Closure

[LuckyLadybug]

Notes: An idea I've been toying with, or a combination of two, rather. I wanted to get into Anna Kirby's head a bit, and I also wanted her to meet up with Coley Rodman again.

This takes place after the fic I'm currently writing, The Night of the Time Travel, but there aren't any outright spoilers for anything that hasn't already been talked about extensively in the story. Just a vague hint or two on my ideas for how things work out for Coley in the end.

Closure
By Lucky_Ladybug

It was shortly after Coley Rodman was granted full immunity due to his life-risking assistance in solving a case of national security that James West and Artemus Gordon visited Anna Kirby-Chang in San Francisco. Knowing that she would be upset and not understand, they wanted to try to explain it to her personally.

She still did not understand when they tried. She had not actively pushed for Coley to be imprisoned or killed, wanting instead to move forward into her future and leave her past behind, but knowing that he was now free to go wherever he pleased was something that she could not grasp or deal with.

“No! No!” she cried, tears glistening in her eyes. “How could anything make up for what he did to my father? And for what he was going to do to all those other people?!”

Arte tried to explain, to tell her that Coley had actually shot Dr. Kirby in self-defense, and that he had refused to have anything to do with the plan to kill towns and cities, but she would have none of it. Finally, recognizing that she was too distraught to listen, he and Jim departed for the time being.

She stayed in the living room, first on the couch, then crossing to the curtain at the window. And for a long time, as her distress slowly melted into sickened understanding, she took a hard look at herself.

Towards evening she bit her lip and turned away, pulling the curtain. She was not sure she liked what she saw.

****

Arte had told her that she was not likely to ever run into Coley, that he lived “very far away” and would only be in the “area” for short periods of time. She did not entirely understand what Arte meant by his emphases, but she took it as the truth and was fine with that.

It was, hence, a surprise when she was returning from the grocery store one day shortly afterwards and ran across Coley on her front lawn. She went stock stiff, her eyes wide, and nearly dropped the bag.

He strolled to her side, that same old entertained smirk on his face, and reached to help her with the sack. “Now, we don’t want any of that, do we?” He pushed the bag more firmly into her arms and she clutched it as she would a defense against the enemy.

“Why are you here?” she choked out. “Can’t you leave me alone? You have what you want. But you will probably waste it to commit more crimes!”

He sobered. “Actually, I don’t have everything I want.”

“You cannot have me!” she snapped. “I am already taken. And I wouldn’t have you anyway, no matter what.”

“You’re jumping to conclusions, aren’t you?” He leaned against a tree with one hand. “I don’t want you. Sure, maybe I did at one time, but not anymore.”

She frowned, shifting the sack in her arms. “What is it then?”

“I just want to clear the air.” He pushed away from the tree. “And for the record, I’m not going back to crime. I’ve gone straight.”

“You could just be saying that.”

“I know I could. But I’m not.” He looked at her, firmly and without hesitation. “I’ve found a better way to spend my life.”

She looked down. “. . . Mr. West and Mr. Gordon told me that you did not shoot my father in cold blood.” She spoke more to the groceries than to him.

“That’s true. And look, I’ll come clean and admit I was going to shoot him. I knew he was a danger and I needed him out of the way. But that’s not what actually happened when I got up there. I wasn’t even trying anything on him and he just flipped and went crazy when West and Lafe started fighting. He pulled a gun and shot at me, so I didn’t have any choice but to fire back.”

She drew a deep, shaking breath. “. . . And Mr. Gordon said that you weren’t going to kill all those people.”

“I wasn’t. I never went in for mass murder. I just put up with it when your father was talking about it. I thought it was just talk; I didn’t think anyone could really be so far gone that they’d actually go through with it. But then on that last night . . . well, I realized he meant it. And I couldn’t tolerate that.”

She looked up, tears glistening in her eyes. “I made myself believe that you were the one who wanted to do it, that my father knew nothing about it, that he didn’t know you were paralyzing people with his other germ. I convinced myself that it was the truth, so I felt I could be justified in hating you.”

