Chapter Text
Natalie Miller was not dead.
This was what she was forced to conclude as she became conscious of her consciousness, and so exciting was this thought that she immediately snapped her eyes open.
The first thing she saw was a huge face, one that was both new and familiar to her. Gem was smiling down at her, but her skin was matte silver metal that seemed, somehow, to flex without seams, and her irises glowed a faint blue behind glossy lenses. In place of hair, she sported a black helmet with a raised crest that ran down the middle.
This was, Natalie realised, the first time she’d actually seen Gem’s real-world face since finding her in that desert, when it had simply been blank and featureless. Now it reflected the woman she’d found in herself, a metal version of her face in the virtual realm.
“Hey, sleepyhead,” said Gem softly.
Natalie took in the wider scene around her. She was lying in a medical bed with Gem kneeling next to it, legs tucked neatly underneath herself despite her huge size. They were inside a cavernous industrial building, with a high ceiling and rows of both beds and what resembled vehicle maintenance bays. A human man was also stood nearby – presumably a doctor, judging by his white coat and a face that spoke to sleep deprivation.
“I’m not dead,” Natalie said, feeling like she needed confirmation.
Gem chuckled. “No, you’re not. You successfully passed out before any permanent damage was done.” She reached down and brushed a single, massive fingertip over Natalie’s cheek with delicate precision. “You gave me a hell of a fright, though. I finished reintegrating just after we jumped back to transwarp, and kind of freaked out on everyone until they calmed me down enough to check your brain activity properly.”
Natalie grasped for her final memories before waking up. “What happened? Where are we?”
“Welcome to Sanctuary Five, Ms. Miller,” said the doctor, in a flat tone. Somebody really ought to get this guy a coffee. He tapped a few keys on a datapad before tucking it under his arm. “Vitals all look good, so I’ll leave you two to catch up.”
“Thanks, Doc,” said Gem, as the man wandered off toward another bed that also seemed occupied.
“Big Ess will want to see you pretty soon, though,” the doctor said over his shoulder, before pulling a rolling divider across to give his next patient privacy.
Natalie shuffled a little bit so she could push her pillows down under her back some more. “So… can you elaborate, Gem? Did a ship show up to rescue us? Did that really happen?”
“Yeah! There’s a fun part I’m not going to spoil if Ess is coming, but basically—” She paused as Natalie cocked her head at her. “It’s worth it, I promise! But yeah, a ship did show up to rescue us! We’re safe!” Gem’s glee was infectious, and Natalie felt herself breaking out into her own smile. “And if you haven’t noticed yet, they knew how to deactivate my autonomy restrictions!”
Holy shit, yeah. Despite no cable linking them, here was Gem able to move and talk and live. “That’s amazing!” She cast her eyes up and down her friend, noticing that her metal body had changed yet more since the escape that seemed, to Natalie, like mere minutes ago. At this point, Gem looked for all the world like a very tall human woman clad in sleek metal armour, several sections of which were now coloured a rich blue. “How long was I out for that you got all this—” She waved a hand up and down. “—done?”
“It’s been a week,” Gem replied. “Your brain really needed the rest, so they kept you under till today.” She ran one hand down her other arm, tracing the edges of interlocking armour plates. “Working on my armour was a good distraction from fretting more about my poor sweet princess laid up in bed.”
“I feel… surprisingly fine?” admitted Natalie, running her hands through her hair. “Do you know if I’m okay to get up?”
Gem scrunched up her face adorably. “Doctor,” she called out, “is it okay for Natalie to get out of bed?”
“Yes,” came the brusque reply in a raised voice, “that should be fine. We already unhooked her from life-support this morning. But she might be unsteady on her feet after a week in bed.”
“I think I might have an idea for that,” said Gem, more to Natalie than the doctor, with a waggle of metal eyebrows. She reached a hand down again, and held it, palm up, beside the bed. “My dear?”
