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2018-08-17
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2019-03-02
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2/2
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The Sorrow of the Impossible

Summary:

I sit in front of the YoRHa Commander. Her stern gaze seems to dissect me.

Commander White is known for being exceptionally blunt and no-nonsense. In that respect, she’s a lot like 2B. Her green eyes are narrowed; her mouth cut in a tight, slight, flat frown. It’s an expression that seems more neutral than anything, but I still can’t help but feel that a part of me is withering as I stumble over my words to explain myself.

I just want to be a girl.

I understand if it’s too much to ask for, but I hope it isn’t.

Notes:

I had an urge to write this just a little self-indulgent diversion from work, job-hunting, and my main fic. It was fun to try out a different style and point of view than usual.

The medieval/renaissance-era poem "On Becoming a Woman" is referenced heavily in this fic. I feel it ended up fitting with what I wrote on a lot more levels than I'd originally intended, so I recommend reading it as well for the context.

(See the end of the work for other works inspired by this one.)

Chapter 1: Dysphoria

Chapter Text

My name is 9S, and I am a Scanner for YoRHa.

Today, I’m about to meet my new partner, a combat unit designated 2B.

I’ve never been so nervous in my life.

(Well, yeah, I was just brought online a few days ago, but still…)

She’s gorgeous.

I wonder if she’d think the same thing about a boy like me?

 2B and I have been working together for weeks now. She’s amazing. The way she cuts down machines with such finesse is inspiring. There’s hardly ever a hair out of place when she’s done with her work.

She’s pretty cold, but I still feel comfortable around her. I’m a chatterbox around her—I just can’t keep my mouth shut. I joke, I make witty observations (at least I think they’re witty), I grumble and grouse…

2B acts so aloof, but I can’t help but feel that deep down, she really likes me. Whenever I end up in a tight spot, she’s there to get me out. And that’s when I hear it in her voice. The veil drops away and I hear the emotion in her voice as she calls my name.

Still doesn’t call me Nines like I asked, but… hey, I’ll take it.

She’s really a wonderful person, and deep down, a part of me wishes I were more like her. I don’t know how to describe it, though.

Scanners like me are curious by nature, but we aren’t always as curious about our missions as we are about… anything else. We’re magpies collecting trinkets, grabbing at anything that glitters and catches our eyes.

The longer I spend around 2B, the more I want to ask her something.

“What does it feel like?” I finally ask.

2B is fishing, letting her pod sit in the water as bait as she leans back and relaxes. It’s strange to see her taking it easy, but the two of us are waiting for another reconnaissance team to meet up with us and have nothing better to do with our time anyway. She’s quite serious-minded, but not high-strung.

“Hmm?” 2B turns her head my way, her eyes buried under her visor. “It’s boring,” she concludes, gesturing to her pod as it bobs up and down in the lake. “But, oddly… refreshing.”

“No, um… I mean, what does it feel like, being a woman?”

We androids were built in the image of our human masters, and while we are sexless, there are those of us who are men and those of us who are women. It doesn’t really matter, though—it’s all cosmetic. Being a woman doesn’t make 2B a more effective combat unit, and being a man doesn’t make me a more effective scanner unit. But it should feel like something, shouldn’t it? Otherwise, why bother?

2B takes a while to respond. All the while, I feel the temperature of my black box rising. I’m not sure why. It’s a normal thing for a man to be curious about, isn’t it? It was the one question in the world I didn’t have the ability to answer on my own, after all.

“I’m not sure,” she says, “what it feels like. I have nothing to compare it to, so I suppose it doesn’t feel like anything.”

“Oh. Okay.”

A little embarrassed, I turn my attention to the lake and watch the sunlight glitter on the ripples breaking on the shore. I wonder how I would answer if somebody asked me what it felt like to be a man.

2B’s pod begins to thrash as a mechanical fish latches onto it and tries to drag it away.

On a mission to the dark side of the Earth, we get caught in the rain.

The dark side of the Earth is a miserable place. When the planet stopped rotating and became tidally locked, the plants and animals on the daylight side fared well enough. But the plants on the night side were not so fortunate—the only ones who survived were those that abandoned photosynthesis and learned to embrace the eternal night. There’s almost nothing but mosses and fungi, many of them stark-white, some glowing with faint bioluminescence. It’s not the Earth humans once knew, that’s for sure—eerie, yet beautiful in its own way.

