Chapter 26 – Long Time Coming
Tyana snipped the end off the red wire and soldered it into the correct socket. She replaced the fuses and reversed the blue and green wires. A second later she gently swapped the Command board. She soldered the silver together and then connected the black wire. Exhaling she glanced up at Shadow who sat at the end of the bed watching her intently. The pinked haired woman smiled reassuringly and wrapped her arms around her legs. Tyana glanced back down at the mess of wires and bulbs and carefully placed the case back on. She twisted the miniature screws back in and sat the device on its correct axis. She flipped the On switch and watched as the mini screen lit up. It worked.
Memory Recovery Unit
Status: 100% correct working order
Memories recovered: 0
Tyana felt her heart flutter in her chest and she looked up at Shadow with an exuberant expression.
"It works?" Shadow inquired, lifting her chin from where it was resting on her knees.
Tyana blinked back tears and nodded, "Apparently so. 100% working order"
Shadow's face lit up. She hopped off the bed and made her way to stand beside Tyana where she sat in front of the device she had been waiting to use so desperately. It had been a long time coming. She rubbed Tyana's back as she smiled, looking down at her, purely happy for her.
She dropped to a crouch and then she was looking up at Tyana, into her happy eyes. "You can give Jeff his memory back" she whispered.
And that was all it took for Tyana to let the tears of joy slip from her eyes.
***
"So, d'ya wanna go out tonight?" Jeff asked gently as Tyana washed the purple and green manic panic out of his hair; her idea.
Tyana refilled her cup and poured it over Jeff's hair, watching as the swirls of purple and green washed away and slipped down the plug hole. She refilled the mug. "I dunno, I kinda feel like staying in, we can watch a film or something, just chill out. If you don't mind that is" she answered, her mind flickering to the memory device sitting in her bag just one door away. She poured the cup over his scalp. More dye escaped.
"Not at all, sounds good."
Tyana beamed, "Great" and continued to rinse out his hair.
An hour later Tyana sat curled up in Jeff's arms, his newly dyed hair tickling her neck, her fingers intertwined in his, Legally Blonde playing on the television. Tyana was somewhat aware of the general plot of the film but her mind had been drifting away from her continuously since she had accepted Jeff's proposal that she spend the afternoon with him. She could feel her hands growing clammy and jittery with the tension, her mind flickering back constantly to the thought that in her bag that had been fetched from next door, the bag that was now propped up against the end of the bed, in that very bag was the one device she had only ever been that eager to use. And yet she had never been so nervous and so utterly terrified in her short but full life. What if it didn't work? What if they never got back what they were beginning to have? Sure it was all going well then but Tyana would never feel right if she had to live with memories that Jeff was totally unawares of. And what if it did work? What if he didn't believe it? Couldn't accept it? Rejected it? She couldn't live with knowing that she had once had something so perfect. Her hands continued to wrap themselves up in a fine film of worried perspiration.
Tyana felt herself ease ever so slightly when Jeff took the hand he had been holding hers in and brushed it against her forearm, grazing his finger tips across the smooth tan of her arm. She left her eyes slip to watch his fingers dance across her, fluttering up her arm, sweeping to caress her shoulder. His breath was warming her neck as he hovered behind her, her back pressed to his chest.
"Jeff?" she asked quietly, opposing the itch to close her eyes at his gentle attention.
"Mm-hmm?" he responded, his hand pausing only momentarily before it continued in its adventure of grazing every flawless inch of her skin, looking for pores and finding them to be so miniscule her exterior looked to be entirely perfect.
She smiled warmly and leant her weight back against him just that little bit more, "What're you doing?"
She could sense his smile, small, soft, entirely his. "I'm looking at your skin" he replied, his voice so low in her ear that Tyana shivered involuntarily.
"Is there a reason for that?" she asked, having to force herself to enunciate the words beyond pure lustful blabber, Reese Witherspoon babbling on in the background, an element she didn't even acknowledge.
