#mechablue

no memes, only replies | accepting! | @mecha-blue

“No—but maybe dodging should be.”

Aurelia’s laugh slips out easy, almost fond, like she’s trying to take the edge off a sentence that could’ve landed a lot harsher. She turns back to the sink as she speaks, holding the washcloth beneath the tap and sucking in a breath when the water hits—biting cold, sharp enough to wake the room up all on its own. The metal basin rattles softly as she adjusts the flow, then twists the cloth tight between her hands until water streams down her wrists and into the drain.

She keeps her back to him for a second longer than necessary.

“Don’t get me wrong,” she continues, voice steady, practical, the way it always gets when she’s trying to keep Robert from setting himself on fire for the greater good. “Refusing to give up? That part’s admirable. Legendary, even. Real Mecha Man branding.”

Another quick wring of the cloth. Another breath.

“But you keep treating every problem like it’s a wall you have to punch through,” Aurelia says, finally glancing over her shoulder at him. There’s humor in her eyes, but concern too—real, unhidden. “And walls have a nasty habit of punching back.”

She turns fully then, crossing the short distance between them. The washcloth is cool in her hands as she lifts it toward him, careful, precise, like she’s defusing something rather than tending to a cut. “The world doesn’t need you proving how hard you can take a hit,” she adds quietly. “We need you thinking three steps ahead so you don’t take one at all.”

The cloth presses gently against him. Her touch is all business, but her voice softens again, dropping into something almost teasing, like how she would speak to one of her little brothers.

no memes only replies | accepting! | @mecha-blue

“Okay—okay. I hear you.” Aurelia lifts both hands, palms out, not to stop him, but to slow the moment down before it turns into a sprint off a cliff. Her voice stays even on purpose; calm is a tactic with Robert, the same way steel is.

“Too many lives are at stake,” she repeats, softer, like she’s taking the weight from his mouth and holding it herself for a second. “That’s exactly why we don’t go charging in blind.”

She takes a breath and tips her chin toward the broken skyline beyond the nearest window—smoke hanging low, sirens far off, the whole city still bleeding from whatever fresh nightmare decided to make L.A. its stage.

“Los Angeles is a mess,” Aurelia continues, firmer now. “Collapsed infrastructure, panicked civilians, mixed signals from SDN, and a whole lot of unknowns. If we move fast and stupid, we become another problem somebody has to clean up.”

Her gaze locks onto his—steady, unflinching, almost gentler than it has any right to be after his most recent reveal. “So here’s what I’m asking: give me two minutes. Two. We make a plan that keeps you effective and keeps everyone else alive.”

no memes only replies | accepting! | @mecha-blue

“Me?” Aurelia scoffed, the sound brittle, more breath than laughter. “We wouldn’t even be in this mess if you had just come clean with me in the first place.”

She pinched the bridge of her nose, eyes squeezing shut for half a second as she forced herself to breathe. In. Out. Slow. Measured. She could feel it there—gold humming under her skin, light itching behind her eyes, begging for release. The last thing she needed was for her temper to spike and turn the room into a blinding hazard.

“I trusted you,” she continued, voice tight but deliberately even. “I took you at your word because I thought you were who you said you were.”

Her hand dropped, fingers curling into a fist at her side. When she looked back up at him, her gaze was sharp—hurt threaded cleanly through the anger.

“If you had just told me who you were,” Aurelia said, each word clipped and precise, “if you had come to me like an adult instead of letting me piece it together from half-truths and rumors, I could have helped.”

She paused, leaving a beat of where the air felt a little too charged.

with @mecha-blue from here.

" god⸺ no. " jane covers the bottom half of her face with her hand, a sound suspiciously close to stifled LAUGHTER eking out from between the spaces of her fingers. it falls back to the bar, around her quaintly-filled, half-drunken glass. evidence of her laughter lays plainly on her face in an unrestrained grin, cheeks dimpled.

" i don't⸺ that's . . . " she takes a second to string the proper words together, " it's not performance anxiety. I DANCE. but i'm, you know. tone deaf. punch-up says it's worse than flambae, and i'm inclined to agree. " the last time she held a microphone seems like a distant memory. the skin between her eyebrows pinch as she attempts to recall, but it submerged in fog, details unclear. there was something about malfunctioning sound equipment, and being too tipsy to read the teleprompter that scrolled through the lyrics of whatever song she'd intended on singing. something like that.

she JABS a finger into robert's collarbone, " i think you should go up and sing, " she says, " the whole team would get a kick out of it. what kind of music do you listen to, anyways? " she has a hard time picturing. whatever's in her veins has her skin buzzing, " old rock? country? "