CHAPTER FIVE
Holding On
What had once been a sparse Zen garden now bloomed with a wealth of flowers. Even in the slight chill of the Atlanta night air, moonflowers and jasmine lined the path that led from the door to the edge. When Ramona couldn’t sleep, she stole up the stairs and sat on one of the small benches. On a clear night, she could see almost all the way to Stone Mountain.
This evening, someone else sat on the small bench at the edge of the garden. Ramona paused, watching the slender shoulders tremble and the feather wings droop. The red and gold stood in sharp contrast to the darkness. Although she couldn’t hear a sound from the bench, Ramona knew that the woman now called Sera was crying. Sera. Everyone had taken to shortening the Seraphym’s name now. It was as if they had diminished her name to fit the diminished reality.
She considered turning around, but Ramona couldn’t think to just leave her there in the dark without saying something. The Russians didn’t have a middle ground when it came to dealing with people. If you were hurt, they smothered you with attention until you were better. After that, you were expected to hold your own. Ramona had been out of the infirmary for more than a week, and her contribution had consisted of paperwork. Considering the Seraphym’s strange background, she couldn’t conceive what the Commissar could have found for her to do.
Then again, Ramona thought as Sera passed a hand over her eyes, the Commissar probably doesn’t have any idea what to do with her.
With a sigh and a quick check in her pocket for tissues, Ramona walked up to the edge of the roof. She made enough noise in the hope she wouldn’t startle the woman, and she stood a few feet back rather than take a seat on the bench.
“I hear you, Ramona Ferrari,” came the soft voice. “If you wish privacy I shall depart.”
“No, that’s okay. I just couldn’t sleep, and staying inside just didn’t feel right.” She rubbed her hands together, the bits of metal that still covered the abrasions making an odd grating sound. “Did you want to be alone, or…”
“Being alone is…not what I wish. No. If you are desirous of company…” The words came haltingly. “I no longer may see inside another’s heart. This is a handicap. Among others. You shall have to tell me what you want and need.”
Ramona slid onto the concrete next to the woman who was hastily wiping tears from her face. “Well, I don’t want or need anything, other than not staying downstairs and listening to that old television playing reruns of COPS. Coming up here seemed like the best way to sort out everything that’s happened lately.” She looked out over the quiet Atlanta rooftops, the damage of the destruction corridors muted in darkness. “You see all that? That’s the world I had come to know, as sick and as twisted as that is. That was my reality, and I was dealing with it.” She pointed to various ruined landmarks. “As least those are the same. Sitting up here is as close as I can get to feeling like I did before everything changed.”
“Change…I said once to John that all things must change or die. I did not understand then how change can be so terrible.” The woman let out a shuddering sigh. “I know it is wrong, but so many times I think, now, that death would have been…not so bad.”
“Me too.” Ramona leaned forward and hung her head. “At least once a day, sometimes more. Sovie says that it’s normal, that any life-altering event resulting from an accident or illness carries the potential for depression and anxiety. And on a professional level, I know that.”
“You are no longer the you that you have known all your life.” Sera sighed. “Nor am I. And my life is—was—a little longer than yours.”
“No one would take you for a day over twenty-nine.” Ramona tried to offer a smile, but it was difficult. Part of her knew she could never compare her experience to that of the Seraphym, and to do so would be an insult. “And no,” she agreed. “I’m not quite the same person, but there are still startling similarities. Changing the outside doesn’t mean that you change the inside.”
“I am glad you still recognize yourself,” Sera said after a long pause. Left unspoken was the obvious corollary; that she did not. There was more silence. “The Commissar has sent me patrolling. ‘Air support,’ she calls it. But I do not know when to act. I do not know…what is…I have no guidance but that of the fallible mortal that commands the patrols! Is it right to act? These Russians are so…how do you live with such uncertainty?” The last had the tones of desperation.
Ramona let out a sigh. “Part of it is trusting the person guiding you. When that’s not possible, you trust the people around you, and you trust your own judgment. As for what’s right, that’s…” She barked a short laugh. “I got into fights with the Jesuit priest teaching religion and philosophy in high school. That earned me a D, so I probably shouldn’t be giving you advice. I slugged my boss in a freezer when he was in hysterics, and I scream at authority figures. I don’t think those tendencies went away when I woke up.” She sat back, chewing on her next question while she studied Sera. “I’ve always worked in situations where I didn’t know if I would come back. I guess it’s living in spite of uncertainty.”
