Coda — the clone: "How do I know that when you say you love me, that you're really saying you love her? How can you love me, when I don't even know who I am? How can I love you when I know you created me because I'm supposed to love you. I can't help it! How can I love you like that? So much that it hurts!" And what could I say to her to let her know that she was right, and I love her just as much.
"Baby?"
Little Lizzie curled up more tightly around our Miranda, whimpering in her sleep as she cuddled her baby girl.
God, I love her so much.
I looked to Kelly.
"Thank you, Kelly," I whispered softly to the Spartan.
Kelly's lips twitched upward. "No prob," she growled with the gruff voice of a warrior.
Her face became thoughtful. "What to do next?" she asked herself. "Kill shit in the sim? Or go for a good, long run?"
She thought for a moment. "Running, I guess." She got up to go.
That's my Kelly, the fastest of the Spartan IIs. She was clocked at 62 kph during her training. I smiled at her with pride.
"As long as it's not running over the fence, Kelly," I cautioned.
Kelly looked back at me, glowering. "Now, why would I do that?" she demanded angrily.
"Because it's been about a week since you've last tried to escape or have killed anyone," I said, "and you've got that look on your face ..." The 'fuck it all' look on her face.
Kelly shook her head, her expression sour. "You take the fun out of everything, Doc," she groused.
I smirked. "Why do you say that? Did I say I was going to report you?"
"You're not?" she asked surprised.
"Well, not at first," I smiled privately.
Kelly regarded me suspiciously. "How much of a lead do I have?"
I snickered. "Now, why spoil the fun and tell you that?"
Kelly's face was thoughtful. "A minute? An hour?"
"Tick-tock, tick-tock, Kelly," I sang delightedly.
Kelly smiled. "You're alright, Doc, no matter what High Command says."
She sauntered out easily, her assault rifle slung over her shoulder — that is, if 'sauntering' is a word that could be applied to a half-ton behemoth of a girl — all pleased with herself that she could babysit a frail, little clone holding a little baby in her arms, and manage to kill ... neither of them.
But now she was keen on the thrill of seeing if she could break her record of how far she could get before the Marines spotted her.
"Hey, Joe!" she bellowed. "Wanna go for a jog around the perimeter a few times with me?"
Lizzie started in her sleep from Kelly's shout.
Ooh, I thought ruefully: 'a jog around the perimeter,' so that was her code phrase to indicate an escape attempt. I shook my head: two Spartans breaking ranks? I wonder how many fatalities would happen this time when the Marines tried to neutralize two Spartans working together.
When Spartans fought back, they fought back for real, and they fought back hard.
My Spartans. Children. Blood-thirsty sociopathic murderers to the last of them, not happy until they're in the heat of battle, being fired at, returning fire, and killing, and killing, and killing.
I took my mind off that, however. It was diverting and entertaining, but it wasn't important. What was important was right before me.
I snuggled up to my sweetie. "How are you, baby?" I asked softly.
"Nnuh!" she snapped tiredly.
I smiled. "Hm, that good? Well, super!"
I wrapped my arms around her. She melted into my embrace and sighed.
"I hate it when you're away from me!" she whispered angrily.
That hurt.
I breathed in her delicious scent and sighed it out over her hair.
She sighed me into her, breathing me in, like I breathed in her. We loved each other too much for our own good.
But I wouldn't trade this for anything in the world.
"I do, too," I said regretfully.
We both knew the score, however. One of the devices implanted into what was salvageable from Lizzie's brain was a little, tiny explosive cartridge filled with cyanide. If I didn't give ONI what they wanted, day after day, eight hours a day for five days a week, well, then, the section chief made it very clear that ONI would take away the only thing I cared about with one, very remote, button press.
My Lizzie.
"Hey," I said, my tone lightening as I held my girls into me. The baby was asleep, but did Lizzie wanna ...
"Hey," Lizzie groused back.
From her grumpy tone, I revised my thoughts. It sounds like she didn't wanna.
I smiled into her back. "Never mind," I said softly. "Sleep, sweetie."
Lizzie breathed for a few seconds, then she asked irritatedly from her sleepiness, "Well, what?"
"It was nothing, sweetie," I said. "It was just I had a long day at work, and it's so nice to have you in my arms and the baby asleep, and I was feeling a little ... randy and was wondering if ..."
"Hmmphf!" Lizzie complained. "I'm wondering if you ever don't feel 'a little randy,' Rosalie, ... if 'little' can be used to describe how you feel, you sex-fiend, I swear!"
I said nothing. Instead I just held her in my arms, and was content with just that.
Eventually Lizzie got the 'guilties.' Not that I was intent on inflicting this feeling on her. I really didn't care. If she wanted to fuck, I wanted to fuck, if she didn't want to fuck, I didn't want to fuck. It was as simple as that. She was finite, I was infinite. I could spare all the patience that she needed. I had lost her more than five hundred years ago, I now had her back, and I was going to enjoy just being with her while she was still with me, because some day, all too soon, she'd be gone again, dead again; and this time, there'd be no bringing her back.
Her source genetic material was gone, and I couldn't turn her: not since Cortana had replaced her naturally iron-based blood with a perfluorocarbon synthetic replacement when her cloned marrow gave out about a year ago. The new fluid was infused with her scent, so she still smelled wonderfully, but she was now as inedible to me as human toothpaste was, and the venom would no longer interact with her artificial oxygen-carrying plasma.
It made being around her now much easier, but her daily dialysis was exhausting for her, and, her being a fast-clone, the prospects over the long term looked very, very ...
Well, ... fated ... Certain.
This time, in the next two years, or if I were very, very lucky, in the next possibly three years at most, Lizzie would die from catastrophic organ failure, and that would be it for us.
The certainty of that made treasuring every single moment I had with her now all the more vitally important. I fucked it up, ... God, I fucked it up with my ego when she was my little captive, and I was hellbent on a mission to improve her. That worked so well when she died on me. I wasn't going to make that mistake now. She could be herself, and I was grateful that she was herself, in all her little quirky and annoying imperfections.
She could annoy the hell out of me now for all I cared, because at least now she was here to annoy me, so I could hold her and love her.
At least I had that now, and, really, that's all I needed.
That's all I ever really needed. Ever. And it took five hundred years of her absence, five hundred years of my terrible loneliness to learn that lesson.
I learned that lesson. You don't have to teach that to me again, okay, God?
Lizzie moaned, faintly, plaintively, "Rooooose!"
She turned, carefully, onto her back, so as to not to disturb the slumbering baby, but also so she could talk to me in a whisper. "You had a hard day, but I had one, too, okay? Miranda was really needy the whole day, grabby and fussy, and she just really tired me out, okay? I'm like ... ugh! I wanna push her away, she's been so clingy! I mean, isn't this what you've always wanted: Mommy and baby and all that? And isn't it supposed to be all, awww! and how cute! and all this lovey-dovey stuff, and not this tiring, exhausting, frustrating, just, just ..."
She broke off, pausing for a second, looking thoughtfully up into the blackness of the chamber.
"I suck at being a Mom!" she whispered vehemently.
I didn't answer.
