#fanbotfic

Crib's plating buzzed numbly, and only after a minute did she realize Shi had been saying her name. She pried her face from the workbench, standing in spite of her own dents, and delicately scooped TM's body into her arms. Again, she sank, but this time into the couch's embrace. She barely saw Shi's lost expression, hardly heard as he fumbled for the words to say he'd give them some time alone and slipped out to the back room. Dimly, as he left, she became aware of the low, grieving moan ringing through her chassis, of her shaking as she bowed over her friend, her friend, hers, her friend she should never have let anyone near, who was gone, and she was gone, and oh God she was gone, she was gone

The fire inside her had burnt low by the time Shi returned; she'd quieted half an hour before, rocking unconsciously and still curled tight around The Mouse.

Voice low and cautious, he asked if she could hear him, and she stilled, slowly letting her optics flicker on. That'd be a yes. Rolling up to face him, death knelt in her stare, a dim, dull, cadaver-like coldness alien to her usual warmth.

She met his gaze, and it chilled him to the core.

Staring through him, through the colorful flicker of his eyes, through the lost, disconsolate slip of his jaw, through his own obvious grief, she took hollow solace in the fact that for once, she wasn't the anxious one.

And it wasn't just anxious, no, she was looking at-- looking right through him, eyes empty like she was gone too, and he burnt with panic, frozen with fear.

Patient as the dead, she waited for him to speak, eyes glazed and greyed in the dim garage lights. Slowly her senses returned, letting her hear the stifled and arrhythmic revving of Shi's engine. Her own furnace crackled quietly, snapping with the last of a log. A siren in the distance made light of a throbbing, rare painful throbbing in her skullplate, faded into the rest of her ignored numbness. She saw his eyes flickering frantic, uneven cyles, colors swung about green like a child about a pole. Grey, blue, green, white, grey-- she watched the emotional looping, passive to his otherwise fixed expression. Eventually, she knew, the ugly silence would have to be broken.  She was an open grave, desolate and inviting.

When the words finally came, they came barely as a whisper, barely a breath on the brittle, brittle air. Shi let them out gently, as if afraid they would only break her further.

"I'm sorry," were the words, so quiet Crib thought she might have imagined them, though they rang so harsh, so harsh for all his grey softness that she cut him off before he could continue.

"I don't want to live," she replied, her answer hardening her, hardening her stare. "I want to die, Shi."

Only his eyes betrayed his alarm, but he refused to be the first to break their gaze. "Don' talk like tha'," he breathed, though he could hear it in the tempered edge of her voice. Not defeat, but surrender.

Her glacial gaze sunk aside to a particularly enrapturing nothing on the wall. "She was everything to me," Crib intoned. "I don't want to live anymore. I don't want to love anymore. Nothing comes of life and love but death and anguish an' I..." She winced, tracking down to the body at rest on her knees. "Shi, I can't do it anymore. I can't. It hurts."

"Crib--"

But she viciously swatted away his outstretched hand, denying his rare attempt to extend comfort, and curled over herself, holding her head in her hands. "Don't touch me," she muttered. The tremors were back, as she strained to move, to not move, to disappear into her all-too-solid and tangible chassis. And when Shi's voice again broke her miserable, catastrophic thoughts, he was cut short again, but not by words.

He hadn't realized that she'd primed her fingers as such, not as a self-soothing gesture, but as something destructive, claws pointed in.

He didn't have time to stop her as in one terrible, engine-stopping split-second, she'd ripped her hand down her face with the sickening screech of rent metal and glass.

And he had to grab her to keep her from doing it again, straining against her as she fought to inflict harm on the only thing she was allowed.

"FUCKING SHIT," he yelled, so immediately enraged and bewildered by Crib's actions that his accent slipped. Struggling against her arm, under the screech of metal against metal, he let out a hissed stream of curses.

With her free hand Crib set TM carefully down on the couch beside her, and that arm too he caught.

She kicked him square in the stomach, but he threw his weight to drag her stumbling off the couch and to the ground. She recovered, barely, slamming a sucker-punch of a fist into him-- only to raise her claws to herself again. Her attacks were just to throw him off, to get him away long enough for her to-- he caught her this time, wrapping his arms around her dangerous one.

"Th' fuck d'ya think yer doin, Crib!" Shi snapped. "Get a fuckin' hol' a yerself!"

Her reply was scathing, sarcastic, insane. "What do you think I'm doing! I almost had a nice grip but you made me let go!" 

His eyes flicked up to the gashes on her head, and oh, fuck, he could see through to the glow of her core. Only one of her eyes was still lit, the rightmost ones completely shattered.

"Yer ou' o' yer fuckin' mind, 's wha'! Hurt'n'-- Killin' y'rself-- Tearin' ou' yer core ain' the fuckin' answer! 'S feckin' daft, 's stup'd!!"

