NOODLEDOODLE07

It didn’t breathe. At least, she couldn’t hear it, the usual whistle from Emre’s nose now silenced. His chest did not heave up or down; that he seemed to animate the plating with such a motion whilst he was present was something she could not yet explain. It held him in stillness, but not in strained posture. No pointless expenditure of energy. Two feet flat against the ground and his back against the seat. Nothing more. Nothing less. 

It held his hands clasped together on his lap. 

Freja knew this had to be for efficiency also, but it made him look like he was attending a meeting and getting chewed out by Captain Amari. Emre was always either tapping his fingertips or talking with his hands, and never anything in between unless Amari raised her voice or someone had died. 

Someone had just died, if Freja really thought about it. She could only hope for the promised resurrection afterward. 

With his eyes, it stared straight ahead. The seats across were empty. This dropship was assigned to them and them alone. An intentional decision, but whether Bartalotti truly understood was a variable Freja hadn’t determined. 

Not for lack of trying. She’d had her hands full recently. 

Speaks too much, and moves unpredictably, Bartalotti had said. 

The latter was true, but no longer the former. Opposite of how it should be. Yet it still sat in the seat next to hers. If she flexed wrong, their thighs would brush. 

It could kill her faster than she could kill it. She had no interest in ever testing that theory. Perhaps that brought it confidence- if such a concept could apply to something like it. Certainty was the more likely term. Or stability. A word new to Emre’s lexicon, one he employed frequently. Stable or unstable. Stay with me or stay away.

She tilted her head up and exhaled. The flyaway hairs on his head danced in the breeze. 

It did not react. She looked away, towards the same empty row of seats it fixed its gaze upon. 

She relaxed and let the outside of her thigh touch its own. 

This provoked a response; its head snapped towards her and she met its empty scleras. 

Neither of them moved. 

It tilted its head towards where she and it touched. 

What was it thinking, inside of its wires? 

What was it thinking, inside of Emre’s brain? 

Perhaps it was moving her planned death date forward a few weeks in its timeline, although that hypothesis might be too self-centered. She knew her place; something that considered Emre only a languishing hanger-on would concern itself even less with anything that chose to cling on to him. 

It lifted his head, looking again at her. If she wanted, she could pretend it was studying her eyes, too, scanning for movement or emotion. She played along, concealing both. 

Then it broke eye contact, and resettled its gaze across the dropship. After a few seconds, she mirrored it. 

Each wire and ridge still pressing against her leg.

. . . it felt like Emre. Somewhere in there, leaning into her touch.