[It's an echo and condemnation all at once. Yes, he'd come around eventually, in his own bloody time, languidly strolling up to her door and offering one of his funny little voices. How generous. How considerate, to throw her a scrap like that. How remiss of her not to get on bended knee and thank him for his graciousness, bestowing such information upon her.
(She's being unfair, she knows. He doesn't owe her anything, and coming around to see her instead of shooting off an impersonal text is a far sight better than she deserves. But still she thinks all of that bitterly, her hurt and terror and fury of the past two weeks shoved down and hid under an icy facade. She can't do a damn thing about those who hurt her, so why not take it out on everyone else?
And yet . . . and yet Darwin snorts and works against Richie's hands, his black beady eyes staring up at him. He's heavy and bulky and a little dim, but there's nothing but comfort in the way he presses up against him, like a dog who wants desperately to make things right).]
It was an explosion for me.
[She stares out the window. He isn't looking at her anyway, but it doesn't matter.]
A man, a rival who had an obsession with me, was paid to sabotage one of my machines. His promised price was to get his hands on all my patents, as well as anything else he could grab on his way out. He ransacked our house afterwards, taking my personal effects right along with our inventions and ideas.
[Her portrait of Robert, her diaries . . . it sends a shiver of revulsion through her, even now, but Fink and his hideousness isn't the point here.]
We didn't realize what was happening until it was too late. There was no point in running. So we stood there and waited for the inevitable, like bloody sheep on the line to the slaughter.
It was painful for you, wasn't it? It was for us-- for me. It was agonizing, and it felt as though it lasted for an eternity. The books always describe it as such a quick thing, because of course people want it to be that way, so neat and fast. But no. Every second lasts an hour, and the worst part is that you know what's happening. You know you're dying, and there's not a damn thing you can do about it.
And you think--
[She smiles thinly, still looking out the window.]
You think, this can't happen to me. You think that you're immortal, because of course people die every day, but not you. That's just good sense. You were supposed to last forever, because of course you've known all your life that you were secretly untouchable. But no. One moment you're alive, the next there's nothing. Just like that.
[There's nothing. She'd never believed in God as a child, too scientific to give in to the rites and rituals of worship, but her death had only confirmed it. There had been nothing there. Just a void, just blackness, just her own agony as she came back together and woke again.
She drains her glass and sets it down on with a hard thunk. Rosalind rises, heading to the liquor cabinet and grabbing the bottle, bringing it back to set it down on the couch between them. She talks as she does all this, her voice deceptively even.]
And then suddenly, impossibly, you wake up. And you think at first that perhaps it was a mistake. Perhaps a miracle occurred. Perhaps somehow, impossibly, you were whisked away at the last second, saved by something, and you don't even care what, because it doesn't really matter.
But no. You died. And now you're going to have to live with that, because it changes you.
no subject
[It's an echo and condemnation all at once. Yes, he'd come around eventually, in his own bloody time, languidly strolling up to her door and offering one of his funny little voices. How generous. How considerate, to throw her a scrap like that. How remiss of her not to get on bended knee and thank him for his graciousness, bestowing such information upon her.
(She's being unfair, she knows. He doesn't owe her anything, and coming around to see her instead of shooting off an impersonal text is a far sight better than she deserves. But still she thinks all of that bitterly, her hurt and terror and fury of the past two weeks shoved down and hid under an icy facade. She can't do a damn thing about those who hurt her, so why not take it out on everyone else?
And yet . . . and yet Darwin snorts and works against Richie's hands, his black beady eyes staring up at him. He's heavy and bulky and a little dim, but there's nothing but comfort in the way he presses up against him, like a dog who wants desperately to make things right).]
It was an explosion for me.
[She stares out the window. He isn't looking at her anyway, but it doesn't matter.]
A man, a rival who had an obsession with me, was paid to sabotage one of my machines. His promised price was to get his hands on all my patents, as well as anything else he could grab on his way out. He ransacked our house afterwards, taking my personal effects right along with our inventions and ideas.
[Her portrait of Robert, her diaries . . . it sends a shiver of revulsion through her, even now, but Fink and his hideousness isn't the point here.]
We didn't realize what was happening until it was too late. There was no point in running. So we stood there and waited for the inevitable, like bloody sheep on the line to the slaughter.
It was painful for you, wasn't it? It was for us-- for me. It was agonizing, and it felt as though it lasted for an eternity. The books always describe it as such a quick thing, because of course people want it to be that way, so neat and fast. But no. Every second lasts an hour, and the worst part is that you know what's happening. You know you're dying, and there's not a damn thing you can do about it.
And you think--
[She smiles thinly, still looking out the window.]
You think, this can't happen to me. You think that you're immortal, because of course people die every day, but not you. That's just good sense. You were supposed to last forever, because of course you've known all your life that you were secretly untouchable. But no. One moment you're alive, the next there's nothing. Just like that.
[There's nothing. She'd never believed in God as a child, too scientific to give in to the rites and rituals of worship, but her death had only confirmed it. There had been nothing there. Just a void, just blackness, just her own agony as she came back together and woke again.
She drains her glass and sets it down on with a hard thunk. Rosalind rises, heading to the liquor cabinet and grabbing the bottle, bringing it back to set it down on the couch between them. She talks as she does all this, her voice deceptively even.]
And then suddenly, impossibly, you wake up. And you think at first that perhaps it was a mistake. Perhaps a miracle occurred. Perhaps somehow, impossibly, you were whisked away at the last second, saved by something, and you don't even care what, because it doesn't really matter.
But no. You died. And now you're going to have to live with that, because it changes you.
[She looks at him.]
Did you see your body?