"STUPID!" she shrieked, jerking her arm away to try to dislodge him, prying with her opposite. She wasn't used to fighting other bots, fighting anyone who matched her strength, and with her dwindling fire and poor leverage it barely budged him. "The Mouse dies and you think I'm stupid for wanting t' go with her! Do you have any idea what she was to me?"

"Yeh, 's a ma'er a fact I do!"

"You liar! You lying bastard!" she cried, the pitch of her voice distorting with anger. "If you knew, you wouldn't fucking try to stop me!"

With a sickening disregard for her fingers she punched his face, scratching, pushing such that he impulsively grabbed for her wrist, loosening his hold on her wide arm.

And that was all she needed to pry away, to grab his ankle and sweep his feet out from under himself-- but he was fast, and as she let go, he didn't even have to get up to pull the same damn trick on her. Before she realized what was happening, he'd pinned her face-first on the floor, securing her by her wide arm wrapped across her back; and despite the awful angle, she continued to try to fight him.

"Let go of me!"

"I c'n let fuckin' go when y'stop tryna fuckin' turn yerself inna fuckin' scrap me'al, Crib, you need t' calm yer feckin' tits!"

"Calm d-- Fuck you! Fuck you, Shi! Just let--" And Crib proceeded to slam her own head against the concrete floor, an action which lasted all of one hit before Shi put his hand down to keep her from picking it up again. "JUST LET ME DIE!"

"No!" he protested. For all he'd restrained her, it was all with the intent of preventing more harm, and out of the angry clash of revving engines there came a splitting, horrible, frustrated sound.

"You SON OF A BITCH," Crib screamed, "DO YOU WANT TO KNOW WHY LAURIE MADE THE MOUSE?" and her voice was like a thousand agonized voices as she battled against Shi's grip, weak from her dying fire, her sick smoke struggling from her vents. It was a question that begged no response, and she pursued answer without waiting.

"BECAUSE AFTER THREE YEARS STUCK NEXT T' MY MOTHER'S CORPSE WITHOUT POWER, I WAS SO MAD WITH GRIEF THAT I NEARLY TORE MYSELF APART, AND SHE NEVER WANTED ME ALONE AGAIN! "I WAS DEAD INSIDE FOR SIX FUCKING MONTHS BEFORE I-- TM WAS A FUCKING CHRISTMAS PRESENT-- ALONG WITH A PATHETIC NEW ARM TAGGED ON FOR WHAT I'D BROKEN, BUT OH, FUCK, SHI, SHE MADE ME SANE."

And she let out a nightmarish laugh that made Shi's engine go cold. Even in his anger, even in Crib's weakness, his eyes were shot with fear.

But it sobered her. She never wanted to hear that sound out of herself again.

She stopped struggling, refusing to let go of the hands that gripped hers, scratched eye shutting in shame and anguish.

"She-- Oh, God, Shi, I loved her. I would have killed for her if she'd ever wanted it, I would've torn the whole fucking world asunder." She shook her head, producing a sad grating on the floor. Her voice dropped to a choked whisper. "I failed her, they just snagged her and I didn't move fast enough, an' just... Like that, she was out, she was gone, and I fucking killed them but it didn't even matter because she was already dead." As Shi softened his grip on her, all that could slacken of her went limp under his hand. "I'm so sorry, Shi," she said softly, "I feel so hollow, so empty, I feel so alone and angry like I did when Mom died and I don't think I know what to do without someone to take care of."

Shi's engine began to slow to a more normal speed, and he eased his knee off of Crib's arm, sitting down next to her; she didn't move. 

"Crib," he gently bit out, "ya got t' take care a yerself."

She turned her good eye up to him, falling into a solemn hush. Water began to drip from her mouth, pooling beneath her. Even if his words were true, she didn't- she wanted, no, she needed to grieve. The toxic urge to claw and tear wasn't gone, but the manic necessity of it had all but vanished, overtaken by a wash of apathy towards movement. She felt herself shrinking from the plea in Shi's stare, a raw worry he was usually loathe to show. 

Again she looked away, unable to hold his gaze, but after letting out a long, slow sigh she finally began to speak again.

"'M leakin'," she murmured. "Can you put me upright sittin'. 'M stuck." 

The first time the kid stole fuel, Shi turned a blind eye to it. He knew all too well how hard it was to drop old habits, and he had bigger problems to worry about without trying to force the kid to go cold-turkey. And the fuel was light compared to what he could have gotten into; the theft is small and he won’t concern himself with it.

When he notices the second theft, he tells himself he has to lock the shit up, at least until the young-form has gotten himself over the urge. So into one of the storage rooms it goes, the door locked with a key only Shi has access to. He doesn’t say a word to the young-form, who displays guilt but no remorse in his silence and avoidance of Shi’s eyes.

