Disclaimer: I don't own or make any money off this…I also don't own much worth suing over, so please don't!
3 years or so down the line...
"Do you love me?"
"You shouldn't ask questions like that," he states gruffly, but there's obvious emotion buried in his voice. She just smiles leaning on her arm next to him on the bed. His back is towards her from his position staring out the window where the sun can be seen setting. Apparently, she thinks, he's forgotten his own questions.
"I need to know."
"I don't see why." Her fingers trace up and down the side of his face, as if in memorization. As if in deep contemplation. As if…as if in love.
"Deckard," she states suddenly, with the surprise of someone whose come upon a sudden epiphany. "What do you think scientifically happens when we, when we…" she gestures helplessly at the space between them in an attempt to illustrate sex.
He turns to look at her then with unreadable eyes in the gloominess. She thinks she must sound foolish and childish and takes his place watching the sun fall. She couldn't bear it if he mocked her, but its worse trying to read the answers in his eyes. She's surprised then, when he seems to understand her quarry, and answers slowly as if treading on thin ice. As if…as if dreading where this will go, but knowing it was inevitable.
"I think I get a great deal of pleasure out of it." She doesn't ask about herself, just gives him a look.
He goes back to watching outside and she stays watching his face fading with the sunlight.
"I think you do what you were…what you were born to do."
"Which is?" She answers him with obvious humor in her voice, and he colors and looks apologetically at her, but he can tell from her smile she knows he didn't mean it that way, and he sighs quietly in relief and goes back to watching the outside world.
"Androids weren't born to feel Rachael, they were born to react."
"React," she repeats in an even tone of voice. She can tell from the way he hunches over even more, and puts his hands beneath his head as if to try and cover that side from her that he's embarrassed, possibly even mortified.
"And unscientifically?" He looks miserable and in turmoil when he turns towards her, and she's suddenly reminded of the day they ran away. A man at his door had told him loudly, "you might as well make love to a washer machine, for all the love you'll get!" before stomping away angrily.
He had thought she was still asleep then and had gone out and returned with a new pack of cigges presumably for her…with half the pack missing. He had never asked her if she'd overheard, and she had never brought it up.
"Rick," she speaks up again suddenly, "are you religious?"
Her sudden change of topic alarms him. He looks helpless for a moment, but she cuts off any meaninglessness before it can leave his mouth.
"I don't mean about me, or for me, or for my kind. I don't even mean about an afterlife. I just want to know whether or not my husband shares my religious views too, as I suspect."
"Your views," he asks in obvious surprise. She grins wryly at him.
"I don't know about any afterlife, but I have figured out I'm an atheist - Tyrell was scary enough for me- I don't want to imagine a guy who would willingly make him," she says lightly
"Oh Rachael."
The sun reaches halfway to oblivion halfway down the hill outside their home, and he turns suddenly and pulling her into his arms, attempts to smother all the million little drops of water that want to jump out of his eyes into the haven of her neck, but she pulls back…and he would give her anything.
"Promise me," she demands with her one hand gripping his head forcefully to make her point and her own tears crowding down her face, and her other hand pressed in a ball against his lips preventing him from speaking. "Promise me that if you love me and you trust me, and you ever, EVER feel despairing or questioning in regards to our relationship that you'll open the letter I left for you before doing anything rash," she says before moving away her hand.
"I love-" he states forcefully, but of course she'd cut him off the first time he said it. He'll have to smile later at the of-courseness of it all, the part of his brain thinks that isn't allowing him to think of what 'later' is.
"Promise me"
"I promise."
"Good," she says, her voice cracking as she lays her head back down into his neck.
"Good," she says half a minute later this time drowsily as his fruitless attempts to bind her to him by holding her as close to his chest (and his heart) as humanly possible fail him with the feel of her hands suddenly curling in on themselves, and the sudden gasping intake of a breath that goes unaccompanied by the answering thud of a heart.
He starts suddenly with the realization the sun has gone down, repulsed at the poor imitation of his wife that imitates her face so well, but leaves her eyes cold and empty, and rushes out of the bed stumbling toward the drawer he knows holds the letter she must have caught him watching her write earlier. He wants to get this over with- wants to fulfill his promise so he can attempt to follow her.
He opens the envelope and begins to read. Apparently she found a file when she was with Tyrell the day he came to test her. Apparently, the letter read, she hadn't run away so much as been forced out.
She'd never read the file, the letter said, but she'd figure it out when she found his pictures, a few months back. She'd grappled with telling him, excited at finally having unquestionable proof that she was as capable of love and feeling as Deckard was, but in the end she was too scared of scarring him to do it- remembering his last lines to Tyrell were "How can it not know what it is?" If he was reading this, the letter said, than she must have trusted he could cope. The letter ended with a simple "I love you- yours truly forever, Rachael."
His hands shaking he gently moved her head aside and fetched the folder the letter had said would be beneath her pillow. Inside was an old newspaper article- proclaiming his death while on the job with a bright color photo of what his features might look like ten or fifteen years from now.
Behind it was a picture of two babies, one wrapped in blue, one in pink being held in the very young arms of Tyrell's niece with a huge grin on her face, Tyrell with his hand on her shoulder behind her.
On its back the photo read simply "My Adam and Eve," in Tyrell's tight scrawling script.
Smiling, Deckard returned to the bed and wrapped his arms about his Eve as the exhaustion of the day began to take effect. He'd always been a morning person, after all… he'd been born on a morning 3 years, 364 days previous according to the file.
End Note: I couldn't figure out how the 'androids' were made to look 20 or 30 when they only live 4 years so in this version they're created in test tubes and then their bodies are aged rapidly when they're determined to be healthy, don't ask me how. Also Deckard and Rachael are 'Adam and Eve' in this story because they're the first replicants with memories and without super-human strength….on a side note, in this way Rachael and Deckard could also be Caine because they killed their 'sibling' replicants. Please review! I took the time to make sure this was finished, and the plot bunnies never attack when I tell them to- this is my first finished story in a while, and probably the first story in a while I can actually say I'm proud of. Do you think it's cheesy?