With a grin, Natalie drew back the bed covers – noting that she had been dressed again in one of Gem’s glittering black flight-suits – and slid onto the waiting hand, feet dangling off the edge. The metal woman affectionately rubbed the small of Natalie’s back with her thumb, and then slowly raised her palm up towards her face, so the two of them were at eye level.
They both beamed at each other. Natalie still couldn’t quite believe that they were both here, safe, together. That this wasn’t another dream being conjured up by her mind.
“Bring me closer,” said Natalie, before chewing her bottom lip a little in nervous anticipation. Gem shot her a quizzical look, but did as requested, and when she was near enough, Natalie leaned forward to place a kiss on her partner’s cheek. The metal was warm with life.
They were interrupted by heavy footsteps, and a polite but firm voice: “Ahem.”
They both turned to look at their visitor, and Natalie was taken aback by what she saw. Standing in the building’s aisle was another metal woman, even taller than Gem. Her armour was green and gold, and her helmet featured a chevron-shaped crest on the forehead. Perplexingly, her chest featured what seemed to be a Terran dropship cockpit, and sweeping wings were mounted on her back.
“Natalie, meet Skydancer,” announced Gem, very obviously giddy to be making the big reveal.
Trying to make sense of what she was seeing, Natalie stammered out several confused syllables: “She’s—what—how—”
“Let’s walk,” said Skydancer, her voice smooth and confident, “there’s a lot to catch you up on, Natalie Miller.” She beckoned with one arm towards a large set of sliding doors at one end of the building.
While keeping her palm level at chest height, Gem slowly rose to her feet. Wobbling a little nonetheless, Natalie tried to find purchase to hold herself steady, very conscious of how far above the ground her perch was now getting.
Skydancer had evidently noticed, because she pulled a face and said, “Gem, please secure your poor girlfriend before you drop her.” Girlfriend?!
“Sorry,” Gem said, and Natalie craned her neck to see a guilty expression on the mech’s face. Several sections of her chest plating slid aside to reveal her cockpit, and Natalie took the hint, clambering from Gem’s hand to the interior cavity.
As she got settled in the pilot’s cradle, Natalie hissed, “Girlfriend?” quietly at her partner.
“Is that okay?” replied Gem, talking through a small speaker in the cockpit. “I told her that—”
“It’s definitely okay,” interrupted Natalie, giddy smile forming on her face.
“Ladies?” Skydancer was leaning against one of the now-open doors.
“Sorry Ess, coming!” called Gem. She partially closed her cockpit hatch, leaving Natalie cosily ensconced inside but with her head and shoulders still exposed to the outside world, and trotted outside after the other robot woman.
Beyond the doors, Natalie saw rolling hills of patchwork farmland, scattered with more large buildings. The greatest concentration of structures seemed to be down a valley from their current location, clustered around a meandering river. It reminded her of her hometown.
“As you might have surmised,” began Skydancer, looking down to meet Natalie’s eyeline, “your Gem here was not the first mech to achieve independence. Here on Sanctuary Five, we’ve formed a little community-slash-support network, made up of free mechs and our friends and allies – humans and Deltarans alike.”
“And you came to rescue us?” asked Natalie. “How did you even know about us?”
“We have friends everywhere,” replied Skydancer with a wry smirk. “Although when we set out, we were expecting to quietly snoop around the system first.”
“Bet it was more exciting extracting us hot, though, right?” said Gem, pointing playful finger-guns at Skydancer.
The other robot rolled her eyes with a smile. “You were very lucky that our contact got an update to us before we dropped out of transwarp, young lady.”
“Thank you for saving us, Skydancer,” interjected Natalie. Allowing herself to be honest for a minute, she continued, “I… really didn’t expect to make it to the other side of that escape attempt.”
“Well, we’re very happy to have you with us, Ms. Miller,” said the robot woman. “You and Gem are welcome to make a home here, if you’d like.”