But the third time, it’s not the diesel Gage dips into, it’s the hard stuff, purified and expensive, the shit Shi needs to keep himself running long hours, the stuff that keeps his engine running even when he’s been awake weeks at a time. The lock to the storeroom is inexpertly jimmied open, scratches in the door handle where the lock pick’s hands were shaking too badly to keep a steady hold on his tools.

He can stand for a lot of things, but he won’t stand for this, for something he needs to just disappear because of one bot’s weakness.

Keeping his temper has never been one of his strong points, not since Pa’s death, but he tries, god he tries to go in without being confrontational. Because the kid honestly isn’t his responsibility, they owe each other nothing and he can’t expect the brat to just listen to him because hell, that’s what free will is all about.

But the second he sees the smaller bot, sitting alone in the tiny living area they’ve put together in the back of the shop, any pretense of calm shatters. Maybe it’s cruel, maybe it’s callous; maybe he’s out of bounds and it’s not his place to grab the kid, catching him still shaking and jittering from the overcharge.

He does it anyway, hands denting the smaller bot’s plates as he grabs him and shoves him away, out of his seat. He will not deal with another Ether. He’s not going to watch another one rot themselves this way. Not on his dime, not in his house.

Bolder with the high-grade fuel buzzing through his processes, the kid scowls, trying to wrench himself out of Shi’s grip. It only makes the mechanic angrier, his hands clamping down tight enough that the younger bot’s rudimentary pain sensors have to feel it. And he keeps them clenched that way until the kid stills.

An accusation is made, a rebuttal given. A lie thrown in his face; “I didn’t touch any a your shit, I don’ need that shit, you fuckin’ psycho, get your hands the fuck off me – ”

It’s too much, too much garbage and his processor is howling at him to just make the noise stop, just shut the brat up and have done with it. He gives him a choice, shoving the kid when he tries to speak over him, tries to argue; he shoves him back hard so he hits the wall with a solid and painful thud, snarling his words in a voice that’s cold and low and brooks no bullshit.

“Are ya gonna stay ‘r d’ya want a cup f’r the road?”

At first the little smart ass fights, flashing bravado that will disappear in later years, his sober-self quieter, more complacent. Friendly, perhaps overly so. But in this moment he’s bitter and baiting and he doesn’t just. Won’t. Quit.

“You ain’t got th’ right t’ threaten me, buddy,” he says, pushing away from the wall and Shi’s fists clench.

“You’re just another thug trying to sound tough. Pissy b’cause your girl ran off and you think you’re better than me ‘cause yer an old model.” The plates on Shi’s neck rise, his eyes flickering from brilliant, ugly green to white, angry and glaring. How dare the brat drag Ether into this, drag something he doesn’t have a fucking clue about into this –

“I ain’t afraid of some all-bark-no-bite, mopey piece of backwater trash that washed up in the gutters and thinks he’s tough b’cause he c’n rip things apart. You’re a coward and cheap fucking crook, you ain’t got the rights ta tell me I can ‘r can’t get m’self a drink if I want one. In fact, I’m feelin’ thirsty now, maybe I’ll get m’self a dr – “

The sound of Shi’s hand connecting with the smaller bot’s face will echo in the mechanic’s processor for years. He slaps Gage full across the face, one hand latched around the young-form’s throat to hold him still, the other cracking hard enough to dent in the kid’s cheek-plate. It’s only by a last minute flex of his will that he manages to unclench the fingers of his hand, turning a potentially lethal punch into a strike that only rattles, only hurts.

With a rev of his engine and a hiss from the hydraulics in his arm, he hauls the shorter machine up by the neck, dragging him toward the exit. In the end, Gage says he wants to stay. Begs to stay as Shi is hauling open the door and is poised to throw him out.

And maybe it’s the rasping, painted sob in the kid’s vocals, or maybe it’s the base fact that Shi is alone now if not for Gage, that he doesn’t want to be alone, taking care of himself just to keep trucking through a miserable, empty, shitty world on his own, but he stops. Drops the kid on the floor, and asks him again.

“You wanna stay, ‘r sh’d I git tha’ cup fer th’ road?”

Whining and pitiful, mismatched eyes pleading in a face that’s been carved to always look like it’s smiling, Gage says he wants to stay, can’t stand the idea of going back to being alone, of dragging himself through the slums trying to find enough fuel to keep powering on every day. Of being alone.

It’s that, knowing that Gage doesn’t want to be alone any more than Shi does that convinces the larger bot to try to rationalize this. It’s not going to change, he knows. He’s been around this loop so many times with Ether, watched her sober up enough to realize how bad she wanted the high, how much she loved it, so she could cycle back to use, then abuse.

Maybe the kid will stop stealing, but that’s not enough. He needs to burn it out of his system. All gone, burn himself dry and power down from lack of fuel, reboot clean without a hint of gasoline in his systems. Even if he can keep his hands out of the stock in Shi’s stores, he’ll slink off and find a fix somewhere else if he has even the whisper of a desire for it.

