Uncontrollable Destiny (4/6) (V, PG-13, Lisa/Joshua)
A rather important author's note: It somehow got accidentally left out of the warnings spelled out in the first chapter, but there is a minor character death coming up in this fic. (not exactly in this chapter, but it'll happen before we reach the end.) I've updated the warnings on the first chapter, but I didn't want those readers in the middle of the story to be caught unawares. I'm terribly sorry for the lateness of this warning.
Part IV: The Past is Gone
Lisa's legs required several follow-up visits to the Healing Center over the next few days. Tyler was always around, marveling at the great technology of her people, and commenting on how he wouldn't know what to do if she had died in the accident. It should have been touching, and it should have helped her feel better, but it didn't.
She felt alone, abandoned. Even though she knew Joshua's present condition wasn't his fault and Tyler really did mean well, she still felt…misunderstood. Isolated.
She had never felt alone before. She had always been surrounded by her people, always been wonderfully numbed by the Bliss her mother provided. Then Tyler happened, and her world seemed to change. And then Joshua happened after that, and her whole world changed again, this time for the better. Slowly, both of them had begun to slip away. Joshua was lost to her before Tyler, but Lisa saw the signs. It would not be long before he joined the Live Aboard Program and her mother's influence over him was solidified.
At her first follow-up appointment, Joshua carefully clipped the tight black stitching that held the torn human flesh of her left leg together.
Lisa shifted slightly as the thread pulled at the swollen wound. By the time Joshua had finished, the entire length of her leg felt painfully raw. "You need to stay off of your feet for a few more days," he instructed, focusing on coating the still-healing wound on Lisa's leg with a thick, clear substance. "The human skin his healing nicely, but I'm concerned about its adhesion to…well, your skin beneath."
He moved around the table to her other leg and began soothing the lotion over the raw skin there, checking for bruises or other tears.
"Joshua…" Lisa swallowed. She was either about to be incredibly brave or unbelievably stupid. "You said the other day that…I…well…you didn't exactly make much sense."
He didn't pause his work to look at her. "I was…rather confused myself."
"You said nothing was the same around me. What…what did you mean by that?" Lisa winced in pain as his fingers pressed against a particularly tender portion of her human flesh.
"Before…" he seemed somewhat at a loss to find the appropriate words. "I saw you differently. I do not understand why."
"I looked different?"
"No…" Joshua frowned, and his hands finally stilled. "You look exactly the same. But I saw you differently."
"I don't understand." Lisa watched as his fingers pressed gently against the skin on her ankle. Something about this touch was less medical, more tender.
"I looked at you, and although you looked exactly the same as you do right now, something…drew me to you." He finally looked up at her face and her eyes caught his.
"How so?" Lisa asked, almost scared to know the answer.
"You were…perfection. You were beautiful. When I looked at you…everything else in the world just faded away. I wanted to stop Anna from hurting you…because it felt as if she was hurting me."
Joshua blinked once, as if waking from a trance. "It makes no sense to me now."
Lisa looked away from him, unable to continue looking in his eyes when for one short minute her Joshua was there and then he was gone. Her vision blurred and her throat constricted.
The next day when Lisa went for her exam, they didn't speak at all. At some point, Joshua must have attempted to get her attention, but when she didn't respond, he touched her hand. "Lisa? Are you alright?"
Lisa blinked, slowly, trying to process what he said. "I believe I am fine."
His hand still covered hers, and his thumb and first finger circled her wrist. Stretching his arm across the table, he took her other hand and helped her down. "Be careful not to put any undue stress on your legs. I'll see you at the usual time tomorrow."
Time dragged by slowly. Lisa spent most of it in her sleeping quarters, lying down. Tyler stopped by occasionally. He was ecstatic to the point of being painfully annoying. Although his mother still maintained that Live Aboard was a bad idea, Tyler was relentless. Lisa was almost certain that elsewhere aboard the Mothership, Anna was doubtlessly making Tyler's excitement look like mute impassiveness.
Her toenails grew back.
Every day, Joshua checked her legs, applied a creamy clear liquid to the wounded segments and sent her on her way. Often he did this without speaking, and usually without looking at her. It was something Lisa knew she could easily do herself, but she was a princess, the daughter of a queen, so extra steps were taken.