I chose not to. I didn't want to fight her, and make her more firmly believe she was a bad mother, when she was so obviously such a good mother to our child.
But how could I say that to her, so that she would really hear my words, instead of just using them to convince herself that I was lying when I was saying good things about her? And when I said anything else about anything else in any other way, she took it as me being critical of her, and used my own words to convince herself she was bad or unworthy of ... everything: my love, motherhood, life, anything.
Sometimes the only thing that got through to her was when I held her. She took great comfort from that.
So that's what I did. I held her. And let her talk, and voice her fears and inadequacies, and tried to listen without criticizing.
Lizzie looked over at me, furtively, from the corner of my eye. Glancing, hoping I wouldn't see her glance, and then she sighed.
"So, you wanna ..." she offered shyly.
She just couldn't bring herself to say the words sex or fuck. She was just such a demure, modest creature like that.
And I liked that, her modesty.
I smiled at her. "Yes," I said. "Always."
"Okay," she said slowly, "but ..."
"'But...'?" I asked.
"But gentle, okay, Rose?" she asked, blushing. "The baby, okay, remember? And I'm just not up for being ravished right now, you wild sex-fiend!"
"Okay," I said, smiling, "gently, then."
Lizzie smiled back, shyly, then puckered her lips, as if to tell me, you may kiss me now.
I chuckled softly, and Lizzie's look became cross as she shushed me with an angry whispered reminder of "The baby!"
I kissed her lips to shush her shushing.
'The baby,' indeed! The little thing had the life: all she did was poop, nurse and sleep, and when things didn't go her way, she cried until she got what she wanted.
Actually, that description of how Miranda is reminds me of a little girl, who wasn't such a little girl, actually, whom I held captive in a cabin in the woods more than five hundred years ago.
Lizzie: all she did was poop, sleep, eat and cry, ... and she always got her way, bossing me around with her pouty lips ...
... that is, until one day I came back to the cabin, and she was dead. She was dead before I could know her, she was dead before I could name her.
She was dead before I could know that I would miss her so terribly badly when she was gone.
Well, I got her back, and then, 'thanks' to Cortana and her endless resources and absolute lack of morality (that description reminds me of someone else, too: myself), I not only got her back, but I also got Miranda out of the deal, too: my daughter...
Our daughter.
Something, too, that I thought I would never, ever have after I was turned.
I guess it's true about Eternity: something impossible today might not be five-hundred years from now, so all I had to do was to wait for my Lizzie to come back, cloned from her source DNA, then, on top of that, to have Miranda from sperm 'donated' (unknowingly) from Lieutenant Keyes, carrying chromosomes mapped from my genetic imprint.
Simple, right?
Nowadays, it is.
I put my ruminations aside and kissed my Lizzie, softly, gently.
She hummed her pleasure underneath me. I broke the kiss and looked down at her, smiling.
"You like?" I asked.
"Yeaaahhh," she sighed softly. "I like it when you're gentle sometimes."
"'Sometimes'?" I asked teasingly, and gently cupped her breast.
Poor Lizzie hissed in pain.
"Sorry!" we both said at the same time.
Lizzie grimaced. "Sorry," she said again, "they're just so sensitive these days."
"So," I said, "I guess no mommy-time for me now," and smiled understandingly.
I really did like mommy-time, though, both giving and receiving.
"Sorry," she apologized again. "The baby's been just so needy these past few days!" she added, pouting.
"Perhaps she's teething?" I offered.
"Dunno," Lizzie answered, sounding disinterested in her tiredness.
"'Sokay," I averred, "I can put my lips to use elsewhere." And before my ever-curious-and-clueless lover could ask where I'd put my lips, I covered her curious mouth with mine, kissing her gently as I rubbed her belly in slow, tender strokes.
Lizzie hummed in pleasure again.
I always like looking at Lizzie's face after I kiss her, or, surreptitiously, while I am fucking her, making her cum. Her face is so beautiful: so sweet and innocent and helpless as she lets the waves of my passion wash over her. It's really a heartbreaking sight to behold, my baby loving me loving her.
"Thaaas nizzzze," Lizzie purred, eyes still closed as she basked in the pleasure of my tenderness.
I smirked. "I'm glad you like," I said mildly, barely able to contain my pride that I can pleasure her, and that she desires me at all, the monster that I am.
She knows what I am, and she loves me anyway. I don't know, maybe she even loves me because I am what I am.
The little nut.
She always was different. Instead of running in fear of me, just as everyone else does, she embraces me, and wholeheartedly, even.
She, seriously, has to be the most blind, or stupid, being in the galaxy.
God, I love her so.
"Here's something that you'll really like," I offered.
I gently prodded and pushed, turning her body away from mine. She cradled the baby in a spoon, and I cradled her into my arms.
"Jeez, Rose!" she complained softly. "What is it with you and your infatuation with my butt? I swear! Are you in love with me or my butt?"
"Yes," I answered right away and truthfully. "I love you, and I love your butt. I love rubbing it, kissing it, squeezing it, and fucking it, long, hard, and often. Any other questions?"
"Huuuuhhh..." was all she could manage, being stunned into silence at my answer.
I smirked. "But, actually, I was planning something else entirely."
"Really?" she asked, trying with moderate success to recover her composure.
"Surprise!" I said, "Dr. Catherine Halsey does not always and automatically fuck your butt in a frenzy whenever presented with the opportunity! Can you believe it?"
Lizzie was quiet for a moment. "Yes," she said eventually, "but I'm even more surprised that you use that name. I thought you hated every name other than yours, and would never use anything else."
"I like your name, Lizzie," I said reproachfully.
"You know what I mean," she sighed exasperatedly.
"'Elizabeth Lucia Aurora Hale,'" I said, savoring each syllable. "It's a beautiful name."
Lizzie was quiet, her pulse slowing down to a mellowed, relaxed rate. "So is 'Rosalie Lillian Hale,'" she rejoined. "That's the most beautiful name in the world."
"Thank you," I said.
"Why don't you use that name?" she asked. "Nobody else can hear us here."
Except Cortana, I thought, who reports my every action to High Command.
"I could," I answered eventually, "if when somebody came out into public areas, she used my public name, and not our private one."
"Oh," Lizzie said, and I felt her blush, and saw her skin tint the slightest green from the fluorine in her synthetic blood. "Sorry."
I smiled. "Besides, 'Dr. Catherine Halsey' is a good name, too. Very proper."
"Yeah," Lizzie retorted. "Proper. Formal. Ick."
Her eloquence was always in top form, wasn't it?
"Come on, sweetie," I cajoled, "Try it. Call me 'Catherine.' You'll like it, I'm sure."
"No! Ick!" Lizzie retorted, ... a little too sharply. The baby started, waking to a half-sleep, and turned, clasping her mother, and latched on firmly, suckling at Lizzie's breast.
Lizzie blew out a long, tired sigh, wrapping Miranda in her arms.
"Does she ever quit?" Lizzie whined.
"I've heard-tell they do eventually ..." I offered consolingly.
"Like when?"
Lizzie's voice was complaining and impatient.
