Never. Stop. Fighting

A general belated Merry Christmas to all. I’m alive, I still occasionally doodle, but in general life is very busy.

It feels dead, I feel dead. I’m just really tired. It’ll take a lot of effort to revamp and not sure if I have it in me right now or there’s enough interest to warrant the effort.

At the start absolutely she did. It was like if both your arms and hands were asleep and prickly but some how you had to make a whole dinner. Or possibly something even simpler like putting on pants. A lot of her first training with them was just doing singular simple motions with them, that were what she wanted. Like moving her index finger, if the middle one moved. Nope. Try again. Then on success, do it at least twenty more times. Fifty more times. Whatever it took.

Eventually she could do more complicated motions and control with them. The part that frustrated her the most I think was when she didn't think on it much and could do things automatically, but when she tried to put in conscious effort sometimes she couldn't.

She had to learn pretty quickly though, given she wasn't really given much down time. But she was alone and isolated a lot, so she had time to dedicate to it. Harder than the movement was the extra features which weren't something ever programmed into her brain already like movement. She burned herself quite often at the start, and even much later in life she has some difficulty moderating the temperature of her hands, especially when stressed, angry or frightened. Times of high emotion, they tend to respond "naturally" to her state which is rarely what she wants.

For some reason the electricity is easier to call and dismiss than heat, the hacking she feels she'll never really be good at. Later on shield upgrades she finds easier, but she's also much more used to them by that point.

Later in life there are still definitely times where she's reminded of the fact these are foreign pieces that still occasionally need to be handled with care. Loss of control can happen, especially when I'll or possibly under the influence of substances that fuck with her mental control over faculties. Much like our own regular bodies can get spasms or weird reactions to these items, just that hers can more easily break a nose or window, oooor melt metal.

Continued from here  @empirescxrned

Aryn pressed her lips together into a tight flat line, holding back the urge of her own to roll her eyes at Anaiya’s already blatant obstinance. Clearly she wasn’t welcome but whatever, when had that ever stopped her before.

   “Not here to play messenger. Here to play Doctor.” Coran knew about her long standing education in physical therapy and first aid, and he was certainly use it so he could continue to multi-task the plethora of other duties he had. While possibly playing match maker. She’d heard an earful of how if she just “got to know her that she’d realize they had more in common than she thinks” and etc, in that simultaneously charming and irritating optimistic tone Coran so often had. She wasn’t sure if Anaiya had had any similar interactions with him, but it was possible.

   But... here she was throwing out low blows about Aryn’s old injuries. “If you were ‘ready’ to join, you’d know better than to say shit like that.” She kept her voice even, it wasn’t like she hadn’t heard worse from a Galra before. Part of her wanted to believe that if Anaiya really sat and thought about it the ‘how’ of it, she’d not be sitting there making jokes about losing limb, but who knew. Who knew.

He leaned back so she could see him. “I don’t make promises I can’t keep, Aryn. Believe me. You’re getting better now and I’ll be right here.”

Belost pressed his face against her, cradling her in his arm as if she might simply float away at any moment. She’d nearly done much worse than that after all. “I’ve kept my promise to always find you if you’re lost, haven’t I? And I’ll always bring you back.”

Then she said what he’d been wishing to hear more than anything. A numbness washed through him and his stomach clenched tight. A sense of doubt set in and he couldn’t help but feel the fear of her waking being a dream. If it was, he would make it the best he could and hope he didn’t wake up. “I love you too, Aryn. You’re everything to me.” Were the situation any less extreme, he’d have found himself cracking a joke at her second to last saying.

“You’re through the worst of it. Just stay awake, okay?” Priorities took over and he found himself reaching for the alert at her bedside. He pressed the button for help. “I’ll be with you the whole time, I promise.”

   She breathed out a deep sigh, relaxing more into his arms as he held her. She didn’t remember all the time she’d been unconscious, but it certainly felt like they hadn’t spoken for a while. She did remember him finding her in the wreckage though, and thinking those would be her last moments with him. His “always bring you back” had once been something of a threat, but that was a long time ago, another lifetime ago, and now it was reassuring words born from care. It was comforting to hear, even more so that he had, it wasn’t just words.

   “You’re right. You’ve kept it.” Her hand lowered from him, sliding down his neck and chest as she found herself too tired to keep holding it up. She breathed slow and deep, blinking languidly but there was still a strength to even these simple actions that had not been present before.