Motor Memory

By Asynca

All of Vigrid rallied around each other, offering shelter to those whose houses had been destroyed in the crash and offering consolation to those who had lost loved ones. The Prime Minister of Spain wore a black suit a red rose in his lapel as he was filmed reviewing the pages and pages of names of citizens who had been killed. "Tragic," he said, sombre in his reflection, "such a waste of life we have seen." However, Vigrid would unite, he said. They would rise up and rebuild their beautiful city, and its future would be bright in the face of its dark, fateful past.

"I wonder if they know how close the whole world came to total annihilation," Jeanne thought aloud, as both she and Bayonetta watched the evening news on Jeanne's leather couch.

"I sincerely doubt it," Bayonetta said, carefully extracting all the prawns from her paella and putting them on Jeanne's plate. "We'd be treated like bloody heroes if they had even a whiff of the role we'd played."

When Jeanne realised what Bayonetta was doing, she smiled sidelong at her. Bayonetta stopped chewing, and said through a mouthful of food, "What?"

"You always used to give me your prawns," she said quietly, putting one of them in her mouth. "I just adore seafood."

So many of Jeanne's sentences started with that phrase, Bayonetta thought, watching Jeanne as she savoured the gift. You always... she'd begin. We used to, you loved to. She'd watch Bayonetta, her normally hard eyes soft and wistful, and Bayonetta knew which question came next: don't you remember? No, Bayonetta thought, feeling crestfallen. I don't remember.

It was too much. "Actually, it's because I just can't stand eating anything that looks like an insect," Bayonetta joked, trying on a grin. "All that scuttling they do in the sand. Ugh!"

Jeanne's red lips pressed together. She didn't comment.

While they were all about business during the day: discussing the finer tactics of their fighting and relearning each other after all the centuries had past, as soon as the sun disappeared over the horizon, all the life drained out of the apartment. Bayonetta drowned out the silence with reality TV turned up to the max, and they sat beside each other and mocked the idiots on the screen. Nothing helped, though. The darker it was, the larger the distance between them grew.

Nothing helped; not alcohol, not late night ice cream binges and not board games. Jeanne's walls shot up, and living with her was suddenly like living with the bank teller you chatted to but had nothing in common with. In the evenings, Bayonetta wondered how they even came to be friends in the first place.

When she thought back, examining the flashes of memory she had, Jeanne's face was in all of them. They were dreamlike and distant, and the sounds were distorted and time was slowed. In the one she remembered the best, Jeanne was standing over her, deep sorrow and apprehension plainly visible on her regal face. As the blade approached Bayonetta's chest, that moment was the only time Bayonetta remembered seeing any sort of clue about how close they were. Fear, she decided. Jeanne had been absolutely terrified of losing her.

But none of that emotion seemed to shine through now. To Bayonetta it felt like she had just moved in with a dance partner she worked well with.

That evening, Bayonetta had been sorting through her big box of ugly knick-knacks, trying to decide which of them she'd put on the shelves in her bedroom. Jeanne had been taking a load of towels out of the dryer. Bayonetta stood up to stretch her legs after half an hour of sitting crouched on the floorboards, and they met unexpectedly in the doorway of Bayonetta's bedroom. Bayonetta probably would have thought nothing of it and continued onward to the living room, but she heard Jeanne's breath catch in her throat.

They stood facing each other for an uncomfortable length of time, eyes locked.

It was Jeanne who turned away first, a blush rising to her cheeks. She pushed past her friend into the bedroom, depositing the folded towels on the foot of the bed. She stood looking down at them for a moment, and then stepped past Bayonetta and out of the room without so much as a glance at her.

Bayonetta stared after her, jaw open.

Sore legs forgotten, she soon followed Jeanne into the living room, pausing in the hallway to watch Jeanne walk toward the balcony, slide the door open and step out into the cool Autumn air. Curious, Bayonetta joined her on the balcony.

Jeanne was leaning heavily on the railing, forehead propped on her hands. Fairly certain a joke would not appropriately diffuse the tension this time, Bayonetta simply watched her. After a few moments Jeanne glanced toward her – without really looking at her – and said dryly, "Cat got your tongue?"

"What's got yours?" Bayonetta gently probed, without any trace of her usual playfulness.

Jeanne's lips were a thin line, and her eyes downcast. "It hardly matters now," she said bitterly.

That sent Bayonetta's eyebrows skyward. She pushed her glasses up her nose, trying to sort through a list of possible replies. She was about to choose an empty platitude that sounded comforting, when Jeanne spoke again. "It doesn't matter," she repeated. "Everything has changed."