Tension filled most of her waking moments. Heightened complications on the ground - some due to the Fifth Column, some due to Anna's nefarious devices - made every Visitor and most of the humans uneasy. However, the Visitors generally had the comfort of Anna's bliss. Since Lisa had already gone several successful months without surrendering herself to the warm light, she wasn't about to start up the habit again. Besides, she had witnessed first hand the difference between the Joshua she had known and Joshua the way he was now. There was no way Lisa wanted to lose her soul like that.
She wondered, often, if there was any way to help Joshua start feeling human emotions again, but every option she considered held little chance of actually working, and only served to expose her if or when it backfired.
When the New Delhi Mothership inexplicably crashed to the ground, killing thousands of Visitors and Humans alike, Anna's first course of action was to initiate a second wave of empathy tests. The investigations were carried out in a matter of a few days, designed to strike so quickly that the Fifth Column would be unable to react. The tests had been upgraded since the last run-through, to the point where it would be near impossible to be feeling even a smidgen of human emotion and still pass.
It worked, sadly enough. Hundreds were exposed and eliminated in a thorough, methodical manner.
There was a time Lisa considered fleeing. Plenty of Fifth Column on the ground would have helped her in her flight. Erica, Jack…even Hobbes would have probably been more than willing to assist her in getting away and staying hidden. In the end, she decided that running away wasn't going to help matters any. She would stay and face the tests with strength and dignity.
If they killed her for it…then they killed her for it.
Joshua was in charge of coordinating and administering all the tests on the New York Mothership. Lisa was the last on a long list. Silently, Joshua positioned the circular monitors on either side of her face and motioned for her to sit down in the long silver chair. Inhaling a deep breath, Lisa allowed her eyes to close, giving her a few seconds of peace before what she knew would be a vicious bombardment.
She was right.
Horrifying sounds and grisly images covered the numerous screens above her, flooding her senses and muddling her mind. She tried not to focus on the pictures above her, tried not to react, but it proved to be nearly impossible.
She failed. Miserably.
Lisa knew it was true before she even slid off of the chair, prying the nodes from her temples as she slowly stood up. Behind her, Joshua's face was hidden by a holographic display, but she could see his eyes scanning the results. His lips were pinched tightly together, and she saw his eyebrows move upwards just slightly as he sliced a hand horizontally through the air and the intangible monitor vanished. Lisa held out the two nodes silently. Carefully, Joshua took the devices from her and slid them into his jacket pocket.
He studied her for a moment, as if lost in thought.
Then, finally, "Lisa, is this a trick?"
"Is what a trick?" she asked, perplexed.
"Because if this is a trick…I could easily kill you based on those test results and no one would bat an eye - not even Anna." He sounded angry, and Lisa almost took a step back.
He was angry.
"Joshua - what are you talking about?" she demanded, feeling the emotion rising in her voice but finding herself unable to stop it.
"You failed." He grabbed her shoulders. "Is it a trick this time too? Is Anna trying to make sure I'm on her side?"
"You're not?"
"That wasn't the question," he growled, shaking her lightly. "Is it a trick?"
Lisa licked her lips, anxiousness trickling down her spine. "To the extent of my knowledge, those test results were real and have always been real."
"You were - you are - feeling human emotion?" Joshua clarified. "You're Fifth Column?"
Lisa nodded once. "I am. So either kill me now, or let go of me."
His arms fell to his sides. "And before?"
"I was feeling before as well. I always was. Anna's plan was to make you believe I was sympathetic to your cause. It worked because she
didn't know that I actually was."
"The entire time…"
"I was on your side." She reached out, clasping her fingers around his arm and giving it a gentle squeeze. "I have always been on your side."
In one sudden, fluid motion, his arms were wrapped around her, hugging her in a warm, firm embrace. She'd done this before with Tyler, several times. She'd even done this with Erica…but here, with Joshua? This was something completely different. She felt secure, peaceful. Her mother's words echoed in her head, Nothing Ahead, Nothing Behind.
Lisa pressed her cheek against his, keeping her eyes closed, realization coming in waves. "I felt so alone. Why didn't you say something before?"
"I almost did, that night in the infirmary." He smiled. "Your mother didn't ask me to stay, you know."