“I see.” From the tone of Sera’s voice, it sounded as if she had left quite a bit unspoken. Probably something like well, that’s all right for you mortals but what about me? “I mean repercussions. To yourself and to the world. I have always known what was and was not Permitted to me. I have always been able to see outcomes of my actions. Now I do not and cannot. I cannot rely on I was just following orders to protect me and the world.”
“So, before you had choices, and now you don’t?” Ramona struggled to understand the limitations of the woman’s new world. “Because you can’t see the result before the action, you can’t trust the action in the moment?” Spoken aloud, the conundrum seemed almost silly, but metas with telepathy or any shred of emotional reception had struggled when their abilities were compromised. It was as much a part of them as an arm or a leg; Ramona could only assume that Sera’s clairvoyant nature had similar qualities. “Well… how long have you been watching the Commissar? Like, really studying her and the way she treats her people here?”
“It is not the way she treats her people. It is the way she treats those outside of her sphere. I believe she has phrased it kill them all and let Marx sort them out. That is…not acceptable.” The woman actually wrung her hands.
“And has she actually carried out those orders? Has anyone in the CCCP refused to act on those orders because they thought she was a few beets short of a pot of borscht?”
“I don’t know. I cannot see the past anymore!”
Ramona sighed. There was a reason she’d chosen the detective route over the metahuman services counseling route. “You’ve said that her treatment of others isn’t acceptable. Even though you can’t see the past, you can still have an opinion based upon what you’ve observed before. You still have a choice. There are still things that are, uh, permitted, aren’t there?”
“I do not know. I have never had Free Will.” Sera shook her head. “Some things are obvious but most are not. I could make things so, so much worse. You, you look at—oh, say rescuing a child. But you do not know that child will grow to murder his playmates if he lives…” her voice broke. “That is a choice I made, not so long ago!”
She had no response to such an admission, other than to reach over and lay her metal-scarred hand over Sera’s arm. How many seemingly right decisions had she made in her time with ECHO that had led to a more terrible outcome? Something as insignificant as a different parking space or the choice of one interrogation room over another might have made a difference, somewhere down the line of choices and consequences. Had she chosen the spot for breakfast, or was that Alex’s decision? Why had she chosen the Varsity that day over NomKitteh, the sandwich shop by the ECHO campus? The possibilities were maddening. “And so… for every choice you ever made, you always knew the outcome? For every single person?”
“It would drive a mortal mad. It did drive Mathew March mad. Faced with too many choices to sort through, he chose to do nothing.” She wiped away a tear. “And even that was too much for him, but at least he thought he minimized the damage.”
“But you,” Ramona pressed. “Did you always know every outcome? Where everyone would end up at the end of things?” She hated the finality in her words, but there was no other way to describe it.
“There was…a blank space. Now I know it is because I chose…this. I did not know that at the time. I only knew that on the other side of that expanse there were those who were present and those who were absent. The analogy of navigating a hole in a cave with a tiny flashlight comes to mind.” Sera shrugged helplessly.
“And on the other side, are there…” Ramona stopped, uncertain if she wanted to ask or even know. Sera might have seen things far into the future, but she didn’t know if she wanted a hint of tomorrow, next week, or next year. “Never mind. I don’t want to ask. I can’t ask, if only because it would keep me from acting on what I see and know.”
“I am—was—not Permitted to tell you, anyway.” Another heavy sigh. “I must assume that edict stands.”
“But you could see all of us, right? See and act upon, and choose?” Ramona sighed as well and stared out past the ledge. The woman nodded. “And did you ever not do something, even if it was, like you said, permitted?”
“It was…complicated,” Sera faltered. “Things were Permitted, which I did, and things were Not Permitted, which I did not do, and there were things that were not Not-Permitted, which I did. And things that were not Not-Permitted, which I did not do, because I am not the Infinite and I could not be at all places at all times.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I could not save the one called Devil, because I had to choose.” The whisper broke on a sob.