The rain doesn’t smell like the rain on the daylight side of the Earth. It feels different, too. Earthier, thicker. The lights of a machine factory shimmer through the haze in the distance, and the heavy rain has a taste of carbon and acid to it.

2B and I find shelter in a library. As we dry off, I can’t help but start thumbing through the books. It’s a little piece of the human race, preserved even to this day. I’m amazed at how many of these books don’t fall apart in my hands.

I imagine what this place must have looked like in its heyday and wish that the war could end soon, so the humans who built us could return to Earth from their refuge on the moon and fill their libraries with the susurrus of flipping pages again. They would have so much to teach us.

A book of medieval poetry—literature dating back to the fourteenth century, over ten thousand years ago—catches my eye.

It begins:

What an awful fate for my mother that she bore a son.

I read on, intrigued.

It’s strange. I’d never known humans could feel this way.

What shall I say? Why cry or be bitter? If my Father in heaven has decreed upon me and has maimed me with an immutable deformity, then I do not wish to remove it.

I feel my chest grow warmer and warmer as I read it. I don’t know why.

It’s lonely being a boy in YoRHa—the only male models are Scanners. Battler, Operator, Defender, Healer, and Executioner models are exclusively female. Is that why I feel the flow of coolant through my synthetic flesh quicken when I think about this?

The sorrow of the impossible is a human pain that nothing will cure and for which no comfort can be found.

Perhaps it is not as much of a human pain as this poor soul, who died ten thousand years ago with his prayers never answered, believed.

Even days later, I can’t get the poem out of my mind.

What I’m doing is stupid, but I know it. Somehow a part of me feels like it’s less stupid because I know it’s stupid.

I break into the Bunker’s storage to take an unused spare body of one of the Battler units. I choose 9B—her template is the same as mine. And she looks like me, too. I can see it in the shape of her face, but only barely, and in her short snow-white hair—but again, only barely. When I stand over the empty shell in my quarters, I feel a longing for something that never existed—a version of myself that might have—could have have been.

When my gaze drifts away from this empty shell’s face and studies the swell of its breasts and curve of its hips and thighs, I feel a hot spike of… not arousal, as I had almost expected, but something else.

Envy.

I need to get this fixation out of my system. It’s distracting me—I’ve been messing up lately, making more mistakes than usual, catching myself admiring 2B’s graceful athleticism when I should be focusing on the mission. I don't understand it. If being a man or a woman shouldn't mean anything to us, then why does it mean so much to me?

Nonetheless, I can’t allow myself to keep being haunted by this strange longing. I need an answer to my question. So I upload a disk image of my consciousness into the empty body and deactivate myself.

I wake up staring at the blank eyes of my own inert body. It’s unnerving seeing my own face so still, my own eyes so dull and glassy. Standing up, I lay my own body carefully on my bed.

Logically, I shouldn’t be disappointed by what I look like at all. My body serves its function perfectly, and if I do say so myself, I’m pretty handsome.

But in this borrowed body, the softness of my skin and the weight on my chest, and even the way this Type-B unit’s standard uniform clings to it and hangs off of it just feels so right.

I’m relieved beyond words, despite the pressure building around my black box. It’s such a small change, really—just a shell—but feels like so much to me at the same time.

This isn’t a version of myself that might have been or could have been, I think, staring at a softer face in the mirror, but a version of myself that should have been.

As luck would have it, I hear the door to my quarters slide open, whirl around to face the intruder, and find 2B staring at me, dumbfounded.

In an instant, I’m staring down the length of her blade as its tip hovers near my throat. I try to explain myself, stumbling over my words, my cheeks flushed and hot with shame, quickly realizing that 2B doesn’t recognize me at all. All she sees is a deranged Battler unit standing over her partner’s inactive body in his own quarters and babbling like a lunatic.

I can feel her eyes boring into mine, even if I can’t see them—There’s a quiet fury there, a fierce, protective glare cutting through me as effortlessly as her sword cuts through the hulls of our machine enemies.

Falling to my knees before her, I try to explain myself to her. I’ve never been so terrified, but I calm myself down and force myself to speak slowly and clearly, and as 2B realizes who I am, what I’ve done, and why I’ve done it, I see dawning sympathy on her face.

I sit in front of the YoRHa Commander. Her stern gaze seems to dissect me. Under her scrutiny, I find myself looking down at my boots while I knead the fabric of my visor with my thumbs.

