T.R.Y.!

Medium: Watercolor, gouache, brown ink, white gel pen on cold press watercolor paper

Some of my favorite details: the pin for ?’s sword, the forget me nots and amaranths (hope and guapoduo), the dandelions

One of my digital color references:

-

Cellbit’s son is gone. So is a significant part of Cellbit’s heart, and yet he knows that he is still capable of feeling love. He’s alive, after all: he isn’t a religious man, but he likes to think that everything with a heart can feel love. Dogs love their owners. Lions love their mates. Crocodiles love the hunt. Parrots love to show off. 

The Mini-Mes? Notably not alive. They aren’t real. They’re plastic and felt and yarn and whatever-the-fuck electronics the Federation shoved into their fake little bodies. Their nerves are made out of copper. Their veins are filled with self-recycling machine oil. Their hearts are combustion engines that run off of the items that their islander counterparts provide them daily. 

Cellbit knows this. He’s cut his Mini-Me apart so many times that ? knows not to squirm on the dissection table. Every time he’s sewn ? back together, he’s made ? hold the roll of string so it doesn't roll away. He’s made ? bleed oil to the point that he once caught ? drinking gasoline when Cellbit’s back was turned. 

The Mini-Mes don’t feel emotions. They can’t. They aren’t real. They’re creatures, if one could call an inhuman amalgamation of wires and eco-friendly microplastics a creature. It’s more apt to call them robots. 

Monsters. 

Cellbit knows that the MIni-Mes were created for war. He watched the video at that conference, he knows exactly what the little assholes were made for. Now that they’re stolen, their purpose has probably been shifted by the Federation from fighting to spying. 

They can’t feel love. This much, Cellbit knows. They were created for battle, and now they’re just biding their time. Waiting. 

The fact that ? seems to be in love with Pulgoier is an outlier that should not be considered. They’re both just mimicking their owners, that’s all. Which begs the question of exactly how adaptive the Mini-Mes are; they can change appearance at the drop of a hat, but behavior? They’ve been robotic up to this point, what changed? 

Cellbit asks this to ? as ? sits in its cage staring at the oil-stained wall. 

?, of course, doesn’t respond. That’s good, Cellbit doesn’t know what he’d do if the little bastard learned how to talk. 

But, at the lack of a response, Cellbit inexplicably feels a sense of… God, is this bravery he’s feeling coming off of ?? Is that it? An attitude? 

Cellbit’s eyes narrow, and he leans in closer to the cage with a sneer. 

“Whatever you’re doing, I’m onto it,” he growls. 

? just adjusts its goggles in response. Its hand briefly dips into the Fear Room’s light, exposing a thin black line drawn around ?’s left hand ring finger. A ring. 

Cellbit is so surprised that he doesn’t even feel angry for a good moment. 

But then ? looks up at him as if asking, “And what about it?”, and Cellbit finds himself standing and kicking the cage so hard that it falls over, sending ? toppling. 

A ring. A goddamn ring. 

A goddamn mockery, more like. It’s mocking him. The Federation is mocking him, he knows it. He fucking knows it. 

(But… why?)

-

Pulgoier starts holding ?’s hand. ? keeps picking things off of the side of the road to give to Pulgoier, and Cellbit hates it. 

Roier makes a little shoebox bed for them that he puts under his and Cellbit’s own bed. Instead of powering off for the day in a corner of the room, ? and Pulgoier go there at night, and Cellbit hates it. 

? and Pulgoier sit across from each other on the floor when their owners have their meals. Sometimes they pretend to eat, usually pretending to feed each other, and Cellbit hates it. 

Richarlyson would have killed them by now. Cellbit wishes he was here to do so, but. 

But. 

-

But it’s well past midnight, and Cellbit can’t sleep. This isn’t anything too unusual; he learned how to live off minimal sleep back during the War, for better or for worse. 

But Roier can’t sleep, which means that he’s somewhere in the castle, which means that Cellbit is somewhere in the castle because there’s no way in Hell he’s letting his depressed and sleep-deprived husband wander around mourning. 

Tonight’s ‘somewhere’ is the garden, and Cellbit has Roier in his arms as they sway back and forth to the music playing softly on Roier’s communicator. (The Federation is shitty for so many reasons, but at least it’s providing the island with Spotify Premium free-of-charge.)