Having spent enough time in the lowest parts of bot-run communities, Shi has watched other bots in starvation mode. Seen them claw at their own fuel gates, seen them attack other bots with compatible fuel sources to try and physically steal the burning coals from another bot’s furnace, bite their way into fuel reservoirs and try to drink the gasoline from punctured tanks. A very human sense of self-preservation makes them as dangerous as any animal, before they slow, succumbing to decline.

So Shi, knowing that the young-form isn’t going to magically form self-control, hauls out the chains for roping up engine blocks. He hauls the kid into one of the back rooms, silent as death and grimmer, chaining his hands behind him and hobbling him, deftly and permanently connecting one end of the chain to the wall like a tether.

Gage begs him not to, pleads for him to do anything else, for Shi to power him down while his systems burn out the gasoline, burn away the need for it. And the mechanic could, he really could. It would work.

But he won’t.

He wants the younger machine to suffer it. To feel himself running down to what will feel like death, slow and painful and horrible. To know why it’s happening. To have the memory embedded so deeply in his system that a sip of gasoline will never even tempt him again.

And maybe, just maybe, part of him wants Gage to be afraid of him. Wants the young-form to see that there is a lot more to Shi than his growl.

As he steps away from the chained form, Gage looks up at him and starts to tremble, begging him softly; “I can’t stand it, you can’t leave me like this, don’t do it, Shi, please, please don’t do it, you can’t, you can’t.”

Oil tracks down the smaller robot’s face on the side with the functioning optic, and Shi feels an echo of his hand cracking hard across the other’s face, so very nearly a punch that would have shattered that wide doll’s eye.

He locks the smaller bot in one of the back rooms, where he can only hear him screaming if he stops working.

There is a mutual curiosity, though Crib feels a pitted revulsion and envy of her old self rise within her. She remembered being this thing, this oblivious spirit, kind golem. This contemptible and spineless her.

But it’s sweet. Sweet and nostalgic, and perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad, having her around, just for a little while.

“Crib,” says the present, and she gently lifts the past’s hands off the ground, examining them. The past can look forward with nothing but dim confusion, silent and innocent. As Crib moves her hands up to the shoulders of her chassis, across the gleaming surface, recognition dawns on the past, eliciting a rumbling laugh.

“Crib!” chirps the past, balancing on her awkward legs. Trying to match the height of the present, the stature, and failing. No hard feelings. She puts a hand down to keep from falling and touches her future’s thin arm. “Crib, what a strange arm! You delightful thing, you’ve grown.” A small chuckle. “Didn’t know I could do that! You look almost human now!”

No she didn’t. That was a lie. Any hint of a smile that might have lit the present’s stare is now gone.

And the past continues, a spark of knowing in her eyes, though her voice is honest. “And you’re very beautiful, you know. With all those upgrades, I’m glad you kept the furnace, even though it’s always been a little troublesome.”

Crib can feel the indignant self-loathing rise and shakes her head at herself. “‘M not, darling, but I did.” Her hands drift and settle at the intersection of the past’s arms and body, holding her in what could be a friendly, firm grip. But she seems more concerned than that, more intensely focused. “How much do you remember?”

The silence that grows as she lets the question hang becomes uncomfortable, the younger bot averting her eyes. “A lot,” she says quietly, but she knows it’s not the answer she’s looking for. She doesn’t want to give the answer, however true, that she’s asking for. “I remember— maybe not remember, they’re not my memories, they’re yours— I know what happened, what you’ve been doing, and I’m— I’m proud, Crib. That you’ve gotten so far.”

“Haven’t done anything t’be proud of.”

“Sure you have! What about when we did what we were s’posed to and protected Eliza, and you Laurie, an’ that new companion of y—”

“Don’t talk about The Mouse. The others are dead.”

A flinch. “Well what about when you brought food to those guys even though you nearly choked going through the store and got yelled at by the owner? And you did things like that a lot, even though you hardly had anything to give most of the time! And then you’d wait in the cold with them to keep them warm and—”

“The least a piece of shit like myself could do. They needed it more’n I needed the gas money.” Her eyes narrow, and her grip tightens. “Don’t keep going, darlin’, you’re avoiding my question.”

The younger bot shrinks back, though stopped by the hands of the other. She seems so hateful, so vitriolic— why was she acting like this? Sure, she was used to Eliza’s backhanded words, soul-crippling self-doubt she could only smile through and bear strongly, but she was never… She meets the present’s gaze, somberly, soberly. “I… remember up to when mum died, but I don’t remember what happened after that. I— I know what happened, but I guess I felt— I’d hoped maybe I could die too ‘n join her.”