Commander White is known for being exceptionally blunt and no-nonsense. In that respect, she’s a lot like 2B. Her green eyes are narrowed; her mouth cut in a tight, slight, flat frown. It’s an expression that seems more neutral than anything, but I still can’t help but feel that a part of me is withering as I stumble over my words to explain myself.

White has difficulty understanding at first. The personality templates used to construct YoRHa androids, while developed from the meticulously-analyzed psychological profiles of once-living human beings, are designed to be gender-neutral so they can be applied to any model. It doesn’t make sense to her that I would feel the way I do.

I didn’t expect 2B to accompany me. But whenever my voice falters, whenever I find myself wanting to give in, she is the one speaks up and nudges me along. Her face betrays no emotion, making her almost a mirror image of the Commander, but she remains steadfast by my side.

At last, we seem to get through to White. She asks me if I’d like to be retrofitted into a Type-B or a Type-H. But if I were, then I wouldn’t be me anymore, I reply: My curiosity as a Scanner would be useless to any other type, so it would be removed from my programming. I don’t actually want my role or function as a soldier to change—not if it doesn’t have to.

I just want to be a girl.

I understand if it’s too much to ask for, but I hope it isn’t.

She deliberates for a long time. Hours turn into days, and I’m put on leave as I await her decision.

I can see the moon from the windows lining the Bunker’s main deck. I think about the humans taking refuge there while we fight on their behalf.

There are probably humans up there who are just like me. But would they think that I, a mere creation of humanity, was being foolish? Am I longing for something above my station?

At last, I am called back to Commander White’s office. Again, 2B remains by my side.

When White tells me that she has consulted with the Council of Humanity and agreed to grant my request, I’m floored. I can’t speak at first—after a few seconds, I mumble out a nervous “Thank you, Commander.” 2B and I stand up, salute, and leave.

2B walks back to my quarters with me. I thank her for helping me—I couldn’t have done that on my own.

Her voice is cold and flat as she tells me that she did it to improve mission efficiency. My dysphoria—that is what humans call it in their medical records, gender dysphoria—is a hindrance, she tells me, and treating it will improve mission efficiency.

But I can’t help but feel there’s more she isn’t saying.

It’s me she cares about, not the mission.

I find myself a little disappointed in my new uniform.

It’s still very much the same outfit all Scanners wear—a black frock coat with copper buttons down the front and ornate detailing around the hem, shorts, and boots—with the only difference being that it’s been tailored to better fit my new body.

It’s not that my central grievance of being a man was anything as petty as clothing, but a part of me had been hoping for a skirt at least. Stockings like 2B’s would have been nice, too…

Perhaps, I think, I can put in a request for a customized uniform. I resolve to ask 2B about it—she must have experience with such matters, considering her outfit didn’t match what other Type-B’s wore.

I can’t quite describe how, but I feel lighter, almost giddy as I exit my quarters. I’d never imagined I could ever feel this way.

2B is there in the hallway waiting for me. She looks me up and down, her stoic face failing to give away her emotions, as always—and maybe I’m just projecting, but I feel like she was expecting something a little more dramatic as well.

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” I say, grinning, placing my hands on my hips. My voice is different—foreign to my ears—but natural-sounding enough that I quickly adjust. “I was expecting them to give me a skirt, too.”

She wastes no time in leading me down the corridor to the hangar bay, and soon enough we’ve gotten back to work.

2B, of course, treats me with just as much respect as before and keeps me at a professional distance as always, although I can’t help but feel she seems a little more receptive to my incessant chatter than before. I can’t say I expected anything less from Miss Emotions Are Prohibited.

During a routine mission, I tell 2B that when the war’s over we’ll finally be able to do girl stuff together. She asks me what that means. I think long and hard about it, studying whatever scraps of human culture I can find, and after about a week determine that “girl stuff” involves painting ones’ nails and complaining about men.

I think I almost make her laugh.

While some of my fellow Scanners are a little more awkward around me than before—some choosing to see my presence as a sort of intrusion, others seeming to see me as an odd novelty—most are, understandably, the keenest to ask me questions about my experiences. I soon learn that answering the same questions over and over again loses its luster very quickly.

My assigned communications operator, Operator 21O, seems not to notice anything about me has changed at all. After a few of our regularly-scheduled contacts over the course of my next several assignments, I finally just ask if she’d noticed anything different about me.

She finally compliments me on my new haircut and says my uniform seems to fit me much better.

