Act Fourteen – Scene 1: Recollections
AN: This weekend I'm headed to a family reunion, so I decided to post three parts tonight to make up for my inability to post tomorrow much. Tuesday I will be leaving for a trip to out to the east coast to visit relatives along the shore. I will be taking a laptop (whether it will be the one I ordered or not depends on the Dell people who are delivering it) and the fragmented parts of this story.
I would like to thank all of the people who reviewed the first two parts. Your encouragement and comments are greatly appreciated, and I hope to read more. To the people wondering about the lack of dialogue (and I have had several discussions on this topic with other people concerned about the same deficiency) the dialogue picks up right after the interlude following this scene, which is entitled 'In Your Arms' and goes into a more poetical prose style of an earlier mentioned vignette that will recur in this scene, 'Recollections,' please bear with me for a few more parts. This Act continues to grow and grow as I go into the details of Roger's first case after his ordeal, and I am currently on part 12, Scene 7: 'Card Reader' and am not even halfway through the case.
As for the length of these parts, they do get longer as time progresses. Incidentally, the dialogue picks up more in Scene 2: Demons and Angels, and continues thereafter. I have the basic layout of these parts finished, but the exchanges of spoken word require more than just the speaker and their name to be suitable for the sequence of events I have chosen to follow. More in-depth perceptions of characters even I have been neglecting, such as Norman Burg, Alex Rosewater, and Angel. Several mysteries will be cleared up, while a few more are given.
But enough of my rambling and onto the story.
'I knew
nothing of the world but him. And now I know more of the world, and I
understand that all I need is him. At the time I had the two confused. I
thought it was emotion, the trappings of the human being I had not yet
acquired, and that would make me feel whole. At times they did, when he would
mention my progress or spare me a glance untainted by any emotion other than
pride and… sometimes… respect.'
For the
first week after the battle with the trio of mega deuces, the worried and
anxious Norman confined Roger to his bed. Dorothy took charge soon after his
wounds were treated, since Norman needed to overhaul Big O again. Big Ear had
contacted the manor three days after the battle with the simple words, 'Duo
lives.' Both android and butler knew what that meant, and had begun
preparations to rehabilitate both Big O and its pilot as quickly as possible.
Upon waking
from a state of slumber that lasted two full days, Roger opened lucid eyes to
see Dorothy's face hovering just at the edge of his field of vision. His
reaction, though silent, was immediate. His muscles grew taut and his eyes
widened with fear and a vigilant guard, his only response to her queries a
frightened look as though he expected her to attack him. She did not understand
his response; it was as though he wasn't really seeing her or the area around
him.
Slowly he had come to accept her presence,
but it was still another day before he would take anything from her. She did
not alert Norman so that the butler would remain calm and continue his work on
the mega deuce. Soon, however, she began to fear she had made the wrong
decision in not telling the butler of his charge's actions.
Roger,
restless, had been sullen and withdrawn to the point that Dorothy began to
think that he would not recover confined to the gigantic prison of silk sheets
and thick, firm cushion, and allowed him to walk the room. Slowly at first,
with her body pressed close to guide his weaker one, but soon she allowed him
to walk around by himself, giving the tortured soul back part of its freedom.
Somehow the
wound in his arm had caused some damage to his mind in the form of resurfacing
his memories, and so doing, some debilitated form of his once healthy emotions.
The stress had caused what would have been called before the Incident, a
breakdown.
He could do
little else by himself, despite his wishes, but pace slowly the circle of his
room and bathe himself, since his arm was still mending slowly. His pallor was
sallow and greenish still on the fourth day, and Dorothy wanted to call a
doctor. She said as much to Roger, who had spoken very little, if at all, in
the four days she had been tending him.
He
immediately protested, and she relented. He was finally well enough to function
on a semi-normal level, and so she allowed him to leave the room and act on his
own accord. Her one requirement was that he wear a sling for his wounded
appendage, to which he agreed morosely.
She brought
the logic to mind that it was a small price to pay for the liberty of movement
he lacked while forced to keep his upper body still so he would not jar his
wound. She relented in her constant vigilance at his side, and went back to her
own room on the fifth night, only to be awoken from her blank-state by noises
from his room.
She entered
the room quietly and stood near the bed, a familiar post since the battle, but
without her normal nonchalant indifference. As she watched he began to struggle
more frantically, one hand going to the shoulder of the wounded arm, as though
to keep it still. His movements were in vain, however, and so she intervened.
She sat down gently on the bed next to him and put a hand to his forehead in
order to wake him.
His eyes
jerked open and he stared at her in a mix of wild fear and incomprehension. He
was guarded – body tense and shaking.
"Roger, you
were having a nightmare," she said slowly.
It took
several more minutes to assure his battered wits and bruised psyche that she
was, indeed, R. Dorothy Waynewright and this was his home and it was
four in the morning. She did not ask why he was having the nightmares, she
could tell it was from when he received the bullet wound to his arm, and she
refrained from commenting on the fear in his eyes. He had not mentioned what
transpired, so she did not inquire after the facts. She felt it best that way,
but was saddened that he only had the skittish and guarded look in his eyes
when he looked upon her.
For the
following week things progressed normally. His arm began to heal properly and
swifter than it had been, though his color was slower to return to its normal
healthy tone. He continued to have restless dreams at night, and Norman, ever
vigilant, once got to the room before Dorothy had roused herself in time, and
then came directly to the door of her room, where he requested she look in on
Roger since he could do nothing for his ailing master.
The dreams
were not always the same. Sometimes he did not see the imprint of her face in
the hideous mask of Red Destiny; sometimes it was memories that returned to
him. Long distant things he had believed he had trapped away for good on the
day that Fate abandoned him. He saw his mother, yet again, and imagined Dorothy
her image, protecting him, and then still other things. The day of the murder,
the look of those green eyes staring lifelessly at some far distant point he
could not even imagine, the body soaked in blood… and the impression of a
building he could not quite make out… all things he sequestered in a vault at the pit of his soul in order to
protect himself. Demons he believed long perished.
All the
remaining scraps of his hidden self strung themselves out in his dreams, and
the only being that made him feel even a bit of emotion woke him from their
taunting haunting of his mind. He looked up into her eyes, those saving,
damning eyes, and he sometimes cried. It dismayed her to see him like that.
She was
more at ease with him when he did not bear himself to her, but his façade – the
trademark of the Negotiator, his laid back and impassive personality. She more
enjoyed the barbed version to the truth. It was against her previous decision,
but she wanted the old Roger back.
She had,
from time to time, been curious to know what shaped the black clad Negotiator
since she had started treading within the cage bars of his rules, and she
finally had her answers, but they were not those she was looking for.
It had been
a basket of flowers she had expected, perhaps a few weeds, but not the den of
the lions. She could almost feel the dark figures prowling around her, they
invaded her thoughts at times these shadows of his past should not have, and
eventually, realization dawned on her. She was feeling all of these things he
was experiencing. She was sympathizing, or at least empathizing with his pain
instinctively.
She cared
about him.
Roger
Smith.
The louse.
She cared
for the old Roger Smith, and was working her hardest to bring him back out of
the petrified shell he had raised up when the memories washed over him. She
wanted him back to his normal self. She yearned for even the smallest glimmer
of hope that the person he once was lie hibernating inside him somewhere. She…
And she began to wonder if her synthetic body could hold a soul. It certainly held a heart.