That struck Bayonetta like another blade in the heart, and she knew instinctively that 'everything' hadn't changed. Jeanne meant to say that Bayonetta had changed, and the change was obviously upsetting her. She swallowed, a stone slowly forming in her stomach. "Look," she said, "I know I'm not the same person you remember." Jeanne exhaled as she said that. Bayonetta continued, "It's just that: it's because you remember, but I don't."

Her eyes searched the streets below, but Jeanne was clearly listening.

A thought occurred to Bayonetta. "In a way, we have you to thank for that."

Jeanne looked up at that, an eyebrow arched.

Bayonetta smiled wryly, "If you hadn't spun that seal quite so masterfully to protect me, perhaps I'd have had the odd chance of actually remembering something about my past."

Jeanne did smile in polite appreciation of Bayonetta's attempt to console her, but then cast her eyes downward again. "Don't mind me," she waived dismissively toward the other woman, "I'm probably just horribly premenstrual."

They stood silently beside each other for a while, listening to the sounds of distant traffic and watching the cars far below. A chilly breeze toyed with Bayonetta's ribbons, making the metallic thread catch the streetlights.

"We should go inside," Jeanne said eventually. "It's getting cold."

"I know I'm not really 'Cereza' anymore," Bayonetta found herself blurting out, instead of agreeing. "But 'Bayonetta' can be quite a lot of fun, too, you know."

Jeanne's eyes settled properly on Bayonetta finally. She looked wistful. "You see, that's just it," she stumbled a little on her words. "You are Cereza. Every part of you is, everything you do and everything you say." She paused, reflective. "Well, aside from your atrocious taste in new friends, but I suppose it is rather like an outcast to befriend them." Returning to her previous point, she finished, "That's what's so fucking tragic. You are every bit my Cereza, but..." She shook her head and left the sentence there, pushing away from the railing and strolling back into the apartment.

Since it was getting quite chilly, Bayonetta was only too happy to follow her back inside.

Jeanne flopped into one of the armchairs, kicking her feet up on the foot rest.

Bayonetta noted how tired Jeanne looked as she wandered up behind the arm chair. She'd never given a simple shoulder massage before as far as she was aware, so it was a genuine surprise to her when her hands lift from her side and rested on Jeanne's shoulders. Her thumbs dropped behind Jeanne's trapezius and immediately, expertly, located two firm knots. She frowned down at her hands as they set to work on the knots.

Jeanne sighed peacefully, tilting her head forward to allow Bayonetta better access to the muscles. Bayonetta found her thumbs tracing up the trunk of Jeanne's neck, kneading the tight muscles and smoothing down her neck and over her shoulders, and—

Alarm bells rang in Bayonetta's head, and she leaned back, lifting her hands from Jeanne's skin. Lips parted in mute surprise, Bayonetta realised she'd been about to lean forward and slip her hands inside Jeanne's blouse to cup her breasts. She held up her fingers, staring at them incredulously and backing away a little.

Jeanne could obviously tell something was wrong, and she twisted back toward the window. "Are you okay?"

Of course, Bayonetta realised. Of course, it all made sense. "Forgive me, I need to be alone for a moment," she said hurriedly, and then fled into her bedroom and closed the door.

Slowly lowering herself on the folded towels at the end of her bed, she stared at her hairsuit-covered knees. They had been lovers back then. Why on earth had she not realised before? All the pieces fell into place: the veiled disappointment on Jeanne's face as they departed to their own separate bedrooms at the end of the night, the stiffness in Jeanne as they sat separately on the couch as they watched TV... and, of course, that near-collision in the doorway.

The wind knocked out of her, all Bayonetta could do was stare at her treacherous hands for their betrayal.

It was some time before there was a soft knock at the door. "Come in," Bayonetta said automatically, before she had time to rethink it.

The door opened and Jeanne gingerly entered, silent.

Bayonetta looked up, unable to stop her eyes from dipping and surveying Jeanne's body. I used to touch that, Bayonetta was helpless to stop herself from thinking. I wonder what else my hands know how to do.

Jeanne didn't miss it. Her lips parted slightly as panic spread across her face. "It's okay," she managed. "I know things are different now."

It was anything but okay, Bayonetta knew, at least at that moment. "I don't," she began, her throat refusing to cooperate. "I mean, I—" She didn't know how to end the sentence. I don't like relationships, she thought. I don't think it would work between us? Bayonetta didn't like either of those choices, and wasn't entirely sure they were true. Obviously she did do relationships – or had done them, at least, in the past – and obviously things did work between the two of them. It also wasn't as if she hadn't fucked women during her time in New York; she'd had several, in fact, and usually with one or two men on the side.