"Sometime before their twenty-first birthday, I'm told," I offered lightly.
Lizzie began to sigh, but then her back tightened up. "No, wait," she said, almost angrily. "You sure haven't!"
I snickered then blew a light raspberry-kiss on Lizzie's shoulder. "I guess that just goes to show your breasts are irresistible. What can I say?"
"Wonderful." She sounded not in the least mollified at my attempt at lightening her mood.
Oh, well! I suppose I'll have to chalk up another failure for me.
I didn't care. I'd keep trying, and failing, with my Lizzie, as long as she allowed me to continue to try.
Miranda had stopped nursing, being comforted back to sleep. But you know how it goes: the baby stops feeding, but she's still latched, and the slightest movement on the bed by the mother causes renewed suckling.
Lizzie risked it. She broke free, and as the baby reawakened, she held her and hummed to her and rocked her gently in the bed.
It worked this time. Miranda was full and contented, safe in her mother's arms.
And Lizzie says she's not a good mother! I declare!
I wonder how I'll be as Miranda's mother when Lizzie's dead and gone. Will Miranda even remember the sacrifices Lizzie makes every day for her? The kindness and love she showers on her? Will Miranda remember Lizzie's kind face five years hence? ten years? Or will Lizzie just be an image of a woman shrouded in a cloud of forgottenness, someone who Dr. Catherine Halsey tells her was the best thing in her life, the kindest, sweetest mother she could ever have.
And all this, being told her, ... by cold, distant me, not knowing how to love, how to open up any more, after losing Lizzie again.
How would I be with Miranda with Lizzie dead again, this time forever?
I prayed I would be strong enough to go on. But I feared that's all I would be: strong — a strong, distant woman known only as "Mother" or "Dr. Halsey," — when she has so, so much more right now with Lizzie, and, being in her first year of her life, not even realizing, not even knowing what a blessing she has in a girl not even twenty in a spindly little frame that barely survived birthing her daughter, even with every resource that this lab — a genetic research military facility — could provide.
Lizzie's back was stiff and sullen, so I gently rested my hands on her shoulders — she stiffened further in shock — and I rested my hands there until she relaxed again. She was always such a flighty thing. It hurt me that her natural reaction was to shy away from me, but, I suppose it meant she had at least one natural reaction that was as it should be, to flinch away from danger, from me.
But relax she did, so I began gently to kneed her back, massaging away the knots and stiffness there.
She sighed contentedly, then as I continued to work her back, her sigh turned into a moan of pleasure.
"How's that, baby?"
"Lower, lower!" she urged.
So I asked again, in a much deeper, throatier voice, "How's that, baby?"
Lizzie snorted quietly, "You cornball!"
But her snort returned to hums of pleasure as my hands moved to her mid and lower back, and my fingers continued to work their magic on her back, patiently working out the knots of stress she had accumulated throughout the day.
"You like?" I asked.
"Rosalie, you would not believe!" she replied, then added, "You carry around this little bowling ball all day and your back'd be as stiff is mine!"
"Stiffer, even," I agreed. I didn't add that there was no material in the world as hard as what I am made of.
Lizzie took my teasing seriously, however. "Do you need a back rub?" she asked solicitously.
"No, sweetie," I said, "I'm fine, thank you."
"You sure?" she asked. "It's no problem, really."
She tried to twist around to face me again. My right hand on her right shoulder stayed her as my left hand continued its soothing magic on her back.
"It's okay," I repeated, then added, "This is relaxing for me. I like seeing you soft and pliant and luxuriating for a change."
"Mmm, yeah!" she sighed contentedly as my right hand rejoined my left in coaxing her compliance. "It feels really, really good."
"I'm glad you like," I said.
"'M glad you do, too." Her body was completely still, just the breath going into and out of her lungs, just her little heart beating the richly oxygenated synthetic blood through her little veins.
"Afterward you can have your way with me, too, if you'd like," she added quietly, as an afterthought.
It didn't sound like a suggestion from her so much as just the way things would go.
"Yes, I would like that, too." I said.
Despite myself, the venom flooded my mouth, pooling there, and the pheromones where thick in the air. I was on edge — "in the mood for love" — as some might say, but I wasn't so discreet. I was rutting: I wanted to fuck my girl, and I wanted to fuck her good, long, and hard! ... and if she were in the mood for it, 'good loving,' or a good, hard, old fashioned Rosalie-fuck, then all the better, says I!
Lizzie snorted again, softly. "Rosalie Hale, you are a perv!"
I wanted to say that it was her suggestion in the first place, but I left that be. Let her have it both ways, and why not? She's had a long, hard day, so she could tease me, then scold me for taking the bait.
I liked our little love play; in my entire existence, I never played. Not when I was a human, especially not now when I'm a vampire, so in these quiet moments, I savored the time Lizzie could play with me, lightly, and I could play back. It felt like living, it felt like being a normal couple with normal problems.
Normality. It felt wonderful, the easiness of it.
But I didn't let something else slide.
"You mean to say, 'Dr. Halsey,' or, intimately, 'Catherine, you are a perv,' right Lizzie?" I corrected.
She sighed.
"C'mon, sweetie," I prompted, "give it a try, hm?"
"No!" Lizzie spat back rebelliously.
She is such a child, sometimes!
"For me, hm, Lizzie?" I entreated.
I felt her back tightened up against my massaging hands. I kept working, gently, at her back as I let her struggle over her struggle. She was a fighter, my girl, and the person she fought the most — all the time, in fact — was herself. I'd tell her to do something, or to try something to make her life easier — Lizzie, stop trying to knock your way through the wall by hitting it with your head; use the door instead, please! — but she'd be like: No!
Before, I'd get angry and frustrated about this. And then she died.
Now that I have her back, I've decided to let more things go. So she made her life hard for herself, so what! It was her life to make hard, and she had a life to make hard. Thank God! It was so, so easy for her when she was lying, lifeless, on that bed in the cabin, day after day after year after century, and all I could do is watch her body disintegrate.
Things weren't hard for her anymore then.
So, now, I'm glad they're hard for her. Please, God, I'd beg, please keep making things hard for her. Please let her struggle through every little thing! Please, God.
So far, God has been answering that prayer. Daily. And with a vengeance, sometimes.
She struggled, now, with my assumed identity. I could understand her struggle. She was always her to me, frustrating, beautiful, loving, kind, blind, weak, strong, ... her. And her name, her new name, meant so much to me, so I could see that she would always see me as me, so Rosalie, and all the time.
My character was ever fixed, the name was just there as a cover story so the people of today could have the pretense that they could relate to the aloof, insane(ly brilliant) scientist that consistently provided miracles to them on demand, never mind the fact that they had done all the discovery themselves. I just simply put together the disparate pieces: I had unlimited time, capacity and mental capacity to do so, where they did not. So my discoveries were all syntheses of work others had already done, or I had uncovered results that others did not have the perspective to see were important in fields outside their areas of research.
Since my 'area of research' was 'everything,' I was able to make connections, and to obtain results, that no other scientist could possibly match.
This proved invaluable for the military. That, and I could kick their collective asses, and eat them for lunch while doing it.
