Cognitive Dissonance

Noriko doesn’t let go of Andy’s hand until they arrive at the house, keeping their fingers clasped tightly together as if she knows that Andy is feeling drained and empty and insubstantial, as if she knows Andy needs something to anchor herself to. Andy has a long memory, but she can’t remember if Noriko’s palms have always felt this way, still a little bit worn and rough despite how sleek and smooth her appearance is now. Andy’s hands have had the same calluses that she had the moment she died, no matter that she hasn’t gripped the reins of a horse in nearly a century.

“We’re here,” Noriko says as they pull into the driveway. The house is large and modern, shiny in a way that reeks of new tech entrepreneurial money. A few more men wearing suits are lingering near the front door and the garage. Unlike on the boat, their weapons are concealed, their pistols hidden away in side-holsters tucked underneath their jackets.

Andy stares at them, playing out several fights in her head. Attack the youngest suit first; his serious expression looks fake and awkward on his face, betraying his uncertainty. Snap the driver’s neck before Noriko can stop her, shoving him out the door and taking the wheel. Dig her fingernails into the soft flesh of Noriko’s eyes, killing her for just long enough to distract everyone else. But those are the actions of a person, a warrior, not the hollowed out shell of one that Andy is now.

She must get lost in her thoughts, because she is jolted back into her body by the tug of Noriko’s hand in her own. “Andromache,” Noriko says.

Andy turns to her. For an odd moment, she almost sees an overlay of the old Noriko over the new one, the woman she laughed with and fought with and loved with a ferocity that felt imprinted onto her bones. She knew that woman as intimately as she knew herself, every scar on her skin, every quirk of her mouth, every thatch of hair on her body. But then Andy blinks, and her vision clears.

This Noriko doesn’t look like she’s smiled a day in her life. She’s all sharp lines and hard angles, and Andy can’t imagine that this woman is capable of any of the kindness or tenderness that Andy had adored. The one who would hold Andy’s head in her lap through a messy resurrection, who loved to listen to the laughter of children, who revelled in introducing Joe and Nicky to the limits of their newfound immortality. Andy had mourned the loss of that Noriko for decades, for centuries, and now, while she stares at this woman who wears Noriko’s face, her death feels all the more real.

Noriko says, “They really did a number on you, didn’t they? Children are so careless with their things.” A flash of something that resembles pity crosses her face. Andy almost wants to punch it off.

Still, she doesn’t resist as Noriko leads her into the house. The guards part for them with respectful nods of their heads but otherwise don’t say a word. The inside matches the outside. It looks like a real estate photograph, posed and sterile, an interior designer’s masterwork, so unlike the messy, ramshackle safe houses that Andy prefers for herself and her team.

Noriko doesn’t let them linger, though. Her grip on Andy’s hand remains tight enough to bruise. Andy follows along as Noriko leads them through the tastefully decorated rooms and hallways. She tries to remember when this particular style of minimalism came into fashion. Five years ago? Ten? Thirty? A century? It feels like it was an eyeblink ago -- no time at all.

“This will be your room for now,” Noriko says, letting go of Andy’s hand and dropping Andy’s single travel pack onto the floor. She doesn’t specify how long that is supposed to be. Andy gets the impression that she has fallen out of the habit of explaining herself to anyone.

The bedroom looks like the rest of the house, all muted grays and whites, empty of all personality. Andy can’t tell whether or not Noriko is also supposed to share it with her. When they-- before Noriko was lost to her, they shared beds as a matter of course, and after that, Andy chased the sensation of a warm, comforting body pressed against her own for hundreds of years afterwards. But it would be different with this Noriko. It wouldn’t be anything like those nights where Andy would tuck her face into the long strands of Noriko’s hair, breathing in all the different scents of all the different places they had visited together. “Sure,” Andy says.

Noriko turns and gives Andy an assessing look, and it reminds Andy of the moments before battle, when Noriko would be drawing up battle strategies and analyzing terrain. Of the two of them, Noriko had always been the more natural tactician, capable of looking at a battlefield and a set of resources and knowing exactly how to best make use of both. Andy wonders what she sees when she looks at Andy now. An asset for future battles. A sentimental trinket. A decorative side piece. None of the above. Noriko always did have a ruthless, pragmatic streak when it suited her.

Which makes it more of a surprise when Noriko reaches out, cupping Andy’s cheek with the palm of her hand. This touch is familiar, an echo of so very many other touches they’ve shared over so very many years. “I don’t think ‘Andy’ suits you,” Noriko says. “I couldn’t believe it when I heard that you had started using it as a nickname.”

Andy shrugs. She feels caught between two instinctive reactions: wanting to lean into the touch and wanting to pull away. All the things they’d fought for decades; all the violence, all the cruelty that they’d been trying to beat back. How much of it had been Noriko pulling the strings? She’s still struggling to make any sense of it.

“It’s too prosaic,” Noriko continues. “I know you were always adamant about changing our names to blend in, but I had hoped that you wouldn’t bother in the twenty-first century. Let yourself embrace your true nature and not hide from it.”

“‘Riko,” Andy rasps out. Her throat feels tight and painful, almost unable to form the words. “Why--”

Noriko kisses her. This is not like the kiss on the boat, immediate and desperate and almost claiming. This is a gentle brush of lips, feather-light, barely a sensation at all.

It’s the sweetness of the gesture that has Andy tearing herself away from Noriko, that call back to something that was lost centuries ago and could not be bought back with just a hint of kindness. An ugly feeling claws away at her insides, that awful grief that had swallowed her for so long before Nicky and Joe managed to drag her back. In this moment, the wound feels fresh, newly reopened, and all the more painful because Andy had assumed it had scarred over and healed.

“Fuck,” Andy says. “I can’t-- we can’t.” She finds herself staring out the window at the green of the perfectly manicured lawn. Before today, she wouldn’t have said that she had the capacity to hurt like this anymore. “Everything’s different.”

She can’t see Noriko’s reaction, but she can hear Noriko’s amused sigh, the one that sounds halfway to a laugh. There’s a bitterness to it that never used to be there before. “You did always lie so prettily to yourself, my love,” Noriko says. “Well, you know where I’ll be when you change your mind.”

Andy continues to stare out the window as Noriko leaves, as Noriko pulls the door shut behind her, leaving Andy as she was in the beginning -- before Lykon, before Noriko, before Joe, before Nicky, before Booker, before Nile.

Totally alone.