Reminescence 1b
***
He goes back to the flat to rest when he looks at the calendar and notices that it’s been roughly 50 years since he’d been injected. He reflects on it, and realizes he must be around 75 years old now. The flat looks disused but it seems as if someone came in the meantime to clean up, even if a layer of dust has settled again. ‘Most likely Samantha,’ he thinks grimly. He dislikes being reminded of his twin; he’s hidden the photographs, because she’s hid him from her life, but he can’t bring himself to throw them away.
He’s still feels resentful enough of her despite the fact that his emotional range has diminished so much that he feels very few things. It’s as if he’s in a hibernating state because he has been emotionally starved for so long. He lives on autopilot mostly, the link between his heart and his mind having been severed. There’s a memo on the old refrigerator: “Come see me John, please, we need to talk.” And there’s an address written and a phone number. He scoffs at it, wondering what is there to talk about after so long of not acknowledging each other’s existence.
But he goes anyway, because this is the first time she has reached toward him in a long time. He finds her at her home, alone. At first he’s astonished that this frail old woman is his twin. He has never stopped imagining her as she was when he last saw her: jovial, sparse grey and white hairs in her blond mane and glowing as she held her young daughter. She wears glasses, and as she opens the door, she squint her eyes at him. "John?" she asks, unbelieving. “It’s me, Sam,” he answers, and he feels as if something is stuck in his throat. “Look at you, you haven’t changed a bit...” but there’s something like pity in her tone. “I noticed, about every damn time I see myself in a mirror,” he can’t help but say in a harsher tone than he wanted, after having not seen his sister in so long.
“What’d you want to talk about?” he asks, more evenly, trying to detach himself again from her. At first she looks confused, then ushers him in. “I think I might... go soon John,” she says sadly, ominously. “I wanted to see you again, I didn’t know if I would before the end. You’re always gone John, I never know where you are,” she finishes, twisting her hands together in them hem of her shirt.
“I think you do. Europe was nice, by the way,” he says it bluntly, bitterly because he’s sure she reads the newspaper and Reaper had last been heard from in Europe, leaving death in his wake, once again. “It’s not you. It can’t be. I know you,” she says weakly, denying the truth and echoing her words from so long ago. “Not any longer Sam, you don’t know me anymore. You stopped knowing me when you... ran away,” he says it accusingly. He has had fifty years to chew over those thoughts inside his slightly deranged, bitter mind. “I didn’t...” she stammers before he interrupts her: “You ran away from me Sam. That’s how it felt. You left when I wasn’t something new anymore. You left me behind to live your life and you cut me out of it. You left me when you were the only one who knew, who could understand. Because I haven’t been *human* since we stepped out of that place,” he finishes, spits out the last part hatefully, head hung down as he voices his demons out loud.
He stays there, not looking at her face as he debates running away from her, from all that he’s got left, from the one who sparked something like humanity in him again. But she’s dying. She just told him she didn’t know how much time she had left. He slumps down against the wall of her kitchen, feeling defeated and curling his arms around his knees as he waits for her to just say something.
“I’m sorry John... I didn’t know,” she says as he feels her sit down next to him. “Bullshit,” he mutters and he feels so tired of everything. “Maybe I did, a little. I didn’t want to leave you behind. But... you don’t age John. You look as young as my son. What would I say to them?” she asks, in a voice that begs for forgiveness. “I don’t know...” he replies and he really doesn’t know, but he continues, “Would that have stopped you, who knew the truth, to keep contact with me? You could have continued to see me. You knew.” She’s silent, thinking most likely. “I should have.” It’s heartfelt. “I’m sorry for what I did to you.” She believes it too, and it makes him feel sick. He doesn’t resent having been changed. He resents the fact that he’s lonely and bitter because of it. “You couldn’t have known about additional effects. Should we have died in there, then? Should I have died from a ricochet shot and let Sarge get to the surface?” He says angrily, not really expecting an answer. “You left me Sam, in that flat 50 years ago. And now you are going to leave me again,” he adds quietly, it’s a fact. She sobs, clutches his arms and he can hear “I’m sorry” repeated over and again. “You’re my sis, my twin. I’ll always forgive you... I just wish things had been different.” His anger has left him, and he’s just tired, having let go of the resentment that had become his security blanket. He falls asleep cuddled against his now so much older twin, her frail form tucked against him as she cries all the remorse accumulated over time.