That got their attention.
But 'Rosalie Lillian Hale' didn't work for them. 'Dr. Catherine Halsey' did, and, at the time, I didn't give a fuck what they called me, as long as they kept their end of the bargain that I could work on bringing my Lizzie back, they could get whatever research they wanted from me. They could call me whatever they wanted. I'm sure they called me 'hardass' and 'bitch' quite regularly. My needs were quite specific and very exacting, for tools, materials, and staff, and if they didn't measure up, their ass was out the door before they could finish reading the pink slip. Fuck them. High Command wanted results, and I got them results, and I didn't care how many people I walked over to get them what they wanted.
And I got my Lizzie. I got her back. After one-thousand, one-hundred thirty-seven failures, the -thirty-eighth one, Lizzie, lived long enough out of the tube to get her onto the operating table in the ICU and on life support to enact various heroic measures to keep her living, even through a serious-risk pregnancy, even unto now.
It was a close-run thing, but that was a hell of a lot better than most of the rest of the clones that came out as protein stew, or came out of the tube okay, but for just a few seconds before all the internal organs exploded turning the insides into a jelled paste.
Or the ones that came out still-born, or brain dead, or ...
God, and this one was the last viable unit from a batch of a four egg batch. The last batch.
Three eggs never even reached cell division, and simply died in stasis. Just this one survived. This last one from the last batch of source material made it all the way to 'term,' survived the rapid growth in the growth chamber, and came out of it, breathing, coughing, screaming, but not quite dying.
She also came with so many mental disabilities that she would've spent the rest of her very short life as a vegetable on life support, if Cortana hadn't intervened, and implanted along with the chatter node, more than several cerebral nerve stimulators and cognitive amplifiers.
Lizzie was as smart and as quick as the tweaked humans of today, ... well, as a two year old human of today, and — I had to observe with no small amount of pride — she did incredibly well for someone who had been alive for only two years, and who had only about that much life left in her before her body rapidly disintegrated back into the protoplasmic mush from whence she came.
You paid a price for creating a flash-clone, they came at the age you needed, in a trice, less than a week: just add water and protein and (lots of) growth hormone. But they left this world just as quickly, and the time they spent here was in a vegetative state.
Lizzie wasn't a 'flash-clone.' No, she was new tech that I had personally developed: she was a 'fast-clone.' It took her months to develop, but the benefit for the extended gestation period was that the body was much more durable and came out much more mature, the brain had time to develop, just like a fetus' in the womb, instead of being flash-grown, so that the organs were frozen and intractable: useless.
The girl I held in my arms wasn't useless, she was ...
My Lizzie.
And I love her.
Lizzie's eyebrows creased — I felt the concentration in her — and she moved her mouth to speak.
"Ca-..." she tried.
"BLEEEEH!" she burst out, startling the baby in her sleep.
She rocked Miranda back into a deeper slumber, but I could feel the angry lines of tension coursing through her back as she fumed.
"Rosalie," she whispered angrily, "I just can't do it! I'll just hide back here from now on!"
"That worked really well today," I retorted.
"Well," she said, "if you can't live with it, you'll just have to get yourself another girl, then, 'cause I'm not gonna play this stupid game."
"Lizzie," I sighed, "why did you have to go there? You know I love you, no matter what, and I'll never let you go."
"Not like you have a choice about it," she fumed. "Like I've ever get to go outside this prison, like you get to all the time!"
I was silent, brooding. Not like I did have a choice in the matter. Her first step outside the compound walls would be her last. The little capsule embedded in her skull would silently pop and she'd fall to the ground, dead, before she could even taste the cyanide.
And my field trips? Transported in a sealed compartment, like a caged animal, to some remote, barren facility on some asteroid or at one of the polar caps? And then, after my research was done, returned straightaway here without so much as a 'Thank you' for my trouble? Oh, yeah, I was living the life of privilege and luxury, wasn't I just!
Being bitter about her situation or mine wouldn't help her, though, so I just swallowed the bitter pill and took her anger.
I'd take it. It hurts, but I'd take this hurt.
She felt my sadness. She was quiet for a moment, then she said: "Sorry," sadly.
"I am, too, sweetie," I said. "I'm sorry I couldn't have given you a better life."
"But you did give me my life back, didn't you, Rosalie?" she asked.
"Yes," I said.
We were quiet again, but now a sad quiet.
"How much longer do we have?" she asked.
"How much longer does anyone have?" I asked her back.
Sullenly: "You know what I mean!"
"A couple more years of viability," I answered. "That's the estimate."
"That's how long ... people like me last?" she asked.
The word 'clone' didn't exist in her era.
"There hasn't been any other clones like you, Lizzie; the flash clones last a few days, and the slow cloning projects have been abandoned as useless to all parties exploring those options. You're the only one of your kind that's made it, and have made it this far."
"So how can you say I have a couple more years?" she asked.
"I don't say that, sweetie," I answered quietly.
Lizzie puzzled over this for a moment, then I felt the light dawn in her.
"Oh," her voice filled with displeasure. "Her."
I was quiet. Yes. Her.
Cortana.
"You spend all day, every day with her, don't you?" she asked petulantly.
"Sweetie," I sighed, answering quickly. "It's all work. You know that."
"But she's as smart as you are ..." she began.
"Smarter, actually," I corrected.
Cortana was, in fact, measurably thousands of times smarter that me: she had access to unlimited computational resources, instantly, and all the time, and her though processes travelled at the speed of light, in parallel, and at google LIPS ('logical inferences per second').
"Yeah, great," she said sullenly, and I instantly regretted my correction, which only fueled her anger and jealousy more.
"Baby, I love you. I don't love her. She is me. I can't be in love with her any more than I can be in love with myself. You know this. She knows this. There is absolutely nothing to be..."
"Look," Lizzie snapped angrily, "I'm tired, can we not talk about this any more?"
"I'm sorry," I said humbly.
I had made a mess of things, trying to correct her statement, trying to reassure her afterward, and all I did was make things worse and worse.
Lizzie was sullen in her silence.
I held her, rubbing her back, until she angrily slapped my hands away.
Great. Now she would fall asleep angry with me. No love play. No sex for me, and no rest in sleep for her.
Being with someone you love was always so hard. One moment you're basking in love for each other, the next one is bitter and furious with you, and it all can happen in an instant, in one turn of a phrase in a conversation.
Or maybe it was because it was I who was in the relationship that cause all this difficulty and heartbreak. I didn't know.
"So," she said eventually, and it broke my heart that she was saying these words through her angry, sad tears, "ya gonna get another clone to love after I'm dead?"
That stung. What really stung me is how she hurt herself so, saying those words.
"Can't anymore," I gasped out, hurting, as she hurt. "All gone. Nothing left. Source all gone."
I couldn't believe that I had been so reduced as this: to be stuttering like a fool.
"Oh," she said. "Too bad for you, huh?"
She asked that ... not sarcastically, but sympathetically.
I didn't know how to respond.
"You could use some of me, couldn't you?" she asked. "I have the same genes as her, don't I?"