The song is unimportant. So are the two little freaks of nature watching from beneath a rosebush. So are the Federation’s hidden cameras, and Bad somewhere downstairs trying to carry Cellbit’s dining table out the door, and the itching bloodlust in the back of Cellbit’s brain. 

What is important is Roier, and so Cellbit focuses all his attention on him. 

He’s tired, clearly so: his hair is more of a mess than usual, his clothes are rumpled and wrinkled, his shoes are untied, his bandana is lost somewhere in the bedroom, his lips are chapped, and the circles under his eyes are dark enough to rival Cellbit’s. 

Cellbit doesn’t think he’s ever seen a more beautiful man in his life. 

He says as much, words ghosting across Roier’s pale lips. 

Roier smiles weakly, and he murmurs a quiet, “No, you.”

The song changes to something a bit quicker. They both ignore the change in tempo and decide to follow each other’s, instead. 

Cellbit’s arms tighten around Roier. He pulls him closer, nose burying itself in the side of Roier’s neck and breathing in his scent and internalizing it, filing it away in the little cabinet in his brain labeled ‘Roier’.

“You stink,” he grumbles. 

“Yeah, because you’re all over me,” Roier responds. He lightly pinches Cellbit’s side. “I know what we’re doing when we get back inside.”

Cellbit whines, sagging in Roier’s arms. He loves his husband, but he does not love showering with him; Roier takes so long under the water that it’s running cold by the time it’s Cellbit’s turn, and his shampoo smells so strongly that it makes Cellbit have an asthma attack. 

Cellbit doesn’t even have asthma!

What Cellbit does have is an unfortunately-acute sense of hearing. It’s a blessing at times, and it’s a curse. 

His eyebrow twitches in annoyance as he hears the absolute faintest of sounds: the crunching of grass beneath clumsy feet, and the overworking of machinery as it tries to figure out how to laugh.

At the same time, Roier gasps, “Mira, mira!”

But Cellbit doesn’t look. Why should he? He’s having a good time. He doesn’t need some… some… some things ruining it. 

“Ay,” Roier insists, poking Cellbit between his ribs once. “Gatinho, mira.” 

Another poke. “Mira.” 

Another poke. “Cellbit.” 

(Poke.) “Cellbo.”

Cellbit’s eyes squeeze shut. He presses a kiss to the crook of Roier’s neck to try and appease him, but Roier just pokes him again. With determination. 

“Stop ignoring me!” he huffs. “Unless… you hate me? You want a divorce?”

At that, Cellbit’s head snaps up in a panic. 

“Não!” he shouts. Why would Roier ever…

Lips twitching into a semblance of a smile, Roier grabs Cellbit’s face with one hand- squeezing his cheeks together and making him feel a bit like a fish- and turns it to the side. 

…right. If there’s one thing Roier is, it’s a fucking asshole. (And a handsome one at that.)

Cellbit’s shoulders sag in relief, but said relief quickly melts back into annoyance as he’s forced to look at the Mini-Mes and their… well. It isn’t dancing, that’s for certain. 

Pulgoier has taken the lead, just like Roier has. It’s holding ?’s little hands and rocking from side-to-side: left, right. Left, right. Left, right. It doesn’t move from its spot other than a small amount of shuffling as it tries pulling at ?’s hands in an attempt to get it to actually move. 

? is still. It’s staring directly into Pulgoier’s beady little eyes, absolutely frozen. If it could blush, Cellbit is sure that it would be doing so. 

Cellbit inadvertently copies it, stiffening against Roier’s body and stopping any and all movements. He doesn’t mean to- he wants to keep dancing, to keep ignoring the Mini-Mes and their bastardized attempt at “romance”, but… 

“Look,” Roier quietly says, sounding almost awed. 

He lets go of Cellbit’s face so he can press his cheek against Cellbit’s. 

Cellbit feels Roier’s jaw work against his as he concludes, “It’s us.”

Because… it is. It is, somehow, in such a fundamental way that Cellbit can’t really identify it as anything but Cellbit-And-Roier. 

“Oh,” says Cellbit, voice hardly above a whisper. 

He watches as Pulgoier tugs on ?’s arms, and as ?’s legs start to shake under it. 

Cellbit doesn’t actually remember a lot of his wedding reception; between the explosions and the alcohol, it’s all just a lot of blurry faces and the feeling of Roier-Roier-Roier-Roier-Roier. 

What he does remember is being ushered into the center of the dance floor along with Roier and freezing. The world faded from around him, and all he could think about was Roier’s smile as he took Cellbit into his arms; Roier’s warm hands on his body; Roier’s alcohol-laced breath across his face. His body was a stranger. 