"Yeah" he mumbled, dribbling his fingers up over her collar bone, tracing the bottom of her neck, making her move her head to the side without a though, giving him access, allowing him to sweep away her hair. She waited in a trance, vaguely aware that she was expecting elaboration, not so sure of what it was on. "This is going to sound stupid." He began, his eyes fixed firmly on the profile, slightly shadowed due to the drawn curtains keeping out the late afternoon sun.
"I'm sure it won't" she responded automatically, unaware of her comment until it was complete.
"It will…I'm going to say it anyway. Ty…I feel like I know you" he whispered, his voice quiet with confidence and yet absolute uncertainty. Tyana felt her eyes opening, focusing better after the closing haze they had lapsed into, her sense soaring as she listened on. "Looking at you now, having you here, it makes me feel like there's something more to it. Something I don't know…It's something I can sense. I feel as if there's so much I don't know, so much I should be, um…recalling, almost." Her heart was thumping hurriedly, picking up on all the things he was saying, her mind sprinting off in a million and one directions as it tried to analyze it. "But I don't know what. I just don't know. And…and I've been having these dreams. Dreams of us, of being together, talking, but it's not like just another dream. It's like, like a déjà vu. I get this feeling in my gut of it having happened before. But I know it couldn't have." He sighed, his hand falling from her body and landing on the bed beside them, disheartened. "It sounds crazy, I know—I told you it would sound stupid"
Tyana shook her head and she turned in his lap, twisting her body so that she faced him. "It doesn't." She bit her lip, looking at every contour of his face, taking in every lurking emotion, trying to decide what she should do, what she should say, what would be best. She smiled coyly, her eyes still rooming his features and she lifted her own hand, moving it to his face, hesitating when she was lingering near it. She caressed his cheek, stroking it gently until his eyes were assessing her in the same way she was him, until he had found his hand again and had clamped it over hers tenderly.
"What?" he asked her, sensing the doubt, feeling her desire to speak.
"What you said…it wasn't stupid. And it wasn't crazy." How did she say it? How did she tell him everything about her, about whom she was and whom she had been? How did she do it again? "Jeff I have it too. I…there's some things about me you don't know. A lot of things. Not bad things—as crazy as this will sound—you've accepted them before. It's hard to explain and to tell you the truth I dunno if I can. But you have to trust me when I say there are so many things in this world that seem like they are one thing and the reality is they are quite another. And although I'm one of them I've only ever tried to do well, always. You have to believe that and you have to understand that; I can't explain if you don't, I can't tell you if you don't trust me, Jeff." He gave her an intense gaze, his eyes staring so hard into hers that she felt as if for a split second they had switched places, as if she had become him and him her. And finally after what was infinity of concentrated and torturous waiting he nodded.
"I trust you"
Tyana felt her eyes well up instantly and her breath rushed from her in relief, leaving her struggling not to collapse against him just with the happiness of those 3 words alone. "Thank you"
"So will you tell me? And explain?"
She nodded and climbed out of her lap, crawling to the end of the bed to snatch up her bag. She scooped it onto the sheets gently, creeping back to Jeff and setting it down between then tenderly, gingerly with its power of their future and past relationships. He gave the bag, and then she a quizzical look, curious, questioning. Tyana untied the drawstring, pulling open the bag's gaping mouth, slipping her hand inside and slowly withdrawing the memory device, the silver and grey glinting between them.
"This will explain; it'll show you all that I am, all that we are and have been. Jeff you'll know it all and I hope you'll accept it. You just have to watch this" she told him as she pointed to the bulb.
He gazed at it briefly before he looked at her, "What is it? What does it do?"
She inhaled deeply, flipping the switch to turn it on, getting it ready for use. "Do you want to ask questions…or do you want the answers?" she asked, her finger tracing the metal around the button that would turn it all around. Jeff stared at her for just a moment before his eyes found the device again, before his eyes clicked on to the sight of her finger near that little black knob. And he reached out, sliding her small finger onto the black, his hand over hers. He gave her one last look and then he stared into the bulb and he pressed down...
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*A/N* hehe, cliff hanger, I am like SO mean! Mwa, hopefully you'll love me for it, even though I made you wait sooo long for this chap. Thank you to Shadow, Billion Dollar Ashley and Someone for reviewing, I'm very grateful, :o)