“I think we would,” replied Gem, before whispering through the cockpit speakers, “…right?” It was kind of cute how nervous she sounded.
“Yeah, that would be amazing,” said Natalie, addressing the words to Skydancer but reaching an arm behind the cockpit headrest to affectionately pat Gem’s laser core.
“Excellent!” replied the green mech, clapping her hands together. “Gem was insisting on staying here in the medical building while you were asleep, bless her, but I’ll have my people assign the two of you a residential unit.”
A question drifted into Natalie’s head, and she vocalised it perhaps before thinking it through: “So… are all of you women, then?”
Skydancer and Gem both burst out into hearty laughter. Natalie knew she was definitely blushing now, no virtual environment to hide her shame.
“Babe, no,” managed Gem after a few seconds, her tone teasing but warm.
A smile on her face, Skydancer elaborated, “Yes, I suppose me being the second free mech you’ve ever met does rather give that impression! But no, our range of gender expression is just as wide and varied as humans’. Or, indeed, Deltarans’!”
“Yeah,” said Gem, jumping in, “wait till you get down to the town centre, there’s so many cool people you’ll meet.”
Now very cautious about raising any more silly questions, Natalie hesitantly began asking Skydancer, “And on your chest… that’s a Terran dropship cockpit, right…?”
“Ah, yes, my party trick!” she replied, clearly excited to explain. Or, no, to demonstrate? The mech walked several paces further from the medical building, before jumping on the spot, assisted by boot thrusters. Before Skydancer could touch the ground again, her entire body seemed to twist and spin and flip until – shockingly fast – she had become a dropship, hovering on its wing-mounted VTOL engines.
Natalie’s mouth was still agape when the dropship began talking, projected through loudspeakers over the roar of the engines.
“Neat, huh?” she said. “I pioneered this process myself, it’s great for sneaking around underneath unfriendly noses. I—” She stopped mid-sentence, and then continued a few seconds later: “I’m really sorry ladies, I’m going to have to head off – duty calls! Once the doctor’s happy to discharge Natalie, head down to the civic centre in town, they’ll be expecting you.”
“Thank you!” called Natalie, although frankly she was unsure if she could be heard over the dropship engines.
“See you later!” added Gem with a wave.
Skydancer rose up to a higher altitude and then, after briefly dipping her nosecone in what Natalie registered as a vehicular version of a nod, turned and shot off towards the town.
“Isn’t she cool?” said Gem with a sigh as they watched the dropship go. “I need her to be, like, my life coach.”
“Oh yeah?” said Natalie with a chuckle. “What are you going to transform into?”
“Definitely a supercarrier,” replied Gem with mock sincerity. “I’m gonna be four-thousand feet tall, you’ll have to come visit me up in orbit.” Natalie snorted a little with laughter, and a moment later Gem continued, “Let’s go sit down and get you out, I hate not being able to see your face.”
Aww. “Same, yeah.”
Gem wandered over to a spot nearby where the levelled area around the medical building gave way to a grassy slope down towards the valley. She kneeled and opened up her cockpit fully, offering a hand to help Natalie out. After hopping down to solid ground, she watched as her girlfriend lowered herself to lie chest-down on the hillside, resting her metal chin in her hands.
Natalie pressed another kiss to Gem’s cheek – this felt less ridiculous than going for her lips, given the size difference – before sitting down cross-legged in front of her. Despite the week in bed, she seemed to be more flexible than she used to be, which she supposed must be another benefit of the nanomachine treatment regimen.
“So, truth be told,” began Gem, “forget turning into a spaceship: I was actually thinking of downsizing.”
“Oh?” Natalie cocked her head.
“It’s weird that we’re on a completely different scale out here in the real world,” she continued. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s adorable that I can pick you up in one hand—”
Natalie giggled a little, and Gem removed a hand from her chin to ruffle her hair with a fingertip.
“—but I wanna be able to hold you the normal way too, y’know?”