He remembers thinking, ‘Shit. I don’t know how to dance.’  Because he didn’t, and he still doesn’t, because he never had a chance to learn how. It just never came up in his life, and then, suddenly, he was supposed to dance. At his wedding. In front of the entire island. And everyone he knew.

And he remembers the way Roier’s face softened as he picked up on Cellbit’s anxiety. His hands slid from Cellbit’s back, up to his shoulders, down the lengths of his arms, and to his hands. He tangled their fingers together, took a step back, and winked. 

Pulgoier physically can’t wink, but it otherwise does exactly what Roier did all those months ago: it takes a step back, and it just starts spinning. 

? can’t shout like Cellbit did back then, but it otherwise does what he did all those months ago: it gets pulled along, forced to spin along with its partner, stumbling over its own feet and flailing about like a doll caught in the wind. 

“I can’t fucking believe this,” Cellbit mutters. 

“I can,” Roier replies. “He’s your Mini-Me, of course he can’t dance for shit.”

He yelps out a laugh as Cellbit indignantly steps on his foot. 

Roier’s right, though; Cellbit can’t dance for shit. And neither can ?, being Cellbit’s shitty little clone. 

The night of the wedding, it took Cellbit a good solid minute to get his feet back under him. He felt himself smiling, and, maybe it was the wine in his system, but he found himself tugging Roier in a spin in the opposite direction. He was dizzy as Hell, but it made Roier laugh when he did it, so he just… kept doing it. Eventually, the spin led into a proper attempt at a slow dance that failed so miserably that the two of them gave up and jumped onto the stage for another round of karaoke.

Tonight, ? picks up on things a bit quicker than Cellbit had. It stabilizes, nods to itself, and starts pulling Pulgoier into its own spin. Almost immediately, they’re attempting a proper waltz, and Cellbit… 

Cellbit doesn’t get it. 

At first, Cellbit wasn’t sure what the end goal of the Mini-Mes was. Then, he realized that they’re little soldiers. Robotic supersoldiers capable of self-multiplication and growth, literal war machines. 

But then… why do they look like the islanders? Why does Pulgoier have the same dark circles as Roier? Why does ? have the same scar across its chest that Cellbit does? What’s the point? The Federation doesn’t do anything without a purpose, so why do the Mini-Mes have to look like their owners if they’re meant to grow up and kill them? 

Why can they dance? 

“What’s the point?” he murmurs. Roier hums in acknowledgement, and Cellbit takes that as a sign to continue: “Of copying us?”

“Because we’re sexy,” Roier responds. 

Cellbit rolls his eyes. “True. But, think about it, what purpose does any of…” (He waves his hand in the MIni-Mes’ general direction.) “...this serve?”

“I don’t know, but… look at them.”

Cellbit looks. He doesn’t understand. Something uncomfortable rises in his throat. 

? twirls Pulgoier, leading it into a dip. Pulgoier raises its head and presses its painted mouth against ?’s. 

Chest clenching, Cellbit tries to tear his eyes away, but he just… can’t. He can’t. Not when they’re right there, not when they’re-

“You think they’re learning from us, right?” Roier asks. “So… maybe they aren’t learning how to kill us. Maybe they’re learning to be us.”

Cellbit gives him a flat look. “Isn’t that just as bad?”

Roier shrugs, still watching the little monsters. 

“Maybe,” he replies. “I’m not a scientist. But… isn’t it kinda crazy that we taught robots how to love?”

But robots can’t love. They can’t. But. 

Roier’s arms tighten around Cellbit’s body. His smile is just as forced as it has been since the eggs all vanished, but his eyes are surprisingly soft as he watches the Mini-Mes tumble into the grass from the force of their silent, impossible laughter. 

“They’re just copying us,” Cellbit weakly says. “It isn’t actually real.”

“Maybe,” Roier hums. One hand travels up to cup the back of Cellbit’s head, gently pulling it against his chest. Cellbit listens to Roier’s heartbeat and wills his own heart to match its pace. 

“Or,” he continues, “maybe it is. We found our reasons. Maybe they found theirs.”

They watch the Mini-Mes, and the Mini-Mes don’t notice. 

The song changes, and Roier starts leading Cellbit into another dance. 

Cellbit’s eyes slip shut, and he lets himself get swept away by Roier’s movements.