“I’m a girl now, 21O,” I point out, exasperated.

“I know,” 21O replies. “I thought it would be impolite to bring it up.”

And most bizarrely of all, despite being 2B’s assigned communications operator, Operator 6O begins to contact me personally with increasing frequency, almost always for no other purpose than to make small talk and occasionally ask me if 2B and I can track down a certain type of flower for her photo album. I’m a little mystified at first by her behavior until I mention it in passing to 4S, who takes great pleasure in informing me that due to my transition, 6O now considers me “on the market.”

The idiom puzzles me for a little bit until the next time 6O contacts me out of the blue and I tell her what I told 2B about “girl stuff.” She laughs so hard that I start to worry about her psychological well-being, then asks me to visit her quarters the next time I’m at the Bunker so I can “learn more about girl stuff.”

A few weeks after 2B learns my secret, I learn hers.

My curiosity gets the better of me—and what had been a quick break to do some light reading in between missions turns into a death sentence.

I learn that I am not the first 9S—nor will I be the last.

I’ve done this time and time again—stuck my nose where it didn’t belong, looked where I was not meant to look, discovered what nobody was meant to discover—and each time I paid the ultimate price.

To prevent my findings from ever being disseminated to any other androids, I was assigned a Type-E—an Executioner—shortly after my initial activation to follow me and, when the time inevitably came, terminate me. Afterward, my data would be desynchronized and deleted from YoRHa’s servers and a new 9S with none of the memories of the old one would be activated. And the cycle would begin again and again.

2B is my partner, and more often than not my guardian and protector as well—but she is also my executioner, her hands bound by her duty. So long as the war exists, so long as YoRHa exists, so too will the two of us suffer through this cruel twist of fate. That the same woman who saves my life so many times would ultimately be the one to take it…

What shall I say? Why cry or be bitter?

It isn’t long before I feel the noose begin to tighten around my neck. On our next mission, 2B leads me to the desolate ruins of a long-ago ravaged city just out of reach of any encampments—friend or foe—I could attempt to flee to. I know the end is coming when I find myself standing in the middle of a dilapidated basement room with only one exit, its bare concrete walls and floor and its ceiling—sagging as the weight of the crumbling building above bears down on it—creating what is to be my tomb.

“I know,” I say, looking back at 2B.

She hangs her head, but draws her sword all the same. “I know,” she says, her voice cracking, barely rising above a whisper. 2B tugs at her visor and unravels it, letting the black cloth fall away from her eyes. Even from a distance, I can tell she is holding back tears. “I’m sorry, Nines.”

She calls me Nines for the first time.

No.

It isn’t the first time for her. I can tell.

The name must have stung her mouth as she spoke it. Because, I realize, she only ever uses it when she knows it will be the last word I ever hear.

I don’t want 2B to kill me. Not simply because I don’t want to die—I don’t, not after all this—but because I don’t want to add another corpse of mine to the weight of her sins.

But she has to obey her orders. She cannot afford to subordinate YoRHa’s morals to her own. There are powers greater than us at work here which we defy at our own peril.

I step forward until the tip of her blade rests above my breast and reach out, curling my fingers around the cold blade. “Let me do it for you,” I say.

2B shakes her head, taking a step backward. The blade slips through my grasp, slicing through my glove and leaving a stinging, bleeding cut across my fingers.

“I don’t care whether you’re 2B or 2E,” I tell her. My voice grows hoarse. “I love you all the same.”

I watch her bite her lip in distress. Her perfect, unblemished face scrunches up as she fights back tears. “I don’t want you to suffer alone,” I assure her, desperate to console her. I lay a hand on her cheek, the blood from my lacerated fingers smearing her skin. “I’ll take this burden off your hands, just this once… if you can promise me one thing in return.”

2B’s hand yields to mine, and I find myself holding her sword. Somehow, I can feel the weight of the dozens of my own lives this sword has already taken—and the dozens it has yet to take. I let my own visor fall away from my eyes so that at last, the two of us can both see each other face to face. In 2B’s eyes I see her, sensitive and vulnerable in a way I have never seen her before. I wonder what she sees in my eyes.

“Don’t let me be erased completely,” I ask her. “Not this time. Please, spare me just one thing.”

I don't want the self I have struggled for to be forgotten. I want to pass this on to the next 9S, and the next one, and the next one, until the war is over and we can live in peace.

