and the hour tick past, and Neil tries his best to keep up the light-hearted jabs, but his heart isn't in it, and the truth is, it isn't that he's a bad liar at all, it's that Eva Rosalene has always seen through him like water.

Still nothing. Still no sign of Rox and Maintenance.

"…Neil. Everything here's starting to break up."

Is this panic? Fear? Resignation? Neil doesn't know anymore, and it's killing him to wonder. He checks the displays: the auxiliary power is almost completely depleted, and the systems are shutting down one by one, and there's absolutely nothing he can do about this.

Nothing except to stay here, with Eva.

"Yeah," he manages. Finds his voice. "I can't….Eva, I can't," and his voice cracks, and he hates it, hates that he can't do anything, that he's the one seeking solace or some measure of comfort now.

"Yeah," the words come, slowly, dimming now. "I thought so. Neil, don't you dare blame yourself—I chose to stay with Collins when everything was destabilising, and there was nothing you could've done about it. Thanks for everything; you were the best….the best partner and friend I could ever ask for."

"Goddamnit," he chokes out, and scrubs furiously at his eyes with the back of his hand. He can't remember when he took off his glasses. "Fuck that. Fuck all this. Don't you dare pull this bullshit on me, stay with me, Eva, I've got you, help is on the way. Everything's going to be alri—"


A/N: Never expected to write a second part for this Five Ways fic - this one focuses on five ways in which Neil says goodbye to Eva (i.e. the other side of the coin, since the previous installment was five ways Eva says goodbye to Neil.) I am conflicted about this fic - it was sitting in my WIP folder for a while as it's kind of tonally not right, but I'm not sure where my dissatisfaction with it stems from. In any case, I polished it up a little and completed it (I'm still working on finishing a bunch of other TTM WIPs) and decided to upload it anyway :) [RL has been a bit hectic, so it'll take longer than I anticipated but I don't plan to abandon any WIP!]

This fic is dedicated to two especially amazing people: to Bee, and to Chiv. Thank you for lightening up these days like fireworks.

-Ammaren