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His head's still halfway in the dream, so it takes until he sees Melina's hand to realize it's not her. It's a familiar hand, bruised and bloodied by battle, but there's no scar, and its fingers are long and slim. A piano player's fingers, they'd joked, and the joke had been that neither has ever been rich enough to see a piano in real life. He remembers painting those nails a dark red one day two weeks ago, cutting away a small hangnail on the side of one nail, blowing onto her nails to dry them faster, kissing her lotioned hands. There's thousands of memories of before, like slipping a ring onto her finger years ago, but he tries not to think of those now. They're not real, for all that they feel real.
"Hey," Doug says, turning back to the medic. "Can we have a couple minutes?"
"Sure, Hauser," the medic replies.
Doug wonders if he's part of the resistance, too, or if someone just gave him that name. Douglas Quaid. Carl Hauser. Neither name feels real to him.
"Is something wrong?" Melina asks. She looks so concerned. He wonders if Lori's making that same face under there.
Doug squeezes her hand gently. "I just wanted to talk to you."
"About…?" And that there sounds more like the Lori he knows. A little pushy, a little cranky. A little murderous, apparently.
"I love you," he begins, because he figures he may as well start with the truth. He's supposed to be in love with Melina, he knows. This would be so much easier if he were just in love with Melina. "It's not the same—I'm not Douglas Quaid, but I'm not Carl Hauser, either." Douglas Quaid had been a fabrication of some government lackey, while Carl Hauser was green liquid in a tube that he'd made sure to destroy. That man who'd loved Melina is gone—if he ever existed at all. All that's left of him is one real memory and a hell of a lot of muscle memory. "I'm a mess, and I can't remember what's up or down anymore, but I love you. 'Til death do us part, right?"
Melina's features twitch in surprise, and then the screen flickers and Lori's face finally appears. He wonders if the blood on the side of her face had been left by him, but doesn't let his thoughts linger on it.
"Is this some kind of game?" Lori asks, raising an eyebrow.
"Why are you here, Lori? If you wanted to kill me, why didn't you just do it while I was out?"
"I wanted you to see me do it. It's more satisfying that way. And did you think I'd let you leave without a kiss goodbye?"
It's so fucking reckless, but he's fought against her before. He's pretty sure he could get away before she chokes him to death. Slowly, feeling each and every one of his injuries, Doug sits up. He tilts his head up, but doesn't reach for Lori. One sudden move and she's going to spook, either trying to kill him or opening the ambulance doors and becoming lost in the crowd he faintly hears outside.
Lori leans down and joins him in that kiss. She tastes like blood and smoke, and fuck, he's missed this. He's missed her, the woman he'd thought she was and the woman he loves, who he still hopes is somewhere inside her. Carl Hauser would be smarter than this. Doug Quaid isn't.
Her breath is hot against his lips when she pulls back. "Now I know why you were such a fantastic lover. Trained in seduction by the UFB? Not even I got that treatment."
"It was just instinct," he says. "Like the fighting skills. And loving you."
"You're insane," she tells him, and when she's not trying to kill him, the accent is pretty hot. "You know full well that it was all made up. It was just a long term assignment, and an easy one at that."
"Was it easy? Because it was easy for me. Shit, Lori, you were the best thing about that life. And sure, they falsified the memories, but they couldn't fake emotions. I fell in love with the woman I knew for those six weeks, the one who loved me, hell, who taught me her grandmother's roast chicken recipe. Was all of her as fake as I was?"
"It was an assignment," Lori replies.
It hurts, and he kisses her again, rough and hot. She's a terrible person. He loves her desperately, even now that he's trying not to. "Was fucking me every night an assignment?"
"No, that was a bonus. You're a fucking idiot if you expect me to tell you I love you and run off to the resistance together with you."
"What about just staying with me, not the resistance? The UFB screwed you over, too. It was a shit assignment whose details you were lied to about. You could just leave the government altogether, make a life here." At her snort, he adds, "I know. But a smart man told me that it's each man's quest to find out who he is, and that the answer to that lies in the present, not in the past."
"He's a dead man, now." There's no remorse in her eyes.
"Do you still want to kill me, too? I don't think you really hated me the entire time. It didn't feel that way. You were sometimes angry, and wouldn't tell me what's wrong, but it wasn't at me."
"Maybe I was angry at having to be with a low-class construction worker."
"Maybe you were angry to be developing feelings for someone so below your status. Harry was right; you're way too hot for me." His mind is a jumble of dissociated feelings and memories, and the one thing binding them is his love for this woman. Part of that love isn't even real. But some of it… He remembers that lazy morning in bed when they'd been stuck inside due to maintenance of the fall and talked about their pasts. Him, of people he misses and now can't have at all, her of Alicia and Greg and, "Are they real? The family you told me about?"
"Of course not," Lori says, smoothly. "You think I'd tell you about my real family?"
"You're lying," he says, realizing it slowly. He knows this woman, with the attention of both a loving husband and a spy. "Greg, who'd needed experimental surgery and almost died before the birth of his daughter? Alicia, who teaches history and works for the government on the side. The two who'd made it to live in the UFB after working hard all their lives, like something out of a propaganda reel. Alicia's ten years older than you, you're the baby of the family." There's something dark in her expression. "They're real, aren't they? If I looked for them, I'd find them."
"They're only the last family I monitored, nothing more. I stayed four months in their home monitoring them for resistance leanings."
"So you're like me. No family." He watches her face, and she doesn't deny it. "Other than a husband who loves the hell out of you. I don't care if you're not completely the Lori I got to know. I know you're not. But there's enough of her in you for me to love you, and I'm going to bet there's enough of the Doug you got sentimental about in me."
For a second, he thinks she might just give in.
Lori rubs the bridge of her nose. "I don't even know what I'm supposed to do with you. Fuck." She looks at him. He can see the determination building in her eyes. "I'm going to leave. I need to figure out what the hell I'm going to do in this shithole now that the fall is broken and I can't get back to the UFB. I might be back."
"I'll look for you," Doug promises.
"If you find me before I'm ready, I'll shoot you."
"How about fucking me first?"
"Maybe," she says. It's almost a promise.
She kisses him, and leaves without trying to kill him again.
It's probably progress.