"All that time…we both thought the other…" Words seemed hard to come by.
"I know." Joshua murmured, pulling away reluctantly. "Your mother is expecting me in her chambers shortly to give a full report. I'll change your test results again. She won't be able to trace it."
"Joshua…" The moment hung between them…a thick, heavy presence that made her head spin and her throat dry.
"I have to go," he whispered.
"I know," her fingers brushed his cheek.
"I'll see you…at our appointment tomorrow." He seemed unsure, but Lisa nodded. "I will see you then."
He looked like he wanted to say something…he looked like he wanted to say a lot of things, but instead he just watched as she walked away, allowing the door to shut quietly behind her.
The next day passed at a tortuously slow rate. Now that she could move about more freely, Lisa was stuck helping Tyler become acclimated to life on the ship, which only made her feel melancholy and despondent. When she did eventually leave the confines of the sleeping quarters and make it down to the medical bay, Tyler followed her like a little puppy dog, all wide eyes and bashful smiles. Thankfully, Joshua requested - in his unemotional, impassive manner - that he remain outside the examination room.
"He still insists on living aboard?" Joshua asked as he helped her onto the table and helped her lift her skirt away from her lower limbs.
"Yes," Lisa looked down. "Nothing I say seems to persuade him otherwise."
"He will eventually die, Lisa," Joshua's voice was firm, agitated. "Anna won't need him alive forever."
"You think I don't know that?" The emotion that bled through her tone would have given her away if circumstances had been different. "I've tried everything, Joshua. He's…stubborn."
Joshua wisely let the subject drop.
"When did you start feeling emotion again?" Lisa asked. "You were under my mother's bliss for a while; I noticed."
"During your accident. I didn't understand why…why I cared so much about saving your life. I told myself that it was because of who you were, because I could get in trouble if I didn't save you, but in the end…" He paused, choosing his words carefully. "In the end…I didn't want to lose you because I cared about you. In some way, you brought me around again. The only reason I defected back to Anna's side was to save you. And the only reason I left it again was because I wanted to save you."
Lisa was quiet for a moment, absorbing his words. "What do we do now?"
"For now, we carry on as we always have." Joshua turned away from her as he spoke, fingers grazing the pink scars on her legs. "These have healed up nicely. I'll clear up the residual scarring, and then you're done."
"Done?" Lisa questioned as the blue light traveled from her ankles to her knees, the soft, almost inaudible humming assuring her that the technology was in fact working its magic.
"Yes," Joshua answered, moving around the table to repeat the process on her other leg. "You will be back to full health."
Lisa read the unspoken meaning behind that statement. Her legs would be completely healed, and while she would see Joshua occasionally, it would always be in the monitored hallways or the presence of other Visitors. She would return to her task of making Tyler fall more deeply in love with her, and he would be working in the healing center or with her mother. In short, they would hardly see each other.
Lisa looked down at the floor, suddenly and almost inexplicably saddened. She cared for Joshua, this she found almost easy to admit, but she hadn't expected the loss to feel so…sharp, like a knife plunged in her stomach.
Joshua's hands locked around her wrists as he helped her climb off of the table. "It will be alright, Lisa," he attempted to assure her. She nodded, noticing that he still held her hands in his. She looked down; his thumb rubbed a slow circle on the back of her hand. His eyes locked on hers, and she tipped her head to the side.
She felt peace.
It was strange; the entire world was rocking unsteadily beneath her feet, first with her decision to help Fifth Column, Joshua's detainment and capture, and finally the moment when she believed that he had lost all human emotions. But right then, even knowing that Tyler was waiting for her on the other side of that door and that after this moment she would likely never be alone in a room with Joshua again, the soft, gentle emotion washed over her, her body stilled, and she found that she believed his words. It would be alright.
The moment felt like bliss. It felt like drowning in that sweet, white glow. Lisa felt all worry, fear and doubt fall away, fade into blackness.
What felt like an eternity turned out to only be a few minutes. Hesitantly, Lisa slipped her hands out of Joshua's grip and walked towards the door, stopping halfway there to glance back at the doctor over her shoulder.
"Thank you, Joshua," she said.
"Always a pleasure," He smiled at her. "My Queen."
PART V