Ramona’s heart leapt in her throat. Poor Handsome Devil…who was it that Sera had chosen to save, so that she couldn’t save Klaus? Had it been…her? She turned to face Sera before she could stop herself, unable to conceal the look of shock and sadness on her face. She hated the swell of gratitude and relief that accompanied the shock. Ramona squeezed her eyes shut and pressed her lips together, focusing on the words. “That… that choice. That’s the uncertainty, and it does hurt. It does carry a ton of pain and regret with it. But we have to act in the moment,” she added in a tearful whisper. “Acting and being able to seek forgiveness for our choice based on what we know in that moment… it’s kind of all we’ve got. The flip side of Free Will.”
Maybe it’s a good thing Shakti and most of the others think that I’m dead. This isn’t what I expected to learn, coming up here. Ramona stopped herself from wiping her face with her hand and resorted to the edge of her sleeve.
“But now I am…Lost,” Sera continued, spreading her hands wide in a helpless gesture. “I do not know what is Permitted, what is Not Permitted, and what is not Not Permitted. I am in the hole in the cave, and I cannot see the bottom nor the edges. Like Mathew, I fear to act. I could doom the world. I could damn myself.”
Ramona hugged herself tightly, unable to focus on her own grief and loss. The woman sitting next to her had lost so much, to the point where the thought of acting on anything carried enormous consequences. Anything she said, any attempt to console or empathize seemed trite and almost inappropriate. Could Sera’s choice to become human damn them all? Would her inaction force ECHO into a situation where nothing more could be done, other than wait for the inevitable day when the Thulians set fire to the earth one last time?
Sera didn’t know, and that not-knowing shook her to her very core. Ramona tried to grope her way towards some kind of answer. “Not-knowing is part of being human. Hell, acting in spite of not-knowing might be one of the hallmarks of humanity. That’s sort of what Free Will encompasses, right? You’re presented with the options, and based upon what you know and what you think you know, you act, and you live with the consequences.”
Ramona lifted her head to see the stars above them. “And sometimes, the consequences aren’t so bad. In fact, there’s often joy in that ability to choose. Does following what’s ‘permitted’ give any kind of happiness?”
“Of course.” Sera looked at her as if she could not comprehend the possibility of the opposite. “We are not Fallen because we trust the Infinite over our finite selves. There is happiness in trust. This is unhappiness in mistrust. Mistrust brings—” she stopped. “I should not lecture on the nature of trust.”
“But you know what it means to trust. That goes along with Free Will.” Ramona seized the words, turning on the bench to face Sera. “Having Free Will means learning to trust your choices, based upon what you know, even when there’s more that you don’t know. Trust doesn’t erase fear, but it can lessen it.” She tilted her head and studied her companion. “Do you have trouble trusting the Commissar?”
The corners of Sera’s mouth turned down. “Yes. She is inclined to extreme violence as her first choice. I know that she has on occasion turned to torture. Not recently but…that could change at any moment.”
“And because it’s difficult to trust someone like that, you fear the choices that you could make when she’s giving orders?” Ramona didn’t try to sugarcoat her words, as the woman next to her wasn’t a child and didn’t deserve to be patronized. “If someone you trusted stood in her place, the choice wouldn’t carry so much fear?”
Slowly, Sera nodded. “But it is not just that. There are so many other choices I face! Things that have nothing to do with the Commissar. Matters in which what I want may have terrible consequences, but all that I know is what I want!”
The former detective’s mouth lifted in a faint smile. “Like?”
“There must be a reason why John does not remember. I want him to remember, but what I want may be…” She shook her head.
“Impossible?” Ramona asked. “Or maybe it’s just that it might take a little longer and it’s hard to trust an uncertain length of time?”
“No. There must be a reason. Which implies bringing back his memory could have terrible consequences.” Sera was so tense now that the feathers of her wings trembled. “How can I make a choice when I cannot know this?”
“You trust yourself.” The words came in a half-whisper, as Ramona glanced down at the small space between them on the bench and the wings draped down over the edge. “There could be terrible consequences or wonderful consequences, but you trust yourself. Go with your gut, that’s the not-so-technical term for it. And really,” she offered with a wistful smile, “it does work.”
The look that Sera gave her practically dripped with skepticism and doubt. “For you, perhaps.”
She shrugged. “For lots of people. Rumor has it that Bella and Bull didn’t have a clue about each other, but one of them had to say something. Unless she read his mind, and that’s not how she works. Somebody had to go with a gut decision, and there was a good, even great payoff. I’d say that it only happens in those goofy romance novels, except I’d be lying.”
Sera shook her head. “I feel like—the one who walks a thin wire over a precipice. Around me all I see are the consequences of failure. How is that good?”
“You’re surrounded by the consequences of whose failures?” Ramona scowled in the darkness, bothered that a creature this celestial in appearance could be so utterly pessimistic. “Yours? Mine? John’s? Having Free Will might invite an opportunity for failure, but it doesn’t guarantee it.”
“The only potential for failure that I can affect—now—is my own. But the consequences are…terrifying. I cannot see any joy in this.”
“You mean that you can’t trust yourself that there could be joy in the consequences?”
Sera nodded, slowly. “All I can imagine is the pain of failure.”
Ramona let out a long breath and shook her head. If the woman—angel, or whatever she thought of herself to be now—had never been able to make a choice and enjoy the outcome, then it was no wonder that the mere thought of choice paralyzed her. “You should spend some time with Bella. Part of her therapy for other metas includes this emotion-piggybacking. I hear it’s done wonders for some of them. Sort of a vicarious walkthrough.”
“Bella…has too much to handle now. I will not add my burden to hers. It would not be right.” The tone of Sera’s voice brooked no argument.
“No… no, I guess it wouldn’t.” Ramona stood and walked to the edge of the building. A broken beer bottle lay on the ground, bits of glass catching the faint light. She pressed her hands against the brick ledge and glanced back at Sera. “This might not be any of my business, but did you ever kiss him? Not one of those chaste little forehead deals, but a real curl-your-toes kiss?”
“Rather more than that.” The Seraphym lifted an eyebrow. “Not that it is your business.”
“So you didn’t like it? Or you thought it was safe because you knew it would be, before it happened?”
“It was…love is always Permitted.” Sera shut her mouth in a way that suggested that was all Ramona would get out of her.
It was enough for the detective to latch onto with a triumphant pointing of her finger in Sera’s direction. “Always Permitted, whether or not you know the outcome. That’s so screamingly close to trust, they might as well be cousins! And when you get that once, because of a choice that you made, you hold on to it. You remember that little bit of joy, even when the moment’s passed.” Ramona’s mouth lifted in a smile, her eyes bright. “Even after weeks, months, or years, it’s still there.”
Sera hesitantly touched Ramona’s arm for a moment, as if she was going to say something. But she never got the chance. Ramona found herself catapulted into memory.
* * *
They had come to try and find the Mountain, and the pair of them peered into the cavernous dark in search of the lone meta. Mercurye stood on the stone ledge and waited while she rummaged for her lighter. She held it out in front of her. “This will have to do.”
“Just look for the giant made of stone. You can’t miss him.”
Mercurye flashed her that handsome smile that had made all of the girls at her table fall over themselves, and Ramona felt her heart leap into her throat. She found herself grinning back, closing the distance between them, and rising up on her toes until there were only inches between them. What would the proverbial damsel in distress say to the ridiculously good-looking heroic sort in this kind of situation? “Thanks for the ride, handsome.” And before she could lose her nerve, she kissed him.
For a split second, Ramona questioned if it had been the right choice or if she had just made a terrible fool of herself. Was it too forward? Desperate? Unwanted? In that instant, Mercurye’s arms wrapped around her and he returned the kiss with a fervor that made her knees grow weak and told her that the choice had been very much the right one. The horrors of the past hours, the utter destruction she had witnessed on the ECHO campus, and the excruciating pain that resonated in her entire body, they all ebbed as joy and passion flooded her entire body and provided an unexpected but much-needed respite. Time slowed around them and she allowed herself to enjoy that moment where for a brief time, everything felt so undeniably right.
When the kiss broke, Ramona took a deep breath and steadied herself. The guy even kissed like a movie star. “Wow,” she managed. Her cheeks burned, and she noticed that Mercurye’s face had a similar blush. “Okay, get going.”
* * *
Ramona surfaced from the memory, not quite gulping for air but certainly surprised at the plunge. She choked and coughed, her cheeks flushed hotly from the thought of Mercurye’s mouth crushed against hers like a scene out of a windswept romance novel. “Well,” she managed after a minute. “I guess that’s easier than just trying to explain things. But like I said, it’s still there.”
Sera shook her head. “I am unsure how this would apply to my situation.” Then she looked off into the distance. “I think it is irrelevant to me, though very important to you. I must determine why things are as they are, and act from there. What I want is of no importance.”
“But that’s part of—” Ramona stopped herself as the explanation between Sera’s why and want hit her like a sucker punch. Of course Rick was how-many-worlds away, but when she did manage to speak with him, Ramona knew that he hadn’t changed. She couldn’t say the same for Sera when it came to John; understanding John’s change and the circumstances surrounding it superseded the angel’s desires. The freedom to want was so new, she could tuck it away for a little longer, but it didn’t keep her from being miserable. “Oh.”
“If I am to remain myself, it is duty and responsibility that must drive me,” Sera continued, sadly. “There is no room in those things for wanting. Perhaps not even for Free Will. I am only here as an Instrument. If I forget that…” She did not add what the consequence would be.
“What if…” Ramona dragged her toe over the gravel, nudging rocks into a small pile as she considered her words. “What if there’s a responsibility to love? What if somewhere down the line, you’re supposed to be a, um, an instrument for that? Don’t you have to leave that open, somehow?”
“I…don’t know.” Again, the uncertainty seemed to shake Sera. “I cannot help but feel that…what I want goes counter to duty.” She paused in thought. “Or…perhaps my responsibility to love must come without being loved in return.” She nodded, as if that had answered a question for her.
“Perhaps.” Unrequited love wasn’t a new concept for Ramona; the way that Sera had explained it made it seem noble. The way that the woman nodded after the statement made Ramona think that she had made at least one decision on how to approach the situation. Anything to reduce the uncertainty, she thought. “You said love is always permitted, so that makes sense. The duty and responsibility would be permitted, even if it’s not returned.”
Sera let out her breath, slowly, as if she had been holding it in all this time. “Yes. That answers the question. And also…this. John Murdock is no longer the same man. I must think of him always as someone else. Perhaps that will…help.”
“It could.” The former detective tilted her head and studied the angel next to her. “He changed more than you or I did. We’re still the sums of our respective experiences, whereas he doesn’t have that luxury… or burden,” she added after a moment’s consideration.
“I should be happy he is without that burden.” Sera tried to smile but the effort fell flat. “Now…” Suddenly her face changed. Clearly she had had an epiphany. “Now he can become the man he would have been, had he not endured the last few terrible years. A different man. An unburdened man. I think, now, I understand.”
Ramona smiled in the darkness. “Really? Understand what, exactly?”
“Why,” Sera said, simply. “And as I thought, what I want, and my own wishes are irrelevant. I am still here as an Instrument. He is as he is because this is the answer. And as for me, my answer is, as it ever was, duty. In that, I am unchanged, and still myself.”
It made perfect sense, out on the rooftop of the CCCP HQ. In spite of the addition or subtraction of abilities, the change of appearance, or the loss of a name, the person remained the same. Sera’s loss of her powers had not lessened her role; the more Ramona considered the woman’s simple declaration, the more she realized that her gaining abilities didn’t change her role, either. She extended a finger and scratched at the exposed bit of metal that covered a healing scrape on her arm. Beneath the surface, she was still Ramona Ferrari.
“Yeah. Yeah, same here.” Ramona pushed herself up from the bench and turned to face Sera. “Same, but different, I mean.”
“So.” Finally Sera actually met her gaze, solidly. “It seems we have answers. At last. And having answers gives us both direction. Also, at last.”
“It does,” Ramona agreed. “I can’t promise that I won’t question those answers half a dozen times between now and next week, but that’s the human thing to do. Are you going to…” She frowned, trying to figure out how to phrase things properly. “Are you staying out here or coming inside?”
“I will remain here,” Sera said. “If a call comes I—” And just like that, as if the alarm system had been waiting for the opening, the familiar three tones of the CCCP/Overwatch alert sounded over the earpiece Sera was wearing tucked into the collar of her tunic. “It seems,” she said, wryly, “I am needed.”
She put the earpiece on, ran a half dozen steps, and flung herself onto the wind. A few wingbeats, and she was out of sight. Ramona watched the woman soar on fire-red wings into the night sky, until Sera was a pinprick of light against the darkness. The voices chattered in her earpiece as the detective stood and crossed the rooftop. Meta or not, she would still be Ramona Ferrari, and she wouldn’t sit idle. Even, she mused, if that means doing paperwork.