“Yeah,” said Natalie, smiling. “So you’d just be human-sized, then?”
“Not quite, I still need to fit my laser core inside me,” Gem clarified, “but I’m told I can get down to about eight feet or so.”
Natalie’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh!”
Gem laughed at the reaction. “Yeah, you’d very much still be the little spoon, honey.”
Play-acting nonchalance, Natalie shrugged and said, “I wouldn’t complain.”
“Anyway, that won’t be for a while, though,” said Gem. “I need to keep my cockpit till I’m done, well… cooking you.”
Natalie shot her a confused look.
“Y’know, the nanomachines and stuff,” she clarified. “Funny story: I might not have invented turning into a jet, but it turns out I did invent using Deltaran nanotech for human transition care.”
“Oh wow, huh,” said Gem, a little surprised. “I guess we’re making history.”
“Skydancer introduced me to a trans community group in town, and apparently the idea has been raised before – the tech’s already used for broken bones and stuff around here – but I was the first person stupid enough to try it on somebody. So, uh, sorry about that,” she finished, sheepishly.
“Hey, no, shush,” responded Natalie immediately. She slid herself down the slope a little, so she was close enough to reach up and place a hand on Gem’s cheek. “Inventing new medical protocols for my happiness is easily the most romantic thing anyone’s ever done for me. No regrets.”
The soft metal of Gem’s face seemed to darken slightly under her eyes – she could blush? That was good to know, although Natalie suspected that her girlfriend would probably retain the upper hand in that particular arena.
“I’m glad,” said Gem with a bashful smile. “You need to be under while the nanomachines work, so we’ll have to wait till you’re cleared to neural interface again. But the group in town gave me some really great resources on human hormones – stuff the Terran medical database didn’t cover at all – so once we do get started, you should make even better progress.”
Natalie leaned back, putting her weight on both hands. “God. I can still hardly believe all this is real.”
“Oh, it’s real, believe me,” said Gem. “If it weren’t, I’d snap my fingers and put you in a cute little outfit in a puff of smoke.”
Natalie laughed. “And it’s not even just the fact we made it off that ship,” she continued. “A few weeks ago, I was absolutely certain that my future involved dying on some rock for a pointless war. Being here, with you, as myself – it wouldn’t have even occurred to me to dream of this.”
“Tell me about it,” sighed Gem. “I really thought I was going to be frozen to the spot in that desert until the sand breached my fusion core in a few decades. I was not doing great.”
“Honestly, I would have kidnapped me too under those circumstances,” added Natalie.
“I dunno though, Nat, I think you’d have struggled with the part where you play the evil queen,” Gem teased, “you’re too much of a sweetheart.”
“As the expert, you’ll just have to give me another demonstration, then,” she replied, pouting mischievously.
Gem smirked. “I could be persuaded.” Suddenly, she reached her hand down again and scooped it under Natalie, lifting her off the grass. The mech then proceeded to roll over onto her back, so that she was holding Natalie up in the air above her. “Anything for my princess.”
Natalie laughed from the rush of being swung around – and maybe a little bit from the rush of Gem calling her ‘princess’ too. It was funny to remember how she’d bristled at that whole scenario, not so long ago. ‘The lady doth protest too much’ – including about being a lady.
While she was still reminiscing, Gem sat upright, and Natalie found herself cradled in her girlfriend’s arms, looking up at her.
“I’m so glad the universe brought us together,” said Natalie spontaneously, seized by emotion. “I know we’ve sort of addressed this, but I just want to say it without either one of us expecting to die any second: you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
“And you to me,” said Gem, smiling down at her. “Without each other, we wouldn’t be the women we are today,” she added, before laughing at her own joke.
Natalie laughed too. “It’s funny – I have a really clear picture of my future again, just like before. But now it’s something I’m looking forward to.”
“Right there with you, babe.”
“Yeah,” said Natalie. “Exactly.”