#waaaertrgth

“Please.” A quiet broken plea echoes off the walls of the empty corridor.

It had been weeks. Chasing. Searching. Any and all attempts the poor technician made to corner the bot had been in complete vain. Marlowe's lungs scream in agony as she tries to catch her breath, nearly doubling over, she leans on her crutch for support. Everything hurts. Her stitches groan, her head pounds, and her heart bleeds. 

Metal creaks and ticks just ahead of her, just out of sight, out of reach. Red eye lights flicker uneasily, cutting through the dark.

“Im so-  s sorry.” Marlowe pleads. “It-its my fault. I should have known, seen, noticed, anything. Something. I….” 

That's how it always goes right?

Should have known the lab was going to explode that day.

Should have known about the virus.

Should have known she was never wanted to begin with. Not by her birth mother. Not by her adopted family—no one.

Excuse after excuse,  failure after failure. 

Her heart aches and the feeling spreads across her whole chest as it beats violently out of rhythm, doubling and skipping beats.

Surely he must hate her. Why else would he run? Disgust maybe…?

Her eyes flicker down to her hand clutching the crutch, the scuffed metal of her knuckles reflecting the faint red of the LEDS. Then back up to the door next to her where her ragged reflection looks back at her through the glass. 

Can she even consider herself human anymore? 

Her stitches across her stomach and up her torso itch. Organs that aren't hers anymore provide a constant dull pain as they're forced to work in tandem with what's left. No more than a walking corpse by all means thanks to the remnant-

She grimaces and rips her gaze back forward towards the figure just out of view.

“Moon- ah…atleast….” Marlowe falters on her words, head slumping over a bit. It's getting harder to see straight. Far too worked up for her now delicate heart.

She clutches at her chest with her free hand groaning in pain before losing her footing and falling over. She clatters onto the floor with a horrible thud as her crutch flies across the floor. The empty hallway only serves as an amplifier as the sound bounces off the walls. 

It’s quiet for a moment aside from her labored breathing, hushed whimpers, and the whirring of internals from across the hall.

Ever so slowly, Moon turns. His joints creak and whine in ways they shouldn’t as he does so. 

Moon knows she'll be fine. He never truly left her alone. 

He’s been watching as he's always had, just out of sight, until he wasn't. His original mistake.

She was supposed to serve as an outlet. Nothing more than someone randomly selected to project his frustrations on. Someone to make feel just as terrible as he did every waking tortured moment he spent as Fazco property.

That's not what happened though. No…she already understood. That's where the sharpness of his edges began to foolishly dull, fading into an uneasy curiosity- and from there it only worsed.

He further tightens his already tense grip. Late nights spent talking, fretting, worrying, holding, clinging to the solace they ended up finding each other.  Fondness was soon to follow, his circuits burned, yearning, want, desire. She felt the same, he knew this, though they never explicitly said it to one another.

They didn’t need to.

-and he ruined it. 

He hurt her.

Snuffed her life completely out.

Something in him grinds and burns as he plays it back- digits tearing and ripping into flesh, the metal of her arm splintering into shards as he tore it off. Gut wrenching screaming and wailing dulling into a whimper as she lost herself to the same infliction as him.

His frame shakes as he continues to still in the hallway. 

He remembers it all- the imagery is seared and burned into his memory banks with perfect clarity. He remembers when his mind was finally freed, he remembers following the trail of blood spattered across the atrium, leading to thick smatters on the wall of the maintenance corridor where someone had used the wall as support to walk themselves to the roof hatch. The ladder up was slick with it.

The sun had yet to rise as he excited onto the rooftop, lilac hues just beginning to ebb at the darker black of the sky over the horizon. 

She had waited. Held out. She knew he would come. 

“Moon.” He jolts from the memory as something grips at his tattered pants. He freezes and slowly looks down. Marlowes there looking up at him heaving, her hold on the article of clothing solid and anchoring. The look on her face breaks his heart, he thought he'd seen every conceivable emotion on her before. Anger, grief, panic, hope, fear, happiness, acceptance…but this was- complete desolate despair. 