2B nods, understanding my wish completely.

We embrace for the first and last time, and deep down, I lament the cruelty of our creators for forcing us to shoulder such a horrible burden. I know I will never see 2B again, but another 9S will. And someday, just as that ancient poet might have someday found the same relief I did for the impossible sorrow we shared, so too will another 9S relieve 2B of her own sorrow.

I close my eyes, and before I can think twice, I take 2B’s sword and drive it into my chest. My aim is true, and behind my breast, the black box which acts as the seat of my consciousness falls silent and dark.

My name is 9S, and I am a Scanner for YoRHa.

Today, I’m about to meet my new partner, a combat unit designated 2B.

I’ve never been so nervous in my life.

(Well, yeah, I was just brought online a few days ago, but still…)

She’s gorgeous.

I wonder if she’d think the same thing about a girl like me?

Chapter 2: Euphoria

Notes:

I couldn't let this go without making sure 2B and 9S would be happy.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

I wake up.

I didn’t expect to wake up.

My memories are hazy. Many of them, I think, are gone.

I remember pain. Agony inside and out. I remember the soft white light, the faces of old enemies beckoning me forward to join them.

I’ll stay here. I’ll vanish here.

I’ll stay here, and watch you go.

Those were my last thoughts…

So that’s where you were… 2B…

And those were my last words.

And then…

My eyes open. My mouth opens. My tongue brushes against my lips, wetting them, and a weak croak crawls through my throat.

There’s snow in the air. Dancing. Beautiful snowflakes twirling, caught by the sunlight, fluttering and flashing and glittering. And a dark silhouette occluding the sun, sunbeams streaming behind it like a halo.

No. Not ‘it.’ Her. I could never mistake that silhouette.

“Nines…” she whispers.

I choke out a few more words. I still can’t place where I am or how I’ve gotten here, and even who I am still feels a little hazy. “Where… am I…? 2B… what did I…”

She reaches out and lays her hand on my cheek. She’s not wearing her gloves, and her hands are cold and wet; I can hear servos whine in protest as her fingers very slightly curl. Wet from what?

I can smell it. Our blood, the fluid that runs through our veins to cool our hardware, has a distinct petroleum-like odor mingled with a sharp, metallic tinge. Its texture, too, is unctuous, like oil. Her hands are drenched with blood.

“I’m so glad…”

She’s crying. I can only remember her crying over me once before, but wonder how many other times she’s done this.

But…

She doesn’t seem sad. I don’t understand.

“I’m so glad you’re…”

I reach out to her. I take her hand. Hot tears blur my vision. I feel the metal bolts she’s driven through her own wrist as a slapdash form of maintenance, and can’t help but wonder what she’s put herself through to get here. To bring me back.

I always knew she loved me.

Weeks have passed us by. I’ve repaired 2B’s hands: her fingers still creak a bit when she moves them, but it’s the best I can do. Replacement parts are hard to come by; I’ve done everything I can to repair what can be repaired and reroute her circuits around what can’t.

We’re sitting on the bank of a river with our pods bobbing in the water, dipping our bare feet in the water and letting the current swirl around our toes as the sunlight beats down on us, when she tells me she wants me to learn about my past. She’s braiding my hair (and doing a bad job of it, though I couldn’t care less) when she says she wants to tell me about the forty-seven 9Ses who preceded me.

I want to know. I’m dying to know.

I tell her that. “I’m dying to know.” She gives me a nasty look, but smiles a second later.

“There’s something I have to tell you,” she says, “before I tell you everything. I’m not sure if, maybe, you’re better off not knowing, but I… think I have to tell you.”

“Do it.” I can’t quell my curiosity. Even if it’s something horrible about myself or about her, I can take it. She might tell me she didn’t love me at first, or that there was a time she hated me, but neither of those things could change the way I feel, because I know she loves me right now, at this very moment.

She begins to tell me the story, not of the first 9S, but of one of the 9Ses somewhere in the middle.

My jaw drops. For a few seconds, I’m speechless. I lift my hand to my chest. It’s so hard to believe. Is she saying I wasn’t always… That I didn’t always have… That I’d once looked like…

“It caused you so much distress,” 2B said. “I didn’t understand. I couldn’t understand. It didn’t make sense to me or anyone else why you felt the way you did, why you kept asking such strange questions about how it felt to be a woman. It went beyond curiosity. You… longed for it.”