Her. The original. The nemesis of every clone that ever reaches self-awareness: I am me, but I am a copy, and that's all I am.
"Can't," I said. "Your bone marrow is gone, and anyway the chromosomes are a copy. We were lucky to rush you to the operating table and you were made from source material. We've tried cloning from a clone, and the template never coalesced; the cells all just were unformed, unspecified and all that was left in the tanks was this wretched ..."
I stopped. Did she want to know the details?
"Oh," she said. "You tried already, huh?"
I was silent.
"So," she said. "I'm it, huh? I'm all you're ever going to get ... from ..."
She didn't finish. But I heard her.
I held her.
She was shaking in my arms, the silent sobs filling us both with sadness.
"If I could tell you," I said desperately, "how much I love you, Lizzie. If I could just let you know how ..."
"Do you love me as much as you loved her?"
Her quiet words lashed out like a blow to my face.
"There's no comparison," I said unequivocally.
"Oh," she said, her voice tinged with sadness. "I actually was going to ask that. I was wondering if I measured up at all. But I guess I got my answer."
She seemed to shrink into herself.
"Thanks."
Her whisper was almost inaudible as it was bitter.
"Baby," I scolded lightly.
That is, as lightly as I could, hearing her saying that, breaking my heart.
"What?" she sniffled.
"Why do you always do that?" I asked. "Why do you always take my words and twist them, like they were a knife in your heart?"
"When you say 'I' do you mean 'her'?" Lizzie snapped back angrily.
The baby stirred fitfully. I sighed.
"Okay," I said, the irritation in my voice failing to cover over my fury, "let's do this."
"Do what?"
Now Lizzie was scared. But for good reason, this one hadn't seen me angry at her. She's seen me angry at others, however, and she's seen what my anger did to them.
And then did to what was left to the pieces of them.
"'Do what?' she asks all innocence," I said spitefully.
"Rose ..." Lizzie whimpered.
"Turn." I commanded mercilessly. "Face me."
She wants to play the woe-is-me game with me? Fine, then, let her fucking play.
I'll play. But I don't play to lose. Ever.
Why? Because I'm Rosalie-fucking-(Dr.-)Hale(-sy), that's why.
She turned. Slowly, carefully, for the sake of the baby. And my commanding voice was harsh, but it was a whisper, for the sake of the baby, too.
"You wanna compare," I said rancorously, "fine, we'll compare. You say you don't measure up? Well, let me tell you. Your mental capacity, even with cybernetic enhancements is about that of a two year old these day."
"Ouch?" Lizzie said, wincing, not believing I could be so harsh with her.
She hadn't seen me be harsh with her, ever.
First time for everything.
"...which is about the mental capacity of a fifteen-year-old protohuman five-six-hundred years ago, about Bella's mental maturity when she died, come to think about it."
"Huh?" Lizzie said, again surprised.
She didn't think she could measure up to her original.
I paused. Bella Swan was an enigma to me, always. She acted like a two-year-old at times, most times, in fact, wallowing in self-pity, but then she would show flashes of maturity and insight that belied her tender years, which I never did ascertain.
No, Bella had a wisdom that belied the ages. She was the only human I ever knew who looked into eternity and flinched, but then, unlike every other mortal that ran as fast as they could away from the unknown, she ... advanced toward it, and embraced it, arms wide.
She died as she lived, an innocent child, eyes wide open, filled with wonder, and hope, and ...
And ... love.
And this one, my Lizzie, she had the same innocence, the same sweetness, the same ... love in her heart, because ...
Well, I wasn't done being angry with her, yet, now, was I!
I had to remind that fact to myself. I had to remind myself to stay angry with her, not hold her into my chest, and hold her and hold her and hold her.
"So you have that to her, her maturity, but you have a near infinite knowledge base from which to draw, that is, whenever you choose to use your chatter." I continued.
They don't call chatter a 'thought amplifier' for no reason. They actually haven't call it that for more than a century now, and it's not just that any more. It's a connectionist machine with each node being an intelligence, human or artificial.
A connectionist machine with more than ten million nodes. That's a pretty powerful 'assistant' that everyone today takes for granted, like the air they breathe.
"It's so hard to use!" Lizzie mumbled complainingly.
"'It's so hard to use!'" I mimicked her words and tone perfectly, layering it thickly with sarcasm.
Humans these days! They have no perspective at all. No sense of how easily everything is just given to them at birth.
Well, with the Covenant holy war against us, driving us further and further back into our little hole-corner of the galaxy, they were getting that sense, as they were stripped of their progress, their footholds, step by step.
Lizzie's face twisted up into a sour pout, aware of my scolding, but still hanging onto her sense of being imposed on.
"There you go." I said. "It's hard to use. So instead of doing what everybody else does naturally from birth, with chatter implanted in them already, just like you were I might add, and just use it, a tool to help them get through their day, you fight it and treat it as something grafted onto you, something external to you, something foreign and strange, and everybody can see that, and you just mark yourself, Lizzie," I tried to keep my voice level, but I hadn't realized I was so irritated by this. "You're in the twenty-sixth century now, for God's sake, get with the times. I did. I have no problem functioning in this present, that I didn't ask for. It was thrust on me, too. But I adapted to it. Did you?"
I shook my head.
"And the thing is," I continued angrily. "You were born in this century! And you had every advantage of it, and more! Who else has her own personal physician on call all day, every day? Who else has an AI that dotes over her, every single second?"
"Is that what you call what Cortana does? 'Doting'?" Lizzie hissed.
I frowned.
Lizzie turned her head away.
I reached out, and gently turned it back.
"Yes," I said finally. "I call it 'doting.' Because why? Because every single day, if you did not go into your birthing chamber and get a flush of all the accumulated toxins in your system, you'd be dead. Do you understand that, Lizzie? That you get a one-hundred percent blood transfusion, every single day? And if you didn't, you'd die? Just like that? And who does that for you? Who controls the systems that monitor your vitals and the systems that empties your body of the poisons and replenishes it with plasma that your body long ago gave up producing? Who does that, hm?"
Lizzie's chin began to quiver.
"She ... she ... doesn't do just that, though ... she ... she ... also ..."
Lizzie sniffled.
I closed my eyes and heaved out a sad sigh, then I reached out and cradled my Lizzie in my arms. My poor, little violated Lizzie.
"Yes," I said. "And I will never forgive Cortana for doing that to you, too. But, now we have Miranda because of that. Do you hate our daughter because of how we got her?"
Lizzie sniffled in my shoulder. "That's not it, and you know it, Rosalie Hale!" she whispered angrily. "But now, ... God, c'mon! Can't you see, Rosalie? Now I'm dependent for my life, every single day, on my own rapist? And what'll happen the next time you go out on a research mission for more than a week like last time? I'm scared to death that I'll just fall down not knowing what hit me, just like last time when she put that gas in the air, then I wake up, strapped down to a chair with her SINGING TO ME? Telling me IT'LL BE OKAY? And I see that ... that ... robot arm coming toward me, and I CAN'T STOP IT because she's put something in my blood that makes me feel all numb and funny, and I can't move anyway because I'm strapped down, and I know I don't want it, but then it's happening and ..."