When he wakes up she’s fallen asleep and he tucks her in her bed, leaving a note saying: “Call me anytime, I’ll be at the flat for as long as you want. - Love, your brother, another creature from the long-lost past.”
They keep contact with each other until she’s moved to the hospital. He’s there when she finally lets out her last breath, holding her hand because the rest of her family wasn’t there in time or simply did not know it was the end of her life. He comes discreetly, nobody that matters know that he was there, slipping in and out like a ghost and avoiding her family.
He tried to ease her grief and regrets in the time he was there. And when she finally passes away, he slips away in the dark, trying to be Reaper once again, but eventually he fades away again under the weight of grief when the casket is buried in a cold October morning.
***
This is the first time he doubts and doesn’t make the kill, feeling as if he’s been jolted out abruptly out of a long and uneasy slumber. Looking at her with her blond hair and her smile through his sniper’s scope, he can’t seem to understand what she could have done wrong, even if very influential people wants her dead and there’s a huge bounty on her head. She’s on the front lawn, playing with her six years old daughter and even then, she’s supposed to be just a name, a target, a pay check.
He has a flashback of his niece’s sixth birthday party and of her mom, his sister, twirling little Marian in her arms as the rest of them sang for the birthday girl, her face smeared happily with cake. She was already pregnant with her second child, and was visibly glowing.
He stifles the pain resurfacing inside of him and lowers his gun. He walks away, for the first time in a hundreds of years... When he gets back to his temporary living place, John has not had a home since he sold the flat when his sister died or had an existence under that name for that matter, he tosses his latest fake ID in the pile with the others and disappears from the surface of the world.
The world has changed, evolved, looking overall sleeker and shinier with advanced technologies and more peaceful now. He is truly a creature from a lost past. Mankind has reached the stars, created the United Federation of Planets after meeting aliens such as the Vulcans and the Andorians, and the less friendly Klingons. A few months later, the headlines states that the infamous assassin, who would be known as the last Reaper, had probably met his match even if his body had not been found. They wouldn’t really know what to look for anyway so he can’t blame them, but he’s very much alive, thank you.
Later, he’s already lost track of time for a while at that point, he stands in front of the University of Mississippi with an ID card that says his name is Leonard McCoy and that he’s from Georgia, seeing as he’s acquired a barely perceptible southern twang during his travels. There’s a messenger bag filled to the brim with medical textbooks tapping against his hips as he enters through the glass doors, there’s a thought running through his head : ‘Some two-hundred years later, redemption begins.’
***
It’s not even two years later that he meets Jocelyn, hard-headed and too stubborn for him to ignore. Despite his various strategies to remain alone and friendless, because he’s so used to being on his own now and doesn’t want his heart broken again; human contact has too much appeal for him not to succumb eventually. She practically ambushes him at the University, and from there, the few acquaintances that he meets in his classes (he wouldn’t call them friends…) claim they were made to be together. When they talk about going out steady, he feels happy but a bit guilty; he’s being selfish, he knows he will have to leave eventually, but ‘What is the harm in a little relationship ?’ he thinks.
All he wants is to feel human, belong among humans and begin to live a life that‘s worth it. So he tries his hardest, willingly repressing his acute senses and reflexes, controlling his strength even more carefully than in the past (but this, he knew how to do almost instinctively). Although having a photographic memory and needing to sleep less did wonders to take a heavier course load and finish it more quickly. Most of his classmates think he’s a genius. Most of them think he’s also 25 years old as well.
Jocelyn tells him that she thinks he’s an old and wise soul, but that he should loosen up a little. She also scolds him for frowning so often and acting so much older than he looks and also about his cynical view about life, and the fact that he’s “really way too sarcastic”. He likes his humour dry. She’ll just have to adjust because he’s pretty much set in his ways. He’s sorry that his age changes his demeanour, but he really doesn’t feel like acting like a frat boy. He never was a frat boy anyway. She does help him lighten up a little, but he’s always the serious and responsible one. Some of his acquaintances even call him jokingly "McGrumpypants". It’s bound to be one of the most annoying things he’s been called. He is *not* grumpy, he just has a darker mood than the other kids because he’s not actually the same age as those kids.
Joce brings him out to try and do the things normal 25 years old do, but it never really works out and he’s more annoyed at this thing they call “dancing” than he cares to even try and participate. He lets have her fun, really. When she asks to meet his parents, he tells a half-lie and says that they passed away a couple of years ago. What’s the difference between two or three years and more than two hundred at this point?