Coley regarded her in stunned surprise. “But you . . . don’t believe that now?”

“I thought for a long time after Mr. West and Mr. Gordon left.” She started walking towards the porch. Arriving, she set the sack on a red bench and turned to face him again. “I realized that deep down, I knew the truth about my father. I knew that he was letting you use the first germ. And I knew that he wanted to kill many people instead of just paralyzing them for a few hours. But I wanted someone else to blame. You were there, and I didn’t like you, so I pretended that everything was your fault until I believed it.”

“I never thought you’d admit to any of this.” Coley stepped closer to the porch and stopped at the bottom of the stairs.

She managed a small smile. “I suppose . . . I wanted to clear the air, too.”

“I tried to tell you about him, you know.” Coley placed a hand on the banister. “I tried to tell you his mind had flown the coop and that all he wanted was to get revenge on the whole world because of that ruler killing his wife—your mother.”

“Yes, I know.” She came down the steps to be more at his eye-level. “And perhaps . . . that was the real reason I didn’t like you. You wanted me to face something that I could not. I think I first started to acknowledge it when my father wanted me to inject Mr. West and Mr. Gordon with the fatal germ. But I still couldn’t completely let go of how I felt towards you.”

“And now?”

She considered the question. “I still don’t really know what to make of you. You have done things that I don’t think I will ever understand. But . . . I haven’t been fair in what I have blamed you for the most, and I am sorry.” She hesitated, then held out a hand. “Perhaps we can part on good terms.”

Coley took her hand, shaking it slowly and gently. “I’m sorry too, for anything I did to you.”

She looked down. “. . . You never did anything that bad. I see now, you were mostly teasing me. I was too young and upset to understand.”

Coley’s grip tightened. “I was going to take you with us, if West and Gordon hadn’t stopped us. I wanted you to be my girl.”

She froze, swallowing hard. “I guess that doesn’t surprise me.”

“You wouldn’t have been happy. I would’ve ruined you. So . . . I’m also sorry for that.” He released her hand.

She regarded him in surprise before she slowly smiled. “You’ve changed,” she decided. “You are a kinder man.”

“You’ve changed too.” Coley nodded in approval. “You’ve grown up.”

“The last few years have been good to me,” she said. “But I think it was only after Mr. West and Mr. Gordon’s visit that I really ‘grew up’.”

She paused, her eyes twinkling in amazed disbelief. “Is that cat hair?”

“What?!” Coley looked where she was pointing. Rolling his eyes, he plucked a small piece of silver fur away from the cuff of his glove. “Crazy cat.”

“You have a cat?” She still looked as though she found that too amusing to be true.

“No, I don’t. She just comes around.”

“She must come around a lot.”

“Yeah, well . . .” Coley trailed off. “. . . Gordon told me you got married.”

She smiled and nodded. “Yes, to John Chang. He is at work right now; he will be back soon.”

“I remember you talking about him.” Coley stepped back. “I’ll clear out of here before he comes.”

“You don’t have to,” she said.

“It’d probably be better that way. Anyway, I have to be getting back.”

She paused. “Mr. Gordon said you live very far away.”

“That’s about the only way to put it. I just come here to visit.”

“San Francisco?”

“Nah, the uh . . . well, nevermind. Yeah, I was visiting somebody in Oakland.”

He clearly did not want to talk about it. Or more precisely, he seemed as though he did not know how to talk about it. But they were not friends, and she had no intention of prying in any case.

She nodded. “I wish you well.”

“Good luck.” He half-waved and turned, heading down the walk.

She watched him go, thoughtful. At last she picked up the bag of groceries and unlocked the front door of the house.

It had been good to talk with him, to say out loud what she had just started to discover about herself. Now she felt a certain satisfaction, a peace that had not been there before. Any lingering ghosts of the past had finally been put to rest.