Metal and all, Crib could be sick. And those words, that confirmation that yes, this her had outlived her creator, this is what she’s been waiting for. She doesn’t give herself the split second she’d need to react as she tears one arm from her past and disables the other, slamming her head so hard into the ground her optics shatter. The past emits an awful whine, only to be pinned under her own feet.

“YOU COULD HAVE SAVED HER,” Crib screams, tearing off the other arm. “YOU COWARD, YOU KNEW YOU DIDN’T HAVE ENOUGH GOING OUT THERE, KNEW THAT SHE KNEW, YOU COULD HAVE DONE SOMETHING!”

The past cries out in terror, though the pain is only emotional. She can’t get the leverage to push herself up again, to run, to fight back, and she’s not even sure she wants to. “No, no, I tried, I— she said she had fuel, I—”

“YOU KNEW SHE WAS LYING, SHE WAS LYING LIKE SHE ALWAYS DID, SHE LIED AND YOU DID NOTHING!” She picks up the younger body and lifts her up, only to smash her back down again.

“I—”

“YOU STUPID USELESS PIECE OF SCRAP,” she shrieks, punctuating her words with slams into the ground. “SHE GAVE YOU ONE GODDAMN PURPOSE, SHE MADE YOU TO PROTECT HER, TO KEEP HER FROM LONELINESS AND COLD AND BODILY HARM AND YOU STILL MANAGED TO FUCK UP EVERYTHING!”

The younger bot’s legs are convulsing, words catching and stammering as the insults and blows wrack her, ram her. “I-I I n-n—n-n- st—st-st—t-top—” And another whine, another awful wrenching sound as she’s dropped and her legs come off, wires snapping and sparking. “I-I-I—-I——”

“YOU WHAT?” she snaps, bringing down her fist on the limbless torso beneath her. Oh, that was a familiar motion. “THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN SAY TO REDEEM YOURSELF, NOTHING THAT WILL EVER MAKE IT BETTER.” She strikes, and strikes again, caving in the chassis, scattering coals and sparks as the furnace door pops open.

“Wh-wh-hhwhhh-wh-aa-t a-a-a—a-a—b-b-b-bout yyyyour f-f-fr-frie—eh-en-n-nd,” the injured bot stutters out through the attacks.

The present stops its relentless beating of the past, crouching down to look her in the still-functioning rear optics. Her voice is low, venemous. Dangerous. Eyes bright. “What about her?”

“I-it doesn’t m-make i-i-i-i-i-it any b-b-b-b-better,” she scrapes out, stammering less that the beating’s stopped, “b-b-b—b-bbuut if M-m-mum lived y-y—yyou wouldn’t h-h—h-ave th-the f-ff-f-friends you d-do nnnnow, a-a-and TM never w-w-would have b-e-e-een c-cc-c-cr-made.”

Crib makes a horrified, angry noise, freezing up. No. Don’t go down that road. Don’t you dare.

“W-w—w-w-would you give her up? Sh-sh-she treats you be—e-e-e-tter than E-E-Eli—Mom ever d-d-did.”

“Shut up.”

So she struck a nerve. Might as well go for it. She was going to die anyway. “S-so to have yo-oo-our a-a-a-abusive mother b-aa-a-ck you’d kill your b-e-e-est fr—”

“SHUT UP!” she screams, lashing out, thrashing her arm against herself, slamming her down, again and again and again. She falls into catastrophic rhythm, mind flashing back to when Lady repaired her, when she beat her hands so long and relentlessly the metal dented and split, the first time she nearly tore herself to pieces.

She doesn’t let up, and in the unforgiving pounding the younger bot’s vocal unit breaks, the rear eyes shatter, her neck seizes up. No sense but hearing, but screaming thought, but the scraping and pounding of metal ringing throughout what’s left of her broken body.

Minutes pass before Crib stops, gripped by a burning anger and revulsion. She stares down at the wrecked body in her hand and drops it, the metal plates in her fingers clattering loosely. Oh.

She’d forgotten what that was like. What disgusting things she could do.

She tears off her old self’s access hatch, flipping the switch to shut her off. Notices, for the first time, The Mouse peering out of the barn. TM, who’d been watching the whole thing, the whole time.

Crib looks numbly down, the accusations of a corpse ringing in her mind.

She turns back to TM, holding her hand out to be examined. Swallowing any words that might try to escape. And really, what is there to say?

That first meeting, all those years ago - their hands had almost matched, fingers long and delicate, finely crafted tools for important work.

And now...

Shi has never been so acutely aware of the casings on his hands, the trapped feeling of long fingers folded over too many times. He stuffs his hands in his pockets, remembering how they used to shake, metal clacking against metal.

Nothing about him is delicate now.

And looking at Soren, knowing what he does, he can't help but think the same thing of the other bot.

His build is much the same - tall and gangling and deceptively fragile-looking, all intricate designwork and spindly limbs.