I’m still struggling to parse this. In my past lives, I’d been… a boy? I can’t even begin to imagine it, looking like all the other Scanners.

I think about how it feels to hack into a machine and control it, to occupy its body, to wear its stubby chassis like a shell and clank around with heavy metal feet. The alien sensation of having a body so different from my own and so wrong… was that how I’d felt all the time? It must have driven me mad.

“Eventually, it was so intolerable, you went to the Commander for help,” 2B tells me. “To ask for special treatment—to be transferred to a female chassis but keep your model type as a Scanner.”

“Oh, god.” I let out a bark of nervous laughter, covering my mouth with my hand. “That couldn’t have ended well…” I’m about to die of secondhand embarrassment. Secondhand embarrassment for myself.

“You told her exactly what you wanted.”

I wonder if 2B had gotten the execution order after that.

“She took a few days to think about it… and then she gave you everything you asked for.”

“That doesn’t sound like her.” I wonder if I’d somehow been brazen enough in my demands to impress her.

I peel off my gloves and set them aside. I read the faint lines of my bare palm, the lines that ancient humans had once said could be used to divine your fate. I don’t know how to read those lines. I wonder if my hands looked different back then. Not as slender, maybe, not as soft, not as much like 2B’s.

“At first,” 2B said, bowing her head, “I… I pitied you. You were afflicted with this… this condition I couldn’t understand. But then…”

She lays a hand on my thigh, her palm rubbing against my bare skin, the tips of her fingers grazing the hem of my skirt. I feel my cheeks flush crimson. I’m still not used to 2B touching me this way. It feels so out-of-character for her that it’s almost frightening, but it’s so stimulating and brings so much warmth to my chassis and it makes my black box buzz like a hive of bumblebees trapped in my chest.

“You went to Commander White. You knew the pain your circumstances caused you, knew it was intolerable, knew you couldn’t go on, and made it clear that you wanted them to change. You explained yourself to her, to me, to us, and…”

I see a tear roll down her cheek and drip off her chin. Then another one.

“I realized that I didn’t pity you. You stood up for yourself and took a stand to change your life. You did what I’d always been too afraid to do… and I realized then that I admired you… even envied you.” She chokes out her words in between heaving sobs wrenching themselves from her throat. “Your courage… it was beautiful. You’re beautiful, Nines…”

I reach out and cup her face in my hands. I don’t want to see her cry. Of all the things that hurt me, seeing her cry hurts the most. I can endure all the swords and spears in the world, I can be torn limb from limb, I can be burned alive from the inside out, and it all pales in comparison to seeing those tears roll down her cheeks. It makes my chest ache and my stomach churn and I can feel the corners of my mouth being forced downward.

I brush the hair out from in front of her eyes. “Not as beautiful as you, 2B.”

2B looks up. Her eyes, glazed over with tears, shimmer like moonstones. “Me… I’m afraid… mine’s only skin-deep,” she says, trying and failing to wrench her mouth into a wry, sardonic smile. Instead, her face crumples like a wad of paper.

My hands slide across her tear-streaked cheeks; I gently guide her to me, resting her head against my chest as she kneads the hem of my skirt and sobs and sniffles. If she has to cry, and she had to, then I want her to have something soft to cry on.

“We had a lot of fun together,” 2B says. “You were happier. Your smile was brighter. Even though I distanced myself from you like I always did… it was fun. I felt less alone.”

I stroke her hair, letting it slither and flow like quicksilver across my fingers, and pat her softly on the back.

“I… liked helping you modify your uniform. At first, they put you in a normal Scanner outfit they’d tailored.” She raises her head, leaning against me. She’s doing a better job smiling now, and so am I. Seeing her with a sunnier disposition lifts my spirits. “You looked good in it, but…”

“I like the skirt better than shorts.”

“I do, too.” 2B slumps over, sliding down until her head is resting in my lap. “And the boots weren’t doing you any favors.”

The two of us are silent for a while. The pods continue to bob silently in the river, staying still in the midst of the current like buoys, waiting patiently for fish to tug on their lures. I play idly with 2B’s hair, curling and uncurling locks of it around my fingers.

“Hey, 2B?”

“What is it, Nines?”

“…Thank you for telling me this.”

A snippet of words—a thought, or a speech, or maybe something I’d read once a long time ago—flutters through my mind.

Oh, but had the artisan who made me created me instead—a fair woman.

I don’t remember where I’d heard