Failure to Disclose by musicofthespheres
I don’t understand why you’re still upset, ART said. It wrapped itself around me in the feed, but I was too exhausted after everything to push it away. You never asked about my origins or my crew.
Would you have told me the truth if I had?
Its subsequent pause was damning. A version of it, it conceded.
I believe they call that ‘lying by omission.’
You lied to me when we first met. I knew you were lying, and I still let you on board.
So? I didn’t know you or what you were. What does that have to do with anything?
It poked me in the feed, then wrapped itself around me even tighter. I’m just saying. Everything turned out okay back then, and I thought everything turned out okay here, too.
It’s the principle of the thing, I said, even though I knew I’d been losing this conversation for a while now.
After about 30 seconds, it added, I wish you didn’t consider this a betrayal of your trust.
I frowned. ‘Betrayal’ was kind of a strong word. It hadn’t owed me the truth back then; I guess I was just upset because if I’d known what it really was, what it did on a regular basis, I’d have... what, had more context to being kidnapped? Understood more quickly what was wrong, spent less time so disastrously emotionally compromised? Been more okay with the fact that it had endangered my humans? (Okay, maybe, aside from that last thing, but it was too late to change that.)
I leaned into it in the feed and sighed. I don’t, I said. I wasn’t sure if that was a lie or not. I didn’t want it to be a lie.
I wasn’t sure if ART believed me, but for once it didn’t say so. What it did say was, I promise I will always tell you as much of the truth as possible from now on.
I suspected it thought it had always done that, but felt it important to come out and say it anyway.
for @murderhelionweek prompts "Intimacy," "Truths/Lies," and "Trust/Betrayal"
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