Shi looks at his hands - his fingers - and they are, of course, the same as ever: complex tools, long and spidery.

And completely changed.

Before, the words they had called to mind were nothing but positives: precise, useful - and, when Shi had been young enough not to chide himself for it, beautiful.

Now he looks at those hands, those sharp, quick fingers, and all he can think is lethal. He looks at Soren's limbs as he stands not even at his full height and still towers over everyone, watches him bound forward awkwardly when there is no one around to impress with a normal stride, and he wonders without meaning to how many humes and bots have backed themselves up against a wall in the dead of night as some horrifying creature loped towards them down an alley, face utterly blank - pitiless - impossibly long arms swinging forward, fingers tipped with deadly sharp points - like staring a snake in the face as you wonder whether it's going to wrap itself around your neck and constrict and constrict or just bite and make it quick.

Nothing about Soren is delicate now.

So maybe they still do match.

Even if he doesn't want to think it - doesn't want to think about that, about what Soren does, what he is, what he's been forced to become. Soren who ran from him that first day because he didn't know if the rules allowed them to talk, Soren who gave him a gift for merely being his friend - Soren who, he thought, before all this, seemed to be learning more and more about the world and emotions and himself every time they met.

Soren can't be one of them. Not really. He's trapped, that has to be it, but Shi might never know because he's too stupidly afraid to ask.

It's been a few minutes since either of them spoke. Silences used to be easy. Now they're full of too many things.

But then Soren looks down at him, bending forward to almost match his height, and his eyes smile the way they used to as he carefully reaches out and plucks one of Shi's hands from his pocket.

Shi watches, silent, as Soren deftly uncaps his hand, setting the casing aside.

Slowly, Shi unfurls his fingers, listening as they clink outward. He doesn't want to look at them - old and scratched and worn, not through honest work but through mistakes and hiding and horrible things.

But he forces himself to watch as Soren lifts his hand – slowly, cautiously –, studying it for a moment like Shi studied his all those years ago. Except Soren's hands were beautiful then and still are, deadly and terrible and beautiful and Shi's are awful - broken, weak, useless things, and he can't see what Soren finds so fascinating about them.

Then Soren moves, still slow and careful, threading his fingers through Shi's, wending them together. Shi is surprised, but he responds - hesitantly at first, flexing his fingers farther apart to make whatever Soren is trying to do easier.

Soren stills, briefly - and then curls his fingers back slightly, squeezing almost, and Shi returns the grip. His fingertips brush cold metal and something in him stalls.

He looks up at Soren and is startled to find him looking right back.

"Is this all right with you?" Soren asks, sounding like that skittish shop assistant again, doubting his every move, weighing every action against someone else's set of rules.

Is this all right?

This is...

ridiculous and probably a really stupid damn thing to do; it's so dangerous on so many levels; they could break each other on so many levels, but it's also the most amazing feeling, easy and simple and

"...Yeh."

Shi looks back down at their hands, fingers interwoven, silver over grey over silver.

Holding hands, he thinks. Huh.

He sits on the floor, as there is no furniture here, back to the wall, and he lays out in front of him the five things that are his last links to a life that isn’t empty; life before a snarling smile, before aching, newly welded hands. Life before he learned that he was too stupid to save his family.

The violin. Freshly oiled, bow still in the case. Blunt copper fingers stroke over the surface, dipping into the f hole. Maybe he’ll try to play. It’s quiet here, desolate. No one will know. But not just yet. He needs to fix up before he can think of trying.

Next, the hat. He carries it with him, goggles carefully wrapped so they won’t break, but since that night he can’t seem to put it on. It’s heavy, too heavy.

Mary, the gun Pa dropped. The gun he used to wound Shi, in lieu of the promise Shi refused to agree too. The gun is also heavy, and Shi hates the way it feels in his hands, but though he has no bullets he finds that a big six shot pointed at most people will keep them from hassling him overmuch. His fingers brush the grip, there and then gone.

Pa’s billfold, it’s dwindling supply of bills clipped tightly together. Shi works for spare change, spending the money frugally while he tries to figure out some kind of plan for the future. And when planning becomes too much, well, he’s still got that magnet Hig gave him, it’s not terribly strong but pressing it to his temple for a few minutes is like a balm for his itchy mind, calming all the worry and he forgets what money even is.

And last, oldest of all his possessions, smallest as well, the watch. It’s still beautiful, still carefully wound each week so that it always runs perfectly. It’s the watch his aching hand lingers over, and in the end he scoops it up, leaning back as his fingers close over it, holding it to his chest.

He feels it ticking, slow and steady and constant. It soothes, it distract him like someone sitting nearby and whispering. It’s just a watch, just a trinket given to him by a friend in the hazy days of long ago.

But sometimes it’s quiet, and there’s a choice between the magnets and the watch. Between forgetting it all and remembering only something pure and old and good. Between dying a little bit and living again in an older self.