It was just... well, it was just something.

Jeanne nodded, eyes veiled. "It's okay," she said simply, and shot her friend a false smile as she exited the room. Bayonetta could hear her walk quickly down the hallway and into her own bedroom.

She must be in love with me, Bayonetta supposed, the realisation making her chest tight for some reason. Jeanne must be in love with her, and have waited five hundred whole years for her return. It was incomprehensible. She wasn't sure anyone had felt that way about her during the twenty or so years she'd been in New York; most of the people she met just wanted to fuck her, and she fostered that desire because it meant she usually got whatever she wanted in other areas of her life. Additionally, she'd always found it deliciously amusing to watch people squirm around her.

Jeanne's behaviour wasn't amusing at all, however. Bayonetta found it deeply disconcerting and her chest ached on remembering the look in Jeanne's eyes as they'd nearly crashed in the doorway.

Jeanne had been subtly doing things for her since she'd moved in, Bayonetta knew. There were fresh flowers, not yet a full day old, by the window. Even the bedspread Bayonetta was sitting on had been lovingly chosen by her. Again, they were both Jeanne's quiet personal touch. Bayonetta had originally dismissed these details as Jeanne being a good hostess, but now she wondered what Jeanne had been thinking about when she'd bought them. They were indeed a patient kindness that would have been difficult: buying items for her ex-lover's separate bedroom could not possibly been easy.

Leaning back and laying her head against the pillow, Bayonetta reflected on how paralysed she felt. She spent at least a few minutes wishing that the whole scene had never played and wanting to find some way to push aside the discomfort so she didn't need to think about it. Her mind kept returning to Jeanne's expression as she'd left Bayonetta's bedroom, and her heart clenched painfully in her chest.

This won't do at all, she decided with sudden resolve, and sat up. She couldn't just lie there and torture herself.

Jeanne's bedroom door was closed as Bayonetta approached it, mirroring Jeanne's earlier visit by knocking gently. There was sudden, frantic movement and then silence. "Come in," a misleadingly bright tone beckoned.

As Bayonetta entered, she caught sight of a tissue Jeanne had hurriedly stuffed under the cover of her bed. She'd been crying.

"Jeanne, I..." she searched herself for something to say as she approached the figure hunched on her bed. "I'm sorry."

Jeanne didn't look at her, but just nodded. "Really, it's okay. This is just a silly little thing I—"

Bayonetta put two fingers on Jeanne's lips, and then tilted her chin upward with them. Striking blue eyes swam, framed by dark wet lashes. Looking at Jeanne for the first time with lover's eyes, Bayonetta had to concede that her ex-partner was truly beautiful. No one would ever have thought such a delicate face could be capable of such fierce fighting or weapon skill; she looked like a fragile porcelain doll. She was an enigma indeed.

In such an intimate pose, a tear escaped the corner of one of Jeanne's eyes and spilt down her cheek. Her throat bobbed uncertainly as she swallowed.

"I don't know if it will be the same this time," Bayonetta said eventually to more tears. As Jeanne tried to pull away to hide the ultimate humiliation should she dissolve into outright sobbing, Bayonetta stopped her. "But I think we should try it."

Jeanne stared at her, hardly believing her ears. Bayonetta wet her lips a little nervously. "If that's what worked for us before, maybe it's what has been missing from us now."

Bayonetta's hand cupped Jeanne's cheek, her thumbs once again tracing a familiar route, this time along Jeanne's elegant cheekbones. Tentatively, she leant forward. She had no living memory of ever being so hesitant about a kiss.

When their lips touched, something fit heavily into place in Bayonetta's mind. No flood of memories returned and Bayonetta's amnesia wasn't cured, but she was filled with an overpowering sense of right. It felt like returning from years at war and finding her wife standing aside from the crowd, waiting for her.

Jeanne's lips were salty with her tears, and her arms moved quickly around Bayonetta's neck, and then to hold firmly either side of her jaw. She kissed with the thirst and desperation of a dying woman desperately clinging to life, pulling fractionally away from Bayonetta for a moment and whispering, "Five hundred years, Cereza," she dipped to kiss her again, "five hundred years..."

Bayonetta's body molded easily into Jeanne's as she let Jeanne lay her down on the bed, their legs interlocking as their lips moved together. Bayonetta found she knew exactly where to kiss and exactly where to touch to encourage her lover; her body knew each position and movement intimately without her conscious interference.

Bayonetta's mind may have been an empty void when it came to her past, but her body remembered every moment they had shared – and after five hundred years it was finally home.