Thunder and Webs C118 [Gold]

Following his mother's treatment, Ripley must decide what he will be from now on. No matter what, he decides to be hopeful about the future.

Following his mother's treatment, Ripley must decide what he will do from now on. No matter what, he decides to be hopeful about the future.

Chapter 118: Hopes of a Future

February 13th

7:17 PM

Mirage

Ripley’s head lay on Elsa's lap as she sat on the couch. She’d taken over the drones to clean up the space of the mess it had been in. Ripley had always been so clean, even clearing up her house, but the last few weeks… he’d kept his mother’s side with her hospital bed spotless while his own workbench was a crowded mess of late-night fast food and Ad-Stim needles.

Her hand drifted to part his hair, wiping up the stray tear that slipped from his sleeping form. Starlight rumbled on his chest within her drone, unable to connect to her father after Elsa injected him with one of Missy’s serums.

That woman was beyond prepared… for even the worst… Elsa hated Missy.

“Is he… going to be okay?”

“Your dad’s strong, Star.” Elsa shifted her hand over to the drone clutching his chest. “Are you okay?”

“No.” A quiet sob left the drone. “I thought… I thought that she would… I told him so many times that everything would be fine… now I feel like I lied.”

“You didn’t lie, Star.” Elsa rubbed a tear falling from her own eyes. “You just didn’t know. There’s nothing wrong with being hopeful. You’re… you’re exactly what he needs right now, even more than me.”

“Thank you… Elsa…” Starlight shifted closer to Elsa’s hand, finding a warm comfort in the familiarity it had to her mother’s.

“Starlight…” Elsa started quietly. “I’m sorry. For… not always… looking at you the way you deserve.”

“It’s fine… I’m made of Amaterasu’s code… you’re right to be wary given your experience with her.”

“That’s not what I’m trying to say…” Elsa rubbed her hand with the rare but genuine affection she had. “I’m sorry for not looking at you like you’re a real person. You’re more than code to him. You’re everything he loves. Everything he’s scared off… you’re more human than a lot of people I know…”

Elsa took a deep breath.

“But you’re still a child. I know this is a lot for you, and Ripley does need you… but you need to take care of yourself as well. Things will be difficult for both of you, and I know you’ll want to be there for him — that’s who you are… but please, take some time on your own to… feel what you’re feeling.”

Starlight rumbled, before raising her voice. “But…”

“I know how much you care for your dad.” Elsa gave a soft smile. “But what we need to do after this… it’s something we have to do as adults. I’m not discrediting who you are, Star, you’re incredibly smart and wise… but don’t push yourself to the point that you forget about yourself. So I guess what I’m trying to say is… go to your mother. Just be with her for a little while, I’ll contact you when Ripley and I… take care of procedures.”

Starlight hesitated, shifting under Elsa’s hand silently. The reason for Starlight's hesitation wasn't a big secret to either of them. Starlight didn't trust Elsa to be alone with her dad, but she wanted to believe. She wanted to hope. “Alright… I'll go. Thank you, for taking care of him.”

The pink lights of the drone slowly faded away, and Elsa gently moved it onto the coffee table before turning back down to look back at Ripley.

His eyes were open, the first time since he collapsed in her arms. He blinked slowly through puffy eyes, and Elsa didn’t know what to say except to keep a firm pressure on Ripley’s cheek to prevent him from turning his head. To keep him from looking at… his mother.

Then he spoke, his voice utterly neutered and flat. “That was nice of you to say to Starlight, but forgive me if I have my… doubts regarding your intentions for wanting to be alone with me.”

“I…” Elsa’s words caught in her throat. She truly didn’t know how to act in this moment, “you’ve both been through a lot. But I… I didn’t tell her to go away so I could do something to your mind. I just…”

Ripley’s hand softly caressed her hand on his cheek, but there was a distinct edge as a talon grazed her wrist. “That thing you injected me with…”

“Missy calls them Nul-Serums… a potent extract of everything that makes her so dangerous.” Elsa explained, a rapid beat in her tone to explain herself. “You can’t use your Energy, it… severs you from your Implant, temporarily. Each needle has just the right dosage to not be dangerous but effective. At least for your Tier. It’s nothing bad, I… made sure of that.”

“A serum to keep Psyche from driving me insane… to stop it from changing me.” Ripley answered, his eyes distant yet in focus of the truth. “It got to V.3.00 and a new Protocol. Dreamscape. That’s the worst Protocol someone like me could get… it all felt so real… I bet I looked insane, waving my hands in the air thinking her touch was guiding me, speaking with such hope while I remained deaf to a damn flatline.”

