Happiness Is Closer Than You Think - Introduction and Sketches
Hey, I had a ton of fun today sketching and thinking about another au!
I'll put the introduction after the sketches for everyone who wants to have some context or to know what the au is about!
Just two alt versions that felt like a bit too much going on so I decided to stick with just the eyepatch:
Soooo... the overall idea is that robots/animatronics in this au have pretty much the same rights as humans.
Sun and Moon, who share a body, are also very successful CEO's of a new company.
But even with all their recent success, a lot of potential (human) business partners are still more wary when it comes to making big deals with 'machines'.
On the other hand there is your family.
Once very powerful and with great influence, their own company had a rough time during the last three years and lost a lot of money.
But your family still holds a lot of connections in all kinds of areas.
Big business partners in the industry and some politicians even.
Connections that Moon and Sun would like to use.
So a deal is made between your family and the two.
They will marry into your family.
Your family gets a new source of money and will become a branch of their company when fusing together. Sun and Moon on the other hand will get access to new business partners and a whole new market.
And you.
You are just caught up in the middle of it.
You are the second child of your parents.
Your ten year older sibling is the one in charge of your parents company and your little sister is being adored for her charming personality, while no one had ever high expectations for you since you were child.
It's fine.
You never had dreamed about being in charge of a company anyway.
Fancy dinner parties had always felt more awkward to you. Something your older and younger siblings are better with.
To you it's just lots of people pretending to be better than everyone around them while making each other compliments that no one is genuine about.
And you don't care anymore that your family never had showed much interest in you or what you did. Not since your childhood.
You have a job you chose yourself and make enough to live from it even without your parents money.
Still, when you got a call from your father, telling you they had arranged a marriage for you, it felt like you lost the ground under your feet.
An endless fall.
One that never stopped.
Not during the first meeting with your future-fiancés.
Not during the wedding preperations (where you had no say in).
Not during the ceremony itself (which still had felt like a fever-dream).
Not even after moving into a house that didn't felt like a home or a place where you would be welcomed.
You know you had been guilt-tripped into this situation.
The first time that your family wanted something of you.
Them telling you if you didn't agreed they would all end up on the street and it would be your fault.
That you couldn't do that to them.
You know, you could... or rather should have said no.
But in the end, you hadn't done it.
Just to be a good 'child'.
You knew they had chosen you for this, because you were the one they had the least expectations for.
You weren't the heir. Nor their beloved little princess.
Just the one they cared the least for.
A cheap price to pay for getting their former wealth back.
And yet, what irked you more than your families behavior - because to that you were already used to -, was the confusing feeling of being married not just to another person, but also an... animatronic.
Sure. You had heard about some people marrying an animatronic or a robot.
But that was still pretty rare.
And usually these people and animatronics both chose to do so out of love.
Not for... closing business deals.
Because you could tell pretty easily that neither Sun or his counterpart Moon had much interest in you other than your name and what doors it opened to them.
Interactions were swift and brief.
Often you felt as if you bothered them, when you wanted to ask them something or to speak with them.
Always busy. Up for work early and back late into the night if they didn't stayed at their company.
Some days you didn't saw them at all.
All of you knew, you were only their spouse on paper.
There was no love involved. They didn't needed to pretend to entertain you.
You weren't sure what you expected when you tried the first few weeks to get to know them, just to be told they had no time for useless chitchat. Their time was valuable. And you. You weren't worth it.
Eventually you lost your courage and stopped trying.
If existing in this house was enough, so be it.
You still went to work everyday. Even if you weren't expected to.
But the allowance that Moon and Sun were transfering to you every month on a new bank account was something you didn't wanted to touch.
It would feel like owning them something.
And you never had liked that feeling.
You didn't needed their money to take care of yourself.
Or maybe you just hated the thought that someone could think you could be a gold digger like the rest of your family.
Six months went by.
Six months in which you felt trapped in a place you didn't liked.
Where nothing changed.
Til one evening you received a call from your husbands' secretary.
An accident had happened.
Sun and Moon had gotten hurt and had needed to be send to a repair service.
They didn't tell you much more than the adress and where to pick them up.
Shortly after the call you were out of the house and on your way to them.
The memories of the two hours of sitting in the taxi and being in the repair store where someone tried to explain to you that there had been an error when trying to start your husbands' systems were a bit blurry.
There had been a lot of technical jargon thrown around, that you hadn't fully understood.
But they told you that a reboot would be the best chance you had to reactivate them to fix the error messages that had been flaring up in a seperatre screen that was connected to them.
You were told it was unlikely to affect their memory files.
But it would activate something called the Eclipse protocol.
You weren't sure what it was and asked for it.
The best you understood from the explanation was, that it was some kind of security protocol that made sure that they would not have any malefunctions when being activated again.
It didn't sounded like a big deal.
The mechanics needed your agreement though to proceed.
You agreed.
Watching the computer analysis showing strings of code you didn't understood.
It took a while for their systems to reboot and to function again.
And yet, when they slowly ached, when their fingers twitched and they set themselves up on the table with a soft groan - like someone experiencing a hangover...
Their form looked off.
Not just for the missing eye - that had gotten damaged during their accident - but their form itself. Rays had come out only on one side. Their face was half light, half dark. As if being stuck between their usual two forms.
You looked like a deer standing in the headlight at them.
And they looked back at you with their single eye.
First in surprise, than confusion til finally a small, but unfamiliar smile appeared on their mouth.
"Did you come to bring me home, dear?"
Since that day your life had changed once again.
Oddly enough, this time it wasn't for the worse.
Eclipse, how he had introduced himself to you after a first very awkward ride back home, had been nothing but polite towards you.
Hadn't it been for him knowing pretty well who you were and hadn't you seen him before on that table in the store before his reboot, you had believed he had been swapped with another animatronic.
But this was still the same animatronic.
The one you were married to.
And unlike Sun or Moon, he wasn't pretending for you to be air or a waste of space in their home.
He seeked you out, wanted to spend time with you and learn about you.
The sudden change from zero attention to so much felt somewhat overwhelming the first few times it happened.
You were shy at first. Reluctant even. Just so used to rejections and neglect that it felt hard to finally open up and speak about yourself, when being offered the chance for it. But he stayed patient and kind.
Giving you the time to find answers for his questions without rushing you, when you found yourself hesitating and overthinking.
His single eye made you feel seen.
Something you always had wished for.
So yeah, that's pretty much the idea behind the story~
And there is still some fun facts about Eclipse that I also want to yap about.
But... looking at the time, I guess that will be something for another post.
