what I know now

         It’s quite unlike Natalie to stare. Really, the blonde was much more of the “ take in and move on ” school of thought. It had lead her this far ( to an inspection of damages done, because lawyer was still apparently her day job, despite the hours she put into Cylon Tech Educational ), it would take her even farther. 

         So Natalie does not want to stare exactly, but when put in front of another robot with the same sentience as she has ( or at least some form of sentience ), it stirs something in her — the part of her who does not want to feel alone, the part who is so used to telling people ( humans ) that her beliefs and ethics and morals and soul were REAL, the part who believed robots deserved far more choice and credit than they were given. She knows the other robot is not here because of her or her work ( she is owed nothing, in the grand scheme of things and in particular cases ), but there is still something almost heartwarming about it. 

         Head tilts as she tries to muster up all the information she can from the data bases she has loaded, but she comes up mostly empty. This is not a technology she has encountered before ( not the same technology that made her, all flesh and data bases and cloud-based artificial intelligence ), nor a design which makes sense to her — But it’s a start. 

          he  thinks  maybe  it  should  be  some  sort  of  comfort,   the  obvious  observation.     not  that  she  would  be  using  it  as  an  offering  of  comfort,   but  after  his  most  recent  trauma,   i’m  human.     i  will  heal.     i  will  be  okay.  is  something  he  thinks  he  should  be  clinging  to.     it’s  easy  to  forget,   in  the  mix  of  lead  bullets,   the  metal  stand - ins  for  flesh,   and  the  wires  and  circuitry,   that  he  and  natalie  aren’t  all  that  different,   but  that  he’s  he’s  still  human.      that  the  voice  in  his  head  isn’t.   ah ,   wasn’t  human.

          but  he  is.

          reluctant  as  he  is,   rhys  slowly  lowers  his  left  arm,   barely  turning  to  give  her  a  better  view  of  his  shoulder.     an  empty  joint,   wires  dangling,   all  stretched  and  crudely  snapped  when  the  arms  was  forcibly  ripped  from  his  body.     he  wonders  if  its  too  presumptuous  to  assume  that  because  she  is  a  machine  that  she  would  be  able  to  make  sense  of  the  mess  he’d  made.

          “it’s  one  goddamn  thing  after  another  here,   isn’t  it?”           he  means  pandora,   he  thinks.     or  he  means  the  mess  of  a  world  he’s  put  himself  into.     never  mind  that  this  was  self - mutilation,   his  decision  to  rip  his  limb  off,   his  decision  to  crush  his  eye,   and  remove  his  port.      that  he  caused  the  fall  of  helios,   the  deaths  of  potentially  hundreds.     thousands?     christ.     he  laughs,   though,   mirthlessly,   and  shakes  his  head,   eyes  trained  to  the  ground.           “i’ll  rebuild  my  arm.     play  catch - up,   and  push  myself  ahead.     two  rakks,   one  bullet.”

          Eyes dart to scan the mess of wires and joints in front of her, fingertips carefully, softly grazing through in order to ensure each thing found its purpose ( at least in her mind, for now, though fingers did move once in a while to change the position of one thing or another, redirect a wire without trying to reconnect it. Not yet ). With an encyclopedic and practical knowledge on virtually anything within her reach, her knowledge of robotics was most often than not assumed - But in truth, she’d patched up others before Rhys, and figured she would patch up others after him. At the very least, Rhys Strongfork was not uncooperative or disrespectful, two qualities the blonde could appreciate for their full values.

         She is not sure he will catch this, focused as she is on his arm, but his comment makes her smile — Sarcastically, perhaps, but with more self-awareness than it might seem upon first inspection.  ❝ As opposed to everything pilling up at the same time ? I would probably take things coming at me this way, any day. ❞ She would rather take things not coming at her at all, really, but this was one of the many topics Natalie never mentioned. She might have been thrust in her position, but had taken ownership of it ( because someone needed to, if her and her peers wanted to have theirs voices be heard ). It would be very selfish ( very human, she thinks ) to voice regrets now. ❝ I am taking your word for it. You don’t strike me as someone who would enjoy being behind in the game — Or in whatever we are calling this. ❞

         There is a moment of consideration there. Getting involved any further with Rhys meant loosing her pretenses of neutrality in human affairs. It meant denying at least in part that what mattered to her was solely the well-being of other machines and taking a stand in events much, much bigger than her and Rhys combined. Leoben and Sharon would have heeded caution — But then, Leoben and Sharon had never been as quick as she was to dismiss duplicitous options, so maybe their moral compass was a poor reference to have ( maybe she had no reference but her own beliefs, and this was an extremely dangerous and exhilarating concept ). Her head tilts slightly toward him, to assess his reaction better. ❝ You have a PLAN, don’t you ? ❞

The look on her face doesn’t change, even when the other’s expression sours. Anathema hasn’t made it this far in life by backing down, even in wars of words. “They were doing their own work, not mine.”