“You didn’t look insane, Ripley. You were… just hopeful. Nothing wrong with that.” Elsa spoke words she truly couldn’t say she believed in, just words she thought he needed to hear.

All he needed was reality, and in his words were a cold reflection of the truth. “It was 87% Compatibility, there was no better Implant, El. I was never going to make something capable of healing her… not if her body was too… frail. That’s the only thing it could be, an initial shock from the fact that alien metal inserted into the brainstem of a woman who was already hanging on a thread… instead of tying that thread tighter, it severed it.”

“Ripley… we don’t know…”

“The Implant was fine, Elsa.” Ripley’s hand reached for her face, as he slowly lifted himself to meet her gaze on an equal plane. “We have to trust in all the hard work we put into this… it was the best we could do. What else could we have done? Found her a Gold? Make a Gold? A fucking Titanium…?”

He leaned his forehead against hers, voice wavering yet held in place with a sturdiness Elsa wasn’t expecting. “I went through the stages of grief a long time ago, Elsa. I denied the fact that my mother was sick for so long, that we could do something to change that… got angry when she began preparing to leave me, hiding inheritances. I bargained with her to give me a chance to let her live, I fought tooth and nail and broke people’s trust for her. Then… at the very end, I hesitated, got depressed with the fact that I still felt like I didn’t do enough to get what I needed. But things happened as they always were destined to, El, I just had to accept it… and remarkably, I am.”

Elsa cried more than Ripley was right now… she was sure his Implant wasn’t affecting him right now… so why was he…

“I know what you’re thinking.” His breath ghosted her wet cheeks, making them colder. “That I’m… not seeing what really happened. In fact, I’m surprised too. I thought I would have a mental breakdown, but… instead… I can just accept that it’s over. All I can do is… live on with her in my heart.”

Elsa opened her eyes to see Ripley’s orange eyes held still, pooling with a genuine conviction like the sun’s last few rays on a sunset. Of a light that faded, but would come back again. He spoke slowly, but with words born of the love and memory of the woman who’d walked beside him for so long. “All I can do is be the hero she thinks I am… even if I have to do it without her.”

He slowly disentangled himself from Elsa, and she couldn’t stop him from taking one step at a time towards the hospital bed.

Towards where his mother’s corpse lay.

She saw him looking at his mother, her pale face illuminated by the night lights and her closed eyes that would never open again. He rubbed the fingers that had been dangling off the bed, a pleading warmth in his orange irises that shut tight before he placed them on her chest — a sad but soft smile preceded his words. “She looks at peace.”

Clenching his fists, he repeated those words. “She’s at peace… we had a nice last talk.”

His lip and jaw twitched as he looked down, before bending to reach for the Silver Implant that her body had rejected. If Ripley was right, she rejected it, not the other way around.

He set the Implant aside, and called a funerary taxi.

———

8:44 PM

There were enough deaths in Westcrook that the taxis had an integrated corpse-disposal service. It took them to a small facility where Ripley and Elsa got out of the car as it entered a garage and drones lifted his mother away. They both waited by a wall with a screen and timer ticking down.

Ripley had opted to have his mother cremated. It was the least expensive option, with graves and funerary services being considered luxuries, but he wasn’t doing it to save money.

He wanted to scatter her ashes somewhere meaningful. He hadn’t decided where yet, but not here. Not in Westcrook.

“Hey, Elsa… NeoCore does tours to Florida, right?” Ripley remembered reading something about it. Take it for the rich and powerful to want guided tours led by NeoCore operatives to a Free City destroyed by a Titan. He’d even recalled there being a package to witness a live fight against a MAL and to keep its Implant as a souvenir.

“They do. Cost a pretty sheddy, especially since the Swarm’s nearing…” Elsa responded dryly, unsure what tone to take for that question.

At a ding, the screen on the wall flashed and a slot opened for a canister to roll in. Written on it were clinical words.

Name: Isabel Gravas-Donovick

Date of Birth: 4/16/2450

Date of Death: 2/13/2498

Cause of Death: Heart failure

Ripley stared at the canister for a long while before picking it up. Elsa huddled close to him as they got back into the taxi. She rested her hand on his, drawing circles to give him any connection he needed. “Will you be holding a… a funeral?”