Lizzie stopped and gasped, holding me tightly to her.
"What happens next time?" she asked mournfully. "That's all I can think, all the time. That's all I think, every second you're away from me, behind that glass door that I'm not supposed to go through, because you're embarrassed of having to explain you have a stupid girl you have to take care of. So I cower back here with the baby who'll be smarter than me next year when she's two years old, you say, and wait for my next blackout when she'll do what to me? Take away my baby? Take me away from you? 'Cause she's jealous of us? 'Cause she hates that I can breathe, and cry, and nurse my baby? And she's just a mean-old robot that has to take care of me, and ... she tells on me, doesn't she? She and you are real buddy-buddy, aren't you! And she watches me every second, doesn't she, but I can't see her at all, I just feel her eyes on me all the time. Watching me. Hating me! And then she goes and tells you every second of what a fuck-up I am and ..."
"Lizzie," I exclaimed, "language!"
Lizzie sniffled.
"It's true," she whispered petulantly.
I didn't know which of the truths Lizzie mentioned that she wanted me to confirm or to protest.
"Baby," I sighed. "Cortana doesn't choose sides. Not mine. Not yours. She serves you and me both. And she tells on us both. She gives me your status, yes, every day, because I ask for it..."
"You could just ask me!" Lizzie spat.
I paused at that.
Asking Lizzie anything about her or her day was always a chore, because all she would say to anything about her was that it was 'fine,' even as her failed kidneys leaked out painful blood poison into her system, killing her slowly, second by second, she said she was 'fine,' even as she was wincing in pain, pasty-white pale, then collapsing into my arms. A full physical with a complete analysis of her blood tests showed that she was very much not 'fine.'
My Lizzie. 'I'm fine,' she'd say, even if it were her very last gasp of air.
I wondered if she said that, five hundred years ago, gasping her last and dying, strangled in her own sheets. I wondered if she died in her sleep, not even aware she was dying, then cold and dead when I found her, just like that.
'Don't worry about me. I'm fine.'
Was that what her corpse, still and at peace in death, said to me?
I was grateful that vampires are unable to cry. Because if they were, I would be crying, even now, even five hundred years later, remembering the shock of that moment, finding her lying thus, and finding myself powerless to resurrect the one and only thing that ever meant anything to me in my non-life existence, with the taste of bitter regret in my mouth, burning like acid, burning like venom, that I never got to the point where I could tell her this. I had never earned that right to.
No. I didn't get my daily status from Lizzie, not since her 'I'm fine, Rosalie, ...' as she fainted into my arms gave me a very clear indication that she was the worst person to consult on how she was doing.
I continued, ignoring her outburst: "...and she gives my status to High Command, every day, because that's who she works for. Not me, not you. Them."
"Well," Lizzie said after a moment. "She may not choose sides, but you sure have, haven't you?" She nuzzled my shoulder sadly. "I just wish you chose my side. Just once."
She breathed in a heavy breath, sucking in the air in a stuttering gasp.
"And what do you call this?" I asked as I held her into me.
Lizzie paused, considering. I felt her conflicted thoughts crawl slowly through her brain.
"I don't know, Rosalie," she said finally, despair and defeat in her voice. "I don't know."
"My Lizzie," I sighed.
I closed my eyes for a moment, holding her so tightly into me that I felt the weak, little bones in her body move, just ever so slightly, yielding to my strength.
I didn't even exercise one-tenth of one percent of how much I wanted to hold her, to squeeze her into me. Not even one per mille. And that was too much for her little human body already.
And it wasn't enough for me. It was never enough. And it never would be.
But it was all I could ask for. To ask any more would kill her.
I said, sadly: "You do know. Tell me what you know. What is this that I hold you now, if I'm not choosing sides? If I'm not choosing you, now, and forever?"
Lizzie was quiet for a bit, then she lifted up her head a little bit, to look up into my face, and her nose gently rubbed my chin as her eyes sought mine in the darkness, only the soft red glow of the floor panelling giving her enough light for her to see me looking down at her.
"I... I think," she said hesitantly, "that it's not. Not really. I ... think that if she were back, somehow, today, that ... that ..."
She gasped. "That ... you'd abandon me for her in a heartbeat, and you'd ... be so happy doing it. You'd have her back: the real one, not fake-old me. And you'd love her with all your heart. And ... and ... you'd just ... you'd just ..."
Lizzie buried her head back into my shoulder, and whispered sadly, "... and you'd just leave me. Just like that."
I felt her tears soiling my uniform. The saltiness of them would leave a stain on my shoulder. I'd have to replace it. Must keep up appearances. Because that's what the military was all about: appearances.
My uniforms were fresh and crisp and brand new, every single day, so I could keep up appearances of being in charge and having it all together, not letting my personal life bleed into my professional life.
There were comments from the staff about that.
The staff could fuck themselves with their comments for all I cared. I did my job. They did theirs. I didn't ask nor comment about what they did with their personal time, but since I was head of Section Zero, that somehow gave them the right to make snide remarks of what I did with my own time?
And since I was section head, I couldn't be petty and snap back at their whispered comments that they intended me to feel but not to hear. Office politics required I be impersonal and exercise impartial self-discipline, inhuman self-discipline, even.
If only they knew.
"Is that what you think, hm?" I asked.
I shook my head. "You stupid, little shit," I scolded, and I felt sad as these words ripped their way out of my gut.
Is this what it was to love someone? To hurt so badly all the time?
I hated it.
I wouldn't trade it for anything else in the world.
"See?" she said sadly. "That's what you think of me." She sniffled. "I'm just a stupid little nothing to you. You love her, and you just love me because that's all you can get of her. Just me. Just a shit."
"Baby," I said softly, and I kissed the top of your head, "are you ready to hurt even more?"
She laughed softly. It was a helpless laugh, bordering on insanity. "Heh. Hahaha," she laughed, and I think I heard the saddest sound in the world. "Why not?" she asked rhetorically.
"Okay," I continued, "then here it is:..."
And then I said it: "I love her."
Lizzie gasped.
"I love her with all my heart," I said quietly.
"Oh," she said, as she held onto me tightly.
"Lizzie, ..." I said.
"I guess I knew that," she interrupted. "I guess ... I guess I just ... It's just that ..."
I felt more tears stain my uniform.
"Let me finish," I said. "I love her."
"I got that, Rose," Lizzie said sadly.
"Lizzie," I said.
She sniffled, but then she was quiet, holding onto me, bunching up my blouse in her tiny hands, wrinkling the pressed cotton.
I pressed forward. "I knew her just long enough to know that I loved her. And then she was gone. And that's all I knew of her: that I loved her, and I loved her with all my heart, and I would never love another as I loved her."
I shifted my head to look down at my Lizzie.
"Do you understand that? Do you hear what I'm saying?" I asked her.
Lizzie breathed in, deeply, and held her breath for a long time, then let it out.
"Yes," she said sadly.
She didn't let me go. And I didn't let her go. I didn't let her let me go.
"No," I said reprovingly, "you don't get it. Because if you did, you know what I mean. Lizzie. I knew her for a few days, just enough to know I loved her, and to know her, and then she died. But then what happened?" I asked.