There’s too little time that has passed before she announces, shocked and unbelieving (a reaction they both share) that she’s pregnant. He’s also worried, but tries to not show it. What if the baby had too much of his genes, like say... a twenty-fourth pair of chromosomes? He was always careful whenever they made love, even if sometimes it didn’t feel so much like that to him, like he gave more than he received, which would probably become the story of his life.
The marriage is a little rushed out but he had even considered letting her in on his secret when she told him she was pregnant with Joanna, but a nagging feeling makes him decide to wait a little, afraid that something would go wrong and she’d go away, taking their little one with her. Which she did anyway, in the end, but he didn’t know that at the time, working to sustain her and trying to finish his medical degree, which was time-consuming.
One day, she smelled different. He didn’t know why, but he attributed it to hormonal changes. Because he tried his best to keep his senses as dull as he could and they weren‘t as reliable anymore; the power of a psychological denial was amazing. Eventually as the smell grew fainter or stronger, he grew a little suspicious and unconsciously lessened the tight control over himself. He was starting to see a pattern, which would depend on how many hours he would be working in a month. He was saving lives, it was important to him, he couldn‘t wash the blood away from his hands, but he tried to make up for it as best as he could.
It was bothering him, and it should have dawned on him every time she got defensive when he asked her what she was doing with her time while he was away, but she was close to term and claimed to frequently visit her mom and her girlfriends. He couldn‘t exactly deny her the right to friends and family, especially when he wasn‘t there as much as he would‘ve liked. He felt guilty about it, but also upset; he was working so hard for her, for Joanna, to give them everything he could while he would be there. He accidentally met the source of the scent one day, when he joined Jocelyn for dinner.
He met Clay Treadway, a “good friend” of hers, and suddenly knew what was up with his wife, and it wasn’t hormonal changes.
It had crushed him, that she would be as close to another man, most likely having an affair but he didn‘t like to think that she would do something like this while pregnant with THEIR child but at least she was his, that much was a relief... The little angel had his eyes and his hair, and was already frowning at the universe at large like her father...
After he had found out, he had tried to rekindle their feelings for each other. He had tried to make it up to her, be a better husband. He tried to take less hours at the ER where he was officially interning, but actually actively practicing, but she had complained that they didn’t have as much money as they should...
She left more frequently, leaving him to tend to baby Jo, which he didn’t mind at all, seeing as how could he be resentful of having time with his baby girl? He was in utter adoration of her, loved her more than anything in the world. And all of this occurred while her mother went “out”, dressed to kill for a supposed diner party and came in the early hours of the morning reeking like alcohol and anonymous sex or not-so-anonymous after a while.
He resented her; She spent the money he made, she went out with other men, and he regretted letting her have her way with him, making him love her, even if he didn’t anymore. He had begun to doubt if his darling little Joanna had not been planned after all. Jo was the only thing that kept him there in the end, who was closer to him than anyone, save for his twin when they were young, but she had long since passed away and no one knew of her existence since Leonard McCoy did not have any brothers or sisters.
Then the ex had the nerve to strip everything away from him, taking sole custody of his little Jo, spreading rumours that would have him fired from his job, scorned by the neighbours, kicked out of his own house (at least he didn’t have to pay for it anymore, but she had tried to keep him on the mortgage, the bitch), and he’s alone in the world, again. Not totally, since he has Joanna, but it’ll be a while before he’ll be able to see her again.
After that he had vowed never to get close to anyone else, and had kept an angry, bitter outlook on life. So five years after the birth of Joanna, once the divorce is finalized, he decides to flee again and opts to go into the black. On that fateful shuttle he meets Jim Kirk, and his life takes a very different turn than what he had expected.
The year is 2255 and Joanna is five years old...and she doesn’t carry the C-24. It’s a relief, and a strong disappointment; he had done her blood test himself. She’ll be able to live a normal human life, but he’ll see her die old and wrinkled too, when he’ll still be the same as he ever was, but it will be worst: He will have seen her come into this world and will be there to see her leave it.
He was minding his own business, faking aerophobia in the bathroom (he just didn’t feel like dealing with people that day, lost in gloomy and angry thoughts...) when the attendant dragged him out forcefully, despite his grouchy behaviour and back-off-if-you-value-your-life vibes. He just had to sit next to the only other civilian in the shuttle. He remembered thinking that Jim was just a kid as he threatened that he might throw up on him, trying to scare him off as he rambled about the dangers of space. But that unwittingly started a conversation that would make Jim stick to him like superglue... he really shouldn’t have shared his flask.
-----
Next part