“No… I don’t think so.” He said with an indifferent tone. “Not many people who she’d want to come, just really me… Starlight and… you. And… I don’t know, I guess Diamante as well. But she wouldn’t want me to go through that hassle… I’ll have a headstone made for her. Once I decide what I want it to say.”

“You don’t have to rush any of this Ripley…” She leaned her head on his shoulder, it unnerved her how… methodical he was to this entire thing.

“Would you rather come to my place or…”

“I really want to stay at your house, tonight.” He interrupted, hands shivering as he pulled himself closer to her. “I really just… not today, I can’t go back to my place.”

“I understand.”

———

Getting back, Elsa and Ripley would find themselves tangled up in sheets as an old movie played in front of their eyes, Ripley hadn’t been able to decide as usual, so she found anything she could to cheer him up.

He made his usual comments about disbelieving certain aspects of the movie, she berated him back to suspend his belief, and life carried on as usual for that moment.

Or perhaps, an imitation of it.

She had to hold herself back from digging into his mind to know what was really happening in his head. In fact, she could do so much to make him feel better, all it took was Dreamweaving.

But Ripley knew that as well, he knew how easy it would be for her… or for him, to cast an illusion over the reality of what had happened.

As the movie ended, Ripley made a snorting comment. “Huh… people really liked superheroes in the old days, huh? Lots of movies about them.”

“They did… I’ve never been a big fan, though.” Elsa sighed. “They all seemed too… fantastical to be real.”

“But it makes sense… you see similar things happening to Diana… or Silvereye anyway. Even me.” Ripley scrolled up a few articles of discussion about Dreadwire, all around were discussions about rumors of his appearances, his motives and desires.

In the end, they ascribed onto him what they wanted to see. A figure who could stand up to the corporations, to the city, a figure who could soar high over these polluted streets and bring the high and mighty down to the earth.

“My mother… she was my hero. And I want to be just like her.” He reminisced. “I’ve hurt a lot of people… so…”

An idea flashed in his mind. “Could you find someone for me?”

“Who?”

“Remember when I… when I fought that ‘Embrance dealer and it cost me an arm? Emily Wilbur?” With his Implant dampened, there was no Psyche to hide that name from him. “She had a daughter and… I’d like to make things right, I changed that girl’s life and… I’d like to make things right — deal with the consequences of that stupid decision. I killed her mother when there was no need to… and I…”

He shivered and Elsa pulled him even closer, was this a good idea? She wasn’t sure, she couldn’t be. “Ripley… with your current state of mind…”

“That’s what Missy’s Nul-Serum is for, right?” He staggered on. “I can live a few weeks without relying on my Implant. How many did she give?”

“Enough for a month.” Elsa muffled into his hair. “But Ripley, are you sure?”

“I’m sure.” He had resounding faith in his words.

“I trust you, Rip.” She kissed his cheek, before rumbling as she tried to fall asleep with him.

“Elsa…” Ripley’s voice was light. “Tomorrow’s Valentine’s.”

“You don’t need to do-”

“I put a reservation in last month. New Bombay… Diamante pulled some strings.”

Elsa’s eyes widened, that was certainly one of the more luxuries options to go for. “Ripley… if you’re… we don’t need to rush back into our normal lives after what happened.”

“I know…” Ripley kissed her cheek. “I…”

His voice broke. “I just need to do anything except… think. I’m sorry, but I’m gonna head to the clinic.”

“Ripley?” He was already moving out of her hands, but she pulled him close and didn’t let go. Smaller than him, she was, but her Shardware was as equally as impressive as his. “Stay, just… just for a little bit. For me?”

“…okay.” His voice came strained.

As they lay there, in silence, it wouldn’t take long for Ripley’s body to shake against hers, quiet sobs releasing into her skin with wet despair. She stayed with him the entire time in silence, not needing words to be exchanged between them for either of them to get comfort in this undoubtedly, terrible time.

His groans dug into her skin, vibrating up her nerves. “Fuck… I tried so hard… I tried so…”

She let him get it all out.

As his waves of pain slowly relaxed, a low rumble shifted to her cheek. “Thank you, El…”

His sleep came soon after whispering. “Thank you for being my blood and steel.”

---

From this moment onwards, I can say that Act 3 has truly begun. I'm pretty sure a lot of people were expecting Ripley's mother to die, but the common consensus was that he'd have a mental break. Even when I first outlined this segment, I was under the impression it would lead Ripley down a bad path... but while writing Act 2 I realized how I really wanted his character arc to go. Next chapter is titled Valentines.