I waited for an answer, but Lizzie was quiet, just taking in the sound of my voice, if not hearing my words at all. She was this nothing thing: so weak and frail, her every breath an effort, a choice to take the next one, or simply to give up and die.
"But then I got something nobody, ever, gets. God gave me a second chance. Lizzie, one thousand one-hundred thirty-seven batches failed, and we were on the last strain of her DNA with your batch, and your egg was the only one that achieved cell division, and then what happened, Lizzie?"
Again, her silence.
"Don't you remember?" I asked her, pleading with her. "You were the only one in the tube who open her eyes, and followed my movements. You were the only one out of the tube that gasped and breathed and cry and did not disintegrate onto the lab floor. You were the only one to look up to me and say a word before we had you on the gurney, rushing you to the ICU. Do you remember what you said to me just before your cardiac arrest?"
It was a close thing. It was a God-damn close run thing, pressing the oxygen mask over her face as I massaged her heart as we fucking sprinted to the ER.
"No," she said humbly, but curious despite her despair.
I smiled. "You cried out 'mommy!' You thought I was your mommy, birthing you, creating you, the only person you saw as your body took shape and formed and became aware that you weren't alone. I saw it in you, your awareness. Your eyes followed my fingers as I waved them back and forth in front of the growth tube. You smiled at me when I smiled at you. And I knew that you felt it: that someone was watching you as you grew into your body. That someone loved you and cared for you."
Lizzie buried her head into my shoulder. I don't know if it were from embarrassment, calling her lover 'mommy,' or if it were from being comforted by the only one who she could hope to be loved by in this strange, alien world she died to five hundred years ago and woke up to two years ago, not two hundred meters from where she died: a secret military research facility built to examine and contain the unnatural phenomenon of a crater not formed by natural means where nothing would grow, where the temperature remained sub-zero year-round, regardless of the surrounding ambient temperature, and where there sat, for five hundred years, a statue of a girl, head bent in sorrow, golden hair fluttering over her face in a light breeze, beside a little mound of dirt indistinguishable from the surround ash, except for the fact that it was the source material containing, here and there, traces of twenty-three chromosomes aligned in two matching crosses.
Female. Human. Carbon dating date of death over five hundred years ago.
That was all that I had left of a girl that I loved with all my heart, and who had died, alone, in a cabin, who died before I could save her, even if I didn't want to do that to her, nor to anybody. But I didn't have that option then.
I had that option now to bring her back. And this time, I did not hesitate. I did not quit on her, even after one hundred trials that failed, not even after a thousand that failed. I pressed forward, grimly, to the very bitter end, to the very last fucking sample, hoping beyond hope that just one, just the very last one would work where all the other failures where lessons learned for me, and for Cortana, to apply to the next sample, not to make the same mistakes we made before. That's how we switched from flash-cloning to fast-cloning: just fast enough for the body to resolve and then know how to remain in homeostasis, even if Cortana and I had to fucking force it to stay stable, with daily heroic measures to help her to stay alive even as regulatory systems in her body shut down and quit on her.
We were going to keep her alive as long as we could, so help me!
And she was alive. Barely. But barely was enough. I held this barely alive girl in my arms.
"Do you know why I tell you all this?" I asked her.
"Yeah," she said shyly into my shoulder. "I guess so."
I paused, then smirked. I didn't expect that answer from her.
"Okay, then," I said, playing along. "Why, then, did I say all this to you?"
"Uh..." Lizzie paused. I felt her brow knit and her jaw working, trying to formulate an answer, now that she was under the cross-hairs of my scrutiny.
"Uh..." she repeated helplessly.
Then I felt the heat from her blush.
Her blood may be a light, light green tint, but her face still heated up deliciously with her embarrassment... like it always did.
I smiled.
"Uh ..." she floundered. "Uh, ... I guess I don't know why you told me all this after all, Rose..."
She paused, swallowing her shame. "Would you ... would you please tell me why you, uh, told me this stuff?"
I rolled my eyes. "'Stuff'?" I asked sharply.
"Uh ... yeah, uh ..."
Poor Lizzy! Her brain was fried all day taking care of the baby, and then she had to spend her nights with me? Who never got sleepy, so when was the best time to talk?
Poor girl.
"Uh, yeah, the stuff, the things you told me. That stuff," she explained lamely.
I sighed and kissed her head, lightly, forgiving her. "I told you all this, sweetie, because, even though I knew her, that girl Bella Swan, for the briefest of moments in Eternity, I knew her enough to see her pure spirit, and to know that I loved her, and, loving her like that meant loving her forever and ever. But you, Lizzie, I've known for two years now, and here, right now, with me telling you I loved her and will always love her, is me telling you that I love you, and, Lizzie, I will always love you. Forever."
"'Cause I'm some cheap knock-off of her?" she said so sadly, but so defiantly. Daring me to love her because she was a copy of somebody else.
"No," I said. "A clone is not the original. It never is. It doesn't have the original's memories or experiences, it just has the exact same genes of the person cloned, and that's all. That means you have the same blood type and liver and muscle tissue ... you'd make a great organ donor, except for the fact that your organs are quitting on you faster than we could harvest them from you."
"Great," she said sarcastically. "Thanks."
"Just telling it like it is," I retorted coolly.
"But you're saying I'm not her," she said.
"No, sweetie," I said. "I said a clone is not the original. A clone doesn't pick up the life of the person clone and just carry on, going to work the next day and greeting the wife with a 'Hi, honey, I'm home!' while patting the kids on the head. That's a myth and a fallacy, and that's why flash-cloning will never pay off like criminal elements who use them hope to."
"Like you?" she demanded.
"I did what I did," I said. "I won't apologize for it, because I don't deserve forgiveness, and also because if I didn't kidnap all those children and substitute them with flash-clones, then we wouldn't have the army we have now to give humanity at least a glimmer of hope against the Covenant onslaught."
"So the ends justify the means?" she pressed.
"Lizzie," I sighed.
She buried her head into my shoulder. "I'm sorry."
"Don't be!" I nudged her with my shoulder so she would look at me, but she stoutly refused, now shy that her arrows hit their mark. "Don't you ever lose your innocence or your sense of what's right. Be my conscience, because I have none, and hardly anyone else still alive cares to think about what's right and what's wrong anymore; they just think about surviving, but to what end? Survive in a world without justice or fairness or even God? The Covenant may actually have the moral high ground here ... they may be right to wipe us out."
"How can you say that, Rosalie?" she said, surprised. "I've seen the feeds. They kill for fun! They kill women and children and whole planets just because they can!"
"And before the Covenant came, what was humanity doing to itself already?" I countered.
Lizzie was quiet. She knew about the insurgency, and all the atrocities committed by people on people all in the name of whatever altruistic cause either side carried on their banner as they marched into battle, murdering, raping, and pillaging as they went, first in retaliation, and then just because that's what animals did: kids with guns, fresh out of the academy, then, battle-hardened, insensitive to the fact that they were killing people, just carrying out a grudge on whomever they could punish for fallen comrades-in-arms or for war-wounds received in battle.
