She’s smoking, man. So much for the innocent virgin bullshit we were into – David blinked, and shoved his hands deep into his pockets. He’d thought Laura was different. He’d thought she was better than Syd. She hadn’t judged him, or tried to trick him. Laura had seen that he was a good person. She believed in him. We were all she saw. But then she’d abandoned him, just like Syd. Like his parents. David gritted his teeth and watched Laura breathe out the smoke, and he hated her. He’d believed in her – really believed in her – and she’d left him. He taught the family that hatred and love were the same, that it was all a spectrum, but right then, it didn’t feel like love. Love had been when he’d kissed her in the white room, when he’d taken her to that private place where it was just the two of them, when he’d shown her that reality was what he made it. This didn’t feel like love.
When she started walking away, he considered making her stop, using his powers to hold her still. No one walks away from us – Stop her – I don’t wanna hurt her – I still care about her – Even after what she did to us? Pathetic – He felt a muscle in his cheek twitch. He was high – he was always high when he gave sermons to the family – and it dulled his anger, made the voices quieter, more like whispers. He needed more of the blue stuff. Laura kept walking, and David bit his bottom lip and ripped a shard of dry skin away, fighting the voices. He didn’t wanna hold Laura still, didn’t want to use her like that. You drugged me and – He wasn’t that guy. The guy Sydney thought he was. He wasn’t going to do that to Laura. He’d show Syd. He was a good person.
So, he let her walk away, and when she stopped, he breathed out slowly. See? I didn’t need to stop her – It pays to be kind – She turned around to look at him, and he waited. Patience was a virtue. That was what he was always telling the family. Laura said she’d been to Paris, and David tried to imagine it. Laura and who knew how many of her clones, together. It was a weird image. She didn’t need to spell it out for him. They’d murdered this guy she was talking about. He was about to ask why she hadn’t told him where she was going, but then she apologised, and he cut himself off. She was sorry? Syd had never said she was sorry. “You are?” he asked, frowned. She was sorry. Really sorry. “Of course I’d care, Laura,” he said, quietly. “You’re my girl. I thought you’d left us – Me. I thought you’d left me.”
She just wants you to fuck her! He would have been angry, but the blue stuff made everything feel distant. Laura’s words washed over him like a tide. He just looked at her as she started crying. She’s jealous? Of Stevie? Seriously? He hadn’t taken any of the other family members to the white room. Not even Lenny. Laura hadn’t told him where she was going because she thought he wouldn’t care, thought he wouldn’t miss her. Not because she wanted to hurt him. But because she didn’t realise how much she meant to him. Just like Lenny, when she’d asked if he still cared about her. He looked at Laura, and he didn’t see a traitor, he didn’t see someone just like Syd, who’d walked away from him when he needed her. He saw his girl, the one who had told him she was all he saw, who had kissed him back, who had said he was a good person. He couldn’t let her leave. She said she’d go crazy murderous on him, and he just smiled. That was such a Laura thing to say. He hadn’t let himself miss her. From the moment he’d woken up to find her gone, he hadn’t let himself actually miss her, because it would’ve hurt too much. But he missed her right then, and he teleported from the porch to stand in front of her.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I know you hate telepathy. I… forgot.” He smiled apologetically, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. And he reached out and placed his hands on her shoulders carefully, like she was going to break. He just had to touch her, to remind himself he could, because she wasn’t Syd. “Baby, don’t go,” he whispered. “I missed you. I’m sorry. I – Someone abandoned me.” He hadn’t known he was going to say that until he said it. She’d told him not to talk inside her head, but he couldn’t help the image he sent out, like a nervous tick – Syd smiling at him in Clockworks, her knees drawn up to her chest, her sleeves pulled over her wrists. It only lasted a second, and he pulled away from Laura’s mind. “Someone abandoned me. And I was – I was so worried you were going to turn out like her.” He hadn’t mentioned Syd before. Laura had no idea. He looked into her bright blue eyes and he didn’t want her to cry anymore. He didn’t want her to hurt.
“Please don’t go,” he said quietly. “It’s not just you anymore. It’s us, okay? I’m right here.” He ran his hands down her arms gently, the way he had in the white room. “I forgive you. I know you’re trying. I’m trying too.” He smiled again, and he was close enough to feel her ragged breath on his lips, but he didn’t move any closer. “Don’t go, Laura,” he said again. “I need you.”
She took a step back instinctively as soon as he flashed in front of her, but didn’t move when he put his hands on her shoulders and stepped closer to her. There was so much anger, so much energy contained within her chest, but she didn’t scream, didn’t push him away, didn’t do anything even though she felt like doing everything. Her claws were itching to come out, and she could feel the violence palpitating right beneath her skin, like an animal she could barely hold back. Anger had always been her biggest weakness, her very own version of Achilles’ heel. Laura took a deep breath, biting on her lower lip hard as he spoke, his voice a hybrid between the soothing guru and the real David. Something wasn’t clicking.
She looked up at him when he apologized, and noticed his smile was odd. Different. Dulled. It didn’t light up his face as it usually did when he really smiled. She suddenly tasted blood on her tongue; she’d bitten too hard when he said I missed you. She’d missed him too. So much it had completely thrown her off. She had never experienced the feeling of yearning before. Of wishing she could hold someone who wasn’t there. Even though it was impossible for Laura to be cold, she’d felt cold the entire time she’d been away. Tracking the group manufacturing the scent had taken her a whole extra week because of how distracted she’d been thinking of David.
Now, she was too angry to think of how much she’d missed him. Her anger didn’t allow her to remember how much she’d yearned for him. She was about to take his hands off of her when suddenly she smelled it. That odd, diluted scent of mixed molecules clashing against one another. It was a smell both natural and yet profoundly chemical, as if the elixir of life, the very substance that fed the Earth's soul, had suffered several rounds of distillation in a cold laboratory. And she’d smelled it before, inside the house. Laura had seen several people smoking something blue which produced that smell. And right then, as she stared at David explaining himself without really listening to him, she breathed in the molecules seeping through his pores and knew his bloodstream was filled with the blue crap.
Before she could say anything, David flooded her mind with images of a blonde woman wearing a hospital gown. Sydney Barrett. She was smiling, and Laura suddenly felt like smiling too. It was such a contagious smile, the way her blue eyes lit up and did something magical. The image was gone as fast as it had appeared, and David was standing in front of her once again, running his hands down Laura’s arms. And suddenly she understood. The realization dawned slowly upon her, like a small stream of information cascading on her shoulders. He wasn’t weird because she’d left. There was something else going on. Something about Sydney, or the blue stuff, or perhaps a combination of the two.
“I’m not Sydney, David." She said, finally daring to speak. Her voice felt stronger, more controlled. “And I’m not interested in being her for you. Not even a little bit.” Was he high because it was easier to see Sydney in Laura? No, that’s not it. She took a deep breath in, smelling him again. He reeked of it. How hadn’t she noticed before? “I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere. But you’re not telling me something and I’m starting to think it doesn’t have a lot to do with me being gone.” She said, frowning while she took a step back and looked away from him. The smell of the drug coursing through his veins was making her feel lightheaded. Hesitating at first, Laura took his hand and laced their fingers together, the act somewhat foreign to her, but still didn’t dare look at him. Instead, she glued her eyes on their linked hands, her face angled so that she was breathing fresh air. “I...” She began, trying to explain herself without exactly calling him out. “I’m sorry. The blue stuff in your body is making me dizzy.”
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