He looks no better. Looking up through blurry vision she scans him like she's done a hundred times over. She winces tracing her eyes down the spidering cracks across the delicate porcelain of his faceplate. Admittedly her fault, slamming a metal tool box into someone's head will do that, not that she had any other choice. He's utterly filthy, grime, oil, and viscera is long dried and caked across his whole body. Her eyes continue down-

Oh. 

She grimaces. That wasn’t there before she…left.

Dead center of his stomach is a large gaping hole, metal crassly pushed inwards from an impact, bent this way and that. Loose and torn wires are shoddily taped together and shoved back in and zip tied to whatever anchors were nearby. Beyond messy, dangerous, it makes her stomach churn the same way it would from seeing a human with their entrails exposed. Concern pushes its way past every other emotion taking priority. Whoever did this repair wasn’t trained at all.

He continues to freeze as she slowly pulls herself up to her feet, still heaving. Marlowe feels so terribly small as she finally stands eye level with the gash. Hands still clutching at the blue fabric of his pants, too scared to let go in fear he'll take off again if she even loosens her grip for a moment. 

“How–…?” She keens anguishly. 

There's no point in lying. 

“I did it.” Moon's voice is laced with static, more so than usual, it carries a heaviness she had only heard from him on one other occasion. “I…” He stops. 

“Let go.” Moon demands, but it comes out more as a desperate plea.

“No– Please…let me…let me fix it. Please this is…so bad.” She fumbles over her words trying to conceal the rising panic. “You’ll…this will kill you.”

…

“I know you don’t want me around…but- please let me do this. Let me do this one thing for you. If I can at least be of some use…m-maybe I–” 

Moon's faceplate stills before dropping down to look at her as she continued to ramble. Really look. Marlowe’s eyes are heavy, and the dark shadows under them are worse than ever. Her usually wavey hair lays straight from the weight of grease and her split dye is far grown out at the roots.

Months of work down the drain. 

His grimace tightens as he tries to hold himself from scooping her up and whisking her away; he wishes he could say it's due to his programming as a caretaker– but those forced functions have been long turned off at his request. 

His resolve in his decision is cracking the longer he stares, he tries to pull away. Marlowe’s fist ball tighter into the fabric of his pants as shake racks its way through her, ebbing into a quiet sob. It snaps- his hands slowly move up hovering just over her shoulders. 

“Marlowe…I- don’t deserve your help- your time- your attention.” Moon’s voice box sputters and crackles in a way that almost sounds painful. “I'm no good. For f̶u̶c̶k̶s̶ sake I killed you.” He slumps over, hands still hesitating to make any sort of contact. He’ll just hurt her again- he's sure of it. “Everything they said about me was true. I…I’ll break you with all these feelings I carry.”

“I don’t mind.” Thick tears roll down her face. “It doesn't matter, as long as it’s you.” 

He wants to be mad. He wants to scream and yell and shake her around until she never says anything like that again but- It would be far too hypocritical if he did. She could reach up and rip every wire from his body, tear him down to nothing but scrap- and he would let her. 

“Please. Please- Don’t leave me alone anymore. Not over something you had no control over.” Marlowe weeps, her tears soaking through the thick fabric.  Her hands slowly find their way around his waist, further trapping him all while maintaining her iron grip. 

“Marlowe…” Moon sighs.

He folds- he doesn’t want this either He wants to laugh, to hold, to praise, keep her around as long as he possibly can. He knew he couldn’t hold his resolve in front of her- hence the avoidance, but it’s over now. Ever so carefully, he wraps his arms around her pulling her into as best of an embrace as he can without cutting her on his torn metal. 

Relief washes over the both of them like a warm blanket, loud sobs quiet into hiccups and whimpers, fans that have been working over time are finally able to catch up soothing burning circuits. 

“I'm sorry.” He hums, pressing his faceplate as far into the crook of her neck as he can. “I won’t do that again.” 

“Good.” Her reply muffled by the ruffles her head now lays in. Drowsiness is quick to follow, days spent strung out finally melting away into a full body exhaustion. “m’ tired....” 

“I know…go to sleep. I won’t go anywhere.”