"I just ..." Lizzie paused. "Would you be saying the same things if it were somebody kidnapping Miranda to do what you did to those kids?"
She had me there.
"No," I said ruefully, "I wouldn't be saying that." Then, thinking of Miranda in the hands of a vivisectionist, just like me, my rue turned to a cold fury. "I'd be ripping apart this facility to find her and get her out of this hell, and then I would show every person their spleen that I had just evacuated from their gaping body cavities."
"See?" she said.
"Yes."
We were quiet for a while, me holding her.
"You're as bad as everyone else, Rosalie Hale," Lizzie accused. Then she thought about it, and added: "No, you're worse. You're worse than anybody else. You're worse than the insurgents, at least they had their ideals. You're worse than the ... than the Covenant. They just kill us for their religious beliefs, but they don't steal away babies and leave a false copy for the parents to grieve over, not knowing why their healthy child just starts to fall apart after a doctor's appointment. They don't resurrect the dead, so ... so ..." Lizzie sobbed, "so she can always wonder who she is, and know no matter what she does, it's because somebody else, just like her, was gonna do it, and do it better, too, without her body falling apart. Without her always knowing she's just a copy, a fake, a non-citizen, and I ... I wake up in this strange place, and the only thing I know about myself is everything you and that monster tell me, so I don't even know if this other person even existed or is just some lie you cooked up so I can be docile and love you because you made me like that, and ... and ..."
Lizzie held onto me tightly.
"And you're worse than all the rest of them. All the rest of them combined."
I took it. I took it all, everything she gave me, and breathed her in. And loved her.
Helplessly, I loved her.
"Because I made you." I said.
"Yes," she said.
"And you hate me for that."
"I ..."
She breathed in deeply, gasping in the air in a sob.
"It's okay, Lizzie. It's okay to hate me," I said sadly. "I expected it from the first. I expect it now. I don't deserve your love. I never did. You're right, I'm the monster, not Cortana. Me. I'm worse than ..."
Lizzie's hand reached up and touched my lips.
"But ..." she said, brokenly. "I don't hate you. I love you. I love you with all my heart. And, Rosalie, I hate myself for that. I hate myself for loving you. I love you. I can't help it. You're worse than all the rest, and I know that, I see it every day, but you ... I will never be ... nobody else will ever ..."
She crushed the material of my blouse in her tiny hands.
"I do love you, Lizzie, with all my heart," I said softly, putting my entire being into every word as I said each one to her.
"You love her with all your heart, Rosalie," she said sadly, "and I'm just a puppet, and my strings are her genes, and I just look the same and sound the same, and ... but, I'm not her, but I'm not even me, because I don't even know who that is. I just know my role, and I just play it, like a good little cl-cl-clone that I am. And all I can do is suck up your love, because I need it more than the air that I breathe, I'd just so fucking die if you didn't love me, even for one second. And I know that you're just loving her, and I'm just there to take it, but that's all I can do, take your love for her, because that's all I know."
She sniffled.
"Lizzie," I sighed. "Yes, I love her, but loving her is loving you. A clone is not the person, you are your own person, and you are her, down to your very bones, and you are yourself, and, sweetie, they are one and the same. I can't explain this in words to you, I can only hold you, and know I love you with all my heart, because you are my Lizzie, come back to me. My second chance. Don't you see? You are living proof of the soul. I saw her soul in her eyes, and I felt in love with her so hard it hit me like a ton of bricks when I found out, seeing her, dead on her bed, and sweetie, when I look in your eyes, I see your soul, and I love you for it. You came back to me, and I love you, and I will hold you as long as you want me to, even onto forever. Don't you see, Lizzie? I love you. You came back. Your soul didn't die, it's here, in this body that is fighting so hard to be her own, just as you fought so hard to be your own, five hundred years ago, just as you called me kind, just as you saw me for what I was, evil beyond description, and chose to love me, anyway. Lizzie, I love you. I loved you five hundred years ago. I love you today. I will love you forever, don't you see?"
"Thank you, Rose." Her words were kind, but unconvinced. "I don't know about all that soul-crap. I think you're stupid and deluded about that, and I don't want you to love me because I'm supposed to be somebody else, somebody you knew a long time ago, and probably felt the same way about her that you feel about me, just blind to everything except what you wanted to see in her, and I bet, if I knew her, that it really pissed her off."
I chuckled lightly. "It did, actually."
"Well, it pisses me off, too," she said in no uncertain terms.
"Just like her," I said, then added: "just like you."
Lizzie sighed. "Whatever, Rose. I ... I guess I'm grateful for your love, you mad scientist! I just wish you could love me for who I am. And I just wish I knew who I was, so you could love that person, and so that I could know it was that person, me, that you were loving, and not somebody who you say I'm supposed to be."
"Baby," I said, "I do love you for who ..."
Lizzie's hand was on my lips again.
"My back's still achy," she said.
I chuckled. My Lizzie is as subtle as a gausse-hog when it comes to asking me to change topics.
"Do you want me to rub it?" I asked, smirking, my hands already gently stroking up and down her bony back.
"Ohhh, yeah," she moaned. "Right there, Rose. Right ... there ..."
She sighed contently as my hands worked their magic on her knotted and stiff muscles.
"You little ..." I began.
She kissed my lips to silence, moaning into my mouth and my hands gently massaged her.
We kissed, like that, our lips pressed together as our bodies held each other.
Then Lizzie completely relaxed, and then ...
I broke off the kiss.
"Lizzie?" I whispered.
Her breath was deep and even. Her eyes were closed and untroubled.
"Sweetie?" I asked.
No response.
"You little nutter!" I whispered in dismay.
My Lizzie had fallen asleep kissing me.
I didn't know whether to be amused or affronted. Was I that boring a kisser? Or that good at relaxing her with my hands rubbing her back?
Or was she just tired, and decided to fall asleep, her lips kissing mine.
Wonderful.
I sighed.
Actually, it was wonderful. She was holding me, in her sleep, and I was holding her, and looking at her peacefully sleeping face, knowing she'd wake up tomorrow, still with her questions, still with her insistent baby clinging to her, but for now, for right this moment, she had this peace of being in the arms of the woman she loved, despite everything that I am and despite everything she thinks she isn't.
She may think she is nothing, but to me, she is my all, and I love her.
And today, this century, I get to tell her that. And she may not believe me, but I can tell her that, and she can hear me, and accept my love, and love me back.
And that is enough, for now, and for ever.
A/N: A reviewer of my story Reminiscence requested I write a story where after the long, terrible loneliness Rosalie experienced after losing Bella Swan in ch 22 of My Sister Rosalie, that she be reunited with her love somehow. This story came to me this past week and fitted that request: Rosalie got her second chance. Did she live happily ever after, getting that second chance?
p.s.: What next in this story series, dear readers? "Boots on the Ground" detailing the Marines encounter with the Forerunner Artifact in old South Dakota, and the one Marine lieutenant that talked Rosalie down from her rampage? Or Cortana's recollection of clones 1137, and it's dissolution and 1138 and her first few tentative days out of the tube?