#isoulated

David narrowed his eyes at the woman, unsure what to make of her, but ultimately she was human and he was not - what say did he have in the matter? “Why bother asking? Perhaps it is I who should ask the same of you.”

                     ❛ I must’ve slipped ? ❜   Confusion plastered across Dolores’ features, a quivering hand lifting up to her bloodied lip, a tad shocked to see crimson liquid stuck to fair skin.   ❛ I can’t remember -- the last thing I can recall is standin’ here, lookin’ out over the canyon, but it was day, and I --- ? ❜

David gave a long-suffering sigh and tipped his head back to stare at the ceiling. He refused to say anything for a long moment, thinking it over. Amanda made him... feel things like Shaw had. He couldn’t just lose that like he did last time, but killing was what he did. It was his raison d'être. He couldn’t just quit cold turkey. That just wasn’t going to happen. He could always lie, but then if she caught him...

It really was her. She was alive. Although, logically, he’d already known this; he’d pulled her in just over an hour ago and had been attending to her unconscious body ever since. Something about seeing her awake, hearing her voice... It did something unfamiliar to him. Perhaps it was just a glitch in his code. After all the trauma and the incident in Seegson Synthetics it wouldn’t be much of shock to learn there were a few errors in his system. He made note to run a diagnostics scan later.

    ‘ You shouldn’t be here. ’

    Too slow to avoid the red giants. Too slow to outrun anything, really. Everything catches up to her eventually, squeezes out the life or whatever is left— and holds her up like she weighs nothing— because she is nothing if not a coward that runs while the people around her die. When she tries to catch her breath, this happens.

    ‘ You should not be here. ’

    She shouldn’t. She knows she’s not worth the sacrifices. If gods and shit really do exist, she should be getting judgement from them and not the dead, coming back for revenge. But its nails still dig into her spine. Thumbs stabbing through her jaw. Her feet aren’t on the ground.

    With her vision fading,     Amanda has nothing left to do but wait,     and found out what the other side is like.

    Slowly but surely the familiar aches return, and the parts of her brain that are logical start to wake up, make sense of reality. Drenched eyes finally open to a bed, the feeling of sweat soaked clothes—— and Samuels, sitting on the side, staring at her with those brown eyes, looking as concerned as he always does.

    Fuck.

    ‘ I— …Yeah. Okay, ’ Her mouth mutters a general reply because she can’t exactly remember what he said. Something about dreams? Her arm is used to dry her face and as an excuse to not make eye contact. There’s no denying she just had a nightmare, but if she can get away with not talking about it she will. ‘ …Please tell me I didn’t… kick you or anything. I’m sorry. ’

His systems awoke from their rest, movement having been registered nearby. It was close - intimately close, and restless; almost mimicking that of a scared, helpless animal.  Samuels opened his eyes. A small nudge in the thigh told him what he had already assumed; sitting up and looking to his side revealed Amanda, still asleep, trapped in yet another nightmare. He gently shook her in an attempt to free her from her torment, before giving her a few moments to readjust.