nothing has changed
2044.
(Present day.)
Professor Callas closes the door shut behind her and leans against it, not taking a single step closer. Dr. Sen looks up at her, and you can’t read the expression on her face. She’d half expected her to cry or scream or turn away or be shocked or anything, but her expression is as still as the ocean, betraying no sense of shock or despair or fucking anything. What is her deal? What does she want? What the hell must be going through her head? Then she notices her fists are clenched. Whatever emotions she’s feeling, she’s holding it back, as expected of a surgeon.
“Sabine.”
Because this wasn’t how she imagined it would happen. From the countless messages she’d ignored, the letters at her doorstep she’d tried so hard not to open yet always had, only to throw them into the fire when she was done with them, she’d half expected her to start groveling at her feet, or punch her, or beg to let her see her son again, for another chance, because she’s better. Because she can do better, she’d said. Over and over and over.
Because at the end of the day, Professor Callas has nothing to say to “Sabine.”
Steeling her resolve against the well-expected silence, Dr Sen’s fists close up a little harder, making her knuckles go white a little. She tries it again.
“Sabine...”
“What.”
“I... just had a question.”
The professor tries her hardest to stand firm, but she’s pretty sure Dr. Sen can hear her brain spinning around like a centrifuge. What’s she about to ask? Her ex-wife’s voice echoes in layers in the back of her imagination. Are you still mad at me? Can I have you back? Have you found someone else? Do you miss me?
“…Yes, Dr. Sen?”
“Why... did you come in here?”
This catches the professor off guard.
“Excuse me?”
“You didn’t have to. Not if you didn’t want to. Surely whatever this job is about… couldn’t have been so... important? You could’ve left as soon as you saw me.”
Fuck.
Now she’s thinking why hadn’t she?
Suddenly the room feels too small for the both of them. She has to grasp at straws. Give her a reason. Any reason. Be petty. Be distant. Be either. All she can come up with is This is more important than the two of us. Even she can tell it's a lie as it’s coming out of her mouth.
The professor turns her cheek to her shoulder and sighs, hoping it sounds more like bitterness than stalling.
“Sabine...”
“Weren’t you the one who was begging to see me?” She snaps. Her tone of voice betrays her bitterness, despite trying so hard to sound removed and impersonal. She wants it to be known that she didn’t choose to be here, that she’s here on a strictly professional basis. It doesn’t work. Dr. Sen knows she chose to walk into this room of her own free will because she knows her.
The doctor’s composed expression sours a little bit. She stares at her thumbs. Poor girl, she must be trying so hard. She’s not someone who can hold back her emotions like this.
Stop that. Goddammit, get it together, Sabine.
“I... don’t know what I can ask of you. Not anymore.”
“Then why'd you even ask to talk to me?” Sabine bites back.
Dr. Sen looks up at her, and her dark eyes warp and reflect the fluorescent lights in a curve. The darkest eyes of any lover Sabine had ever taken, yet still the brightest all the same.
“I guess... I just wanted to see if you would.”
That pisses Sabine the hell off. She turns around and loudly jerks at the doorknob.
“I’m fucking leaving—”
Yunhua interrupts her, hand reached out and tugged on Sabine’s shoulder, her voice a little louder now.
“It doesn’t get easier—”
Yunhua’s also broken character. And when she cries she cries like pieces of herself are falling out of her. She doesn’t sob—or, at least, she tries not to. You can still hear her sharp breaths in and out like someone is driving a dagger deeper and deeper into her heart. Her moment of strength fizzles before she can even finish her sentence.
“—does it..? for you? Does it at all...? Sabine?”
Sabine stops dead in her tracks, her hands still clasped around the doorknob.
She doesn’t respond. She can't.
Fuck. Is the silence answer enough?
Yunhua presses further, because she has nothing left to lose anymore.
“Does it hurt because you loved me? Would it hurt less if you hadn’t?”
Sabine lets go of the doorknob and in the blink of an eye, struts up to Yunhua and grabs her by the collar and drags her face up to hers.
“You really think you’re in a position to ask me that?”
Sabine stares into her own reflection through Yunhua’s eyes. Her eyes are trembling from fear, and for a second it loses the light and her reflection with it.
She grabs Sabine’s arm to try and resist, but it doesn’t budge.
Her hands rest so cold against her forearm.
You can always tell when Yunhua’s trying to be indignant, because she’s trying to do that thing with her lips she does when she’s pissed but her chin is still trembling.
“You left me without a word. I just want to hear your voice. What are you gonna—” She hiccups. “—gonna do, kill me?”
Her voice is too shaky for any of those words to have any weight behind them. Sabine wishes her ex-wife would, for fucking once, back down from a fight she knows she can’t win.
“You wouldn't fucking deserve it.”
Yunhua takes several sharp breaths as if she’s trying to think of something equally as hurtful to say in return. But when she stares into Sabine’s eyes, all she can do is fall apart. She starts sobbing louder and louder to the point it almost sounds fake. Sabine tries to say something, but Yunhua can’t get it to stop to listen to whatever it is. She takes her hands off of Sabine’s arms and starts trying to wipe it away. She's come so far. She can’t lose face now. She has to be mad at her back. Stop fucking crying. Her vision starts shimmering into blurs because the tears don’t stop coming.
Sabine doesn’t know what to do. She never does. God, she’s pathetic. Her next words come out without her even realizing it, and they're softer than she thought she'd sound.
“You’re alright?”