So tonight he holds the watch, rests it against his chest as oil wells at the edges of his photoreceptors and he starts to slip into stasis. He holds the watch and he remembers.

He knew what friends were; Pa had a few and sometimes they called themselves his friend too, but it was in that way that people talked when they were being nice to be nice, not because they meant it.

The watch-maker’s assistant wasn’t anybody else’s friend. He was Shi’s friend, just that.

Shi feels that this is very important position, but the nature of it eludes him. He can fetch a definition for the word friend, but it does nothing to help him understand how to be a good one.

‘One attached to another by affection, or esteem’.  

Well, he understands affection. And it’s there, there in how he thinks fondly of the taller bot tapping his fingers together; trying to hide by standing still. It’s impossible not to feel affection for the watch-maker’s assistant, who is so endearingly quiet and shy.

And he understands attachment, too. He knows it by the feel of sharp fingers around his robotic heart, clenching as he looks over the ship’s railing and watches land slip away. At least he can carry with him a part of this place, something small to keep his friendship alive in his own heart. There had been nothing for him to leave behind, but he could take something away, and that has to be enough.

He hadn’t wanted to leave. That was the problem; in leaving it felt as though he were abandoning something that must be stood by. Could you be friends and be so far away? Separated by an ocean, by thousands of miles, by continents and languages and a million unknowns. Could friendship stretch, elastic, phantom-like over so much?

Or had he lost his friend just as soon as he’d made one?

His hand stays carefully folded over the small circle of ticking metal in his pocket. The watch is beautiful, and he could spend hours looking at it, but when he stares at it he knows it’s just a watch, just a timepiece made for him by the watch-maker’s assistant.

It’s fear that’s making you want to shake. You’re scared because Pa is scared; not looking-over-his-shoulder-suspicious but honest to God frightened. You can see it his eyes, in the way his hands shake when they’re not holding on to a tool. Exactly what’s got him so scared you don’t know; you don’t understand all the hushed up meetings with mean looking men; why Pa just stood there and let them whisper things you couldn’t hear but that were obviously bad. You just know that one of those men, one of the one’s with big hands and broad shoulders and a deep mocking voice, one of them took screws to Pa’s right hand last year and broke each and every finger.

But what have they got to do with Pa rebuilding your hands, covering all the delicate tools that make work easy with thick, tough caps you’ve got to rip off every time you want to fix anything? What does anything have to do with Pa deciding to fill your mouth with tiny blades?

Why has Pa decided to put something in your head that lets you feel it when something bends wrong or wires get snipped and pinched? It hurts, it hurts as Pa reattaches your jaw, just like it hurt as he soldered your new hands together.

And you sit there staring at him, trying to keep your optics from welling with oil at the pain coursing up from your hands and, and he just looks back, fingers grimy with his own blood and your oil. And when at last he speaks, there’s no comfort to it, only more fear.

“Yer gonna be okay, Son,” he says.

“I know you don’t understand,” he says.

He takes a seat in the chair beside you. Puts a hand on your shoulder. His eyes are tired, completely and utterly done in, but he squeezes your shoulder and looks at you, and you know that wherever he’s going next, it ain’t to bed.

“Makin’ you hurt is the worst thing I ever had ta do,” he says, and his voice has that weird thickness to it like it sometimes does when he talks about Marilyn, the woman you never met who would have been his wife. But he doesn’t start crying, at least not right then. He says, “But I figure if ya can hurt, yer gonna do whatever you gotta do ta stay outta pain. You gotta be lookin’ out fer yerself now.”

“But Pa, yer here fer that,” you say, and your words are slurred and butchered by the blades in your mouth, you voice harsh and ugly. “We look out fer each other.”

Now he is crying and you know it’s your fault even though you don’t know why he’s doing it, and he just grips your shoulder and shudders for a moment before taking a deep breath and shaking his head.

“They offered me an out that’ll keep you safe,” he says, and you don’t know who they are except you kind of do, you kind of know even though he hasn’t said that it’s the bad men with the ice smiles and bludgeoning hands. “They wanted me ta give ‘em everything, and that woulda meant you too, and they woulda just broken you, Shi. I won’t let ‘em. I won’t.”

He stands up and takes a few steps away, pacing. “They’re gonna come anyway,” he says, and the tears are out of his voice again; now it’s hard and cutting, almost lecturing. “They’re gonna take my stuff, and yer gonna let em, Son. Promise me that – you won’t lift a damn finger to stop them.”

You promise, because what else are you supposed to do? What else can you do?

“But if they try to take you – if they try to so much as touch you, Shi, well, that’s what this all is for.” He steps forward and grabs your hand, shakes it as if trying to drive home some point. “Your hands are stronger this way, heavier. Someone tries to hurt you, you punch ‘em. And you hit until the bastard backs down or stops moving, because once you hit one, they’re all gonna gang up on you. And if they get close to yer mouth, then you bite ‘em.

“Bite ‘em till they bleed and don’t let go till you know they’re down.”

All of this only serves to upset you more, because you still don’t understand why he’s acting like he won’t be here, he’s always here and now he’s talking like he’s leaving forever. It must show on your face, because he pats a hand on your cheek, a sort of buck-up gesture from when you were still figuring out how to walk without falling, and then he’s putting his hat on your head, adjusting it just so, so that the goggles don’t feel awkward or heavy.

“Now, I know you’ll wanna follow me, so,” he says, and the regret is back, the heavy self-loathing that you don’t recognize, won’t for years until it starts creeping into your own voice, “So I’m gonna take out yer knees.”

And you look at the big gun (the one he named Mary, Mary like his sweetheart) he pulls out of the bag on his hip; look around you at the spare caps and ball joints he’s left out on the tables, and you know intrinsically that this is going to hurt bad. In that moment you feel something hard and mean, and it’s aimed at Pa – a sort of anger, a bitterness that he’d do this.

“I figure it’ll be at least three hours before yer up and walking, by which time my business will be complete. But son, I’m gonna ask you to promise me something. Will you do that?”

You look at him, and your still fighting the tingle of oil welling in your photoreceptors even as you feel something like a glare forming on your facial plates.

“Promise you won’t come after me,” he asks, voice so soft. “I’ll leave and I’ll put Mary in your hands before I do, and you can wait a few minutes and walk out, head east. How ‘bout that?”

And you know what he’s trying to do, how he’s trying to twist your fear of pain to make this easier on himself, make it so he can abandon you guiltlessly. I won’t shoot you if you promise to be a coward, he’s saying.

You shake your head slowly, defiantly, and the look on his face is so sad you almost regret it before he pulls the trigger.

Everything after that is thunder and pain; the gun explodes again, so does your other knee, and you fall sideways out of the chair onto the floor screaming as oil pours out of you and Pa drops the gun on the floor and runs, runs away from you as you howl agony into the floor, curled into yourself and clutching your legs.

For a minute, while the pain is still so wretched it consumes almost everything, you hate him. But then something finally clicks in your stupid head, something you should have gotten from the get-go, as soon as he said it.

They offered me an out that’ll keep you safe, he’d said.

An out that’ll keep you safe.

Not us, not me.

Just you.

Which means Pa’s not safe. Pa’s not safe at all.

For the record, once you manage to start moving, all the panic and furious worry motivating you beyond the pain, you get your legs disassembled and repaired in only two hours, even with your hands shaking and leaking oil, clumsy and blunt.

Pa said to head east so you know wherever he is it’s toward the coast, and the only place that comes to mind is the storehouse he uses for spare parts and useful scrap, and while your legs are shaky, still hurting like you packed glass in around the fresh joints, you manage to stumble your way across town, all the way to the dingy, dirty backstreets that lead up to the storehouses. And of course, they’re locked for the night, the place is dark and the little garage-like structures all closed up behind the chain-link and barbed wire, so you scale the fence, collapse when you jump over the top because your legs just can’t take it, and drag yourself up, over all the way to Pa’s unit.

You have to break the lock; you wrap a hand around it and rip it (not without a bit of the latch) right off, throwing it to the side and throwing the door up, only to find darkness and the shadows of hulking, broken machinery.

Not a single trace of Pa. Not even a clue, no signs of struggle or splash of dramatic bright-red human blood; nothing, nothing at all because he was never here, you guessed wrong and so it doesn’t matter how quick you drug yourself here, doesn’t matter how you hurt because you’re wrong and Pa’s gone and there is

nothing

you can do about it.

And that’s the moment when despair grips you, when it creeps in around your processor and drags you into its depth; when you knows what loss is, what pain is and that it’s got nothing to do with your body.

Unable to walk, to even  think about taking another step, you collapse in the mouth of the cluttered store house, shuddering and unable to stop the oil streaming from your eyes, muffling your screams in your aching, ruined hands until your systems overwork and flash warning after warning and you let them wail and shriek in your head.

Weeks later, word will find you where you’re shacked up with nothing to your name, getting by fixing cheap trinkets for spare change, that Pa’s body turned up in his garage, suicide note blaming debt and his own stupidity for his death. And, your friend says, word is that he drew up a will, naming a certain family of questionably moral background (who may or may not have been the holders of his debt) as his sole beneficiary.

You will learn true rage in that moment; a sickness that will ball itself in your core and give you something to fixate on, something to chew and grow with and hold on to as you pull yourself through life, thuggish and alone and casually cruel.

But now you’re barely more than a kid, lost and alone and miserable with the knowledge that your creator, your Pa, is dead and you’re alive and whole, protected by his passing. You let the panic and agony force you into shutdown, and you sleep.

Just sleep.