Yunhua sniffles. And coughs and hyperventilates and you can barely make out what she's trying to say when she says:
“Stop that. Be mad at me.”
Yunhua’s always been an ugly crier. She’s getting tears and snot and whoever-knows-what all over Sabine’s wrists. A few seconds of awkward silence between them is just Sabine listening to Yunhua’s disgusting crying and sniffing and snorking and gulping noises and she can’t fucking keep her head straight because she’s supposed to be threatening a fucking war criminal and the murderer of her child—their child—and it’s... It’s not that Sabine can’t be mad with her when she cries but… she just can’t focus.
There are those who’d look at Professor Callas and claim she doesn’t have a heart.
But if she doesn’t have a heart, what is beating so fast against her chest?
Stop it. This isn’t the time. What’s making you so anxious?
She knows she's asking herself a question she already knows the answer to. She’s just asking it because she wants to think she doesn’t.
Is it the eyes? Is it because her eyes are the same. Is it the proximity? Is it the warmth of her breath that seems to radiate around the room? Is it the way she smells like honey and oat and oolong?
That's not it.
It’s the danger, isn’t it? You’re heart is beating so fast because you think the two of you might die.
Neither of them can explain what she does next, but Sabine takes her other wrist and helps Yunhua wipe her tears off her cheeks. Her eyes are still puffed red as if Sabine had punched her in the face. Yunhua sniffles and dabs at her chin with her wrists.
And Sabine pulls her in and kisses her. Yunhua kisses her back. And her lips are as soft as the first time they’d ever kissed, and it feels as hard and painful as remembering the last time. It’s strange because the world doesn’t melt away, and neither does the anger, or the pain. It’s strange because it’s still so much like when they used to kiss before, it never used to feel like they were floating because their feet were so firmly on the ground. She tastes no different, either. She tastes just as soft and sweet and delightful and insistent and intoxicating as before and the kiss tastes like nothing, like water, she tastes like when you slip your hands into a gentle stream and wave it around against the flow of the current. Yunhua still wraps her arms around Sabine’s neck the same, and the pressure of her thumbs against her neck still makes her feel like she’s so firmly anchored to reality. Sabine still grazes her wrist ever so slightly against the back her head and traces the top of her head with her fingers and her hair still feels soft like cotton.
And when she finally loses herself to the kiss all her responses to Yunhua’s question start crackling in the back of Sabine’s throat like she’s choking.
Does it hurt because you still love me?
Now Sabine is crying. When she cries the tears stream down narrow and all at once, in droplets too small they dry up before they can reach her chin. She doesn’t have a lot to cry because she’s never had a lot to lose, growing up. It’s not her eyes that hurt, it’s her throat, because she used to sob a lot as a kid but ever since she was young she’d trained herself to choke them back without even needing to be conscious about it. Yunhua knows her tell, though. It’s the almost unnoticeable scratching noise she makes at the back of her neck.
Of fucking course it hurts.
It hurts because nothing has changed.
It hurts because I don’t know why it happened. I don’t understand what happened. And I don’t know what to do to fix it and I know it's not something that can be fixed. It hurts because we’ve always made it through but now I don’t know how.
It hurts because nothing has changed about the way I feel and I don’t know how to make it change. Because everything’s wrong but I still can’t forget the way I’m supposed to hold you. I still can't get rid of the way you used to hold me. Because every day I spend without waking up next to you is a fresh fucking nightmare and it never gets easier.
It hurts because I know you so fucking well that I understand. I'm probably the only other person in the world who understands. It hurts because I still can't forgive you for it, in spite of all that.
It hurts because you don’t know. It hurts because you don’t know that your son is still here, needing you. It hurts because I still need you. But you can’t know. I can’t ever let you know.
It hurts because I’m the only one who remembers the way you used to make him smile.
So I just have to be the one who carries all the weight of remembering you, loving you, hating you, wanting to forgive you, needing you, never being able to forgive you, alone.
All the time.
Because at the end of the day, it's us. It'll always be us.
And it hurts because that will never change.
Sabine doesn’t need to spell those answers out with her tongue or the tips of her fingers.
And she can tell Yunhua knows exactly how much she’s hurting because she’s already—without having to look—cupped her cheeks with her hands to prevent the tear marks from drying up and running cold.
Huh.
Her hands are warm. Sabine could’ve sworn...
And when they finally pull apart, hair ruffled between the both of them, their faces and cheeks and eyes so red, they are more certain that ever that it’ll never happen again, that it can't ever happen again.
The professor lets go of Dr. Sen's collar and wipes herself off with the thighs of her jeans. She clears her throat to get the lump in the back of her throat out, to no avail.
“Get out of my sight.” She chokes, her voice cracking.
The doctor doesn’t say anything in response. She readjusts her lab coat and stows the wrists of her sweater. She clears her throat and tries to reset her expression with her face still red. It doesn’t work.
She looks away when she takes step after step towards the door in big paces—as big as her short legs will allow. And wiping one last tear away with the wrist of her lab coat, she clicks the door shut behind her.
“Thought you'd murder her in there. Looks like things went well, all things considered.”
Viper glares daggers at him. “Shut your hell mouth, Liam van den Berg.”
“Look, I care about you is all. You're good?”
“...”
“I still get final call on approvals.” her brother murmurs, gently. “So that's a no?”
Sabine throws her back against the wall and slides to the floor. She tries to steady her breathing, to little success. God, fuck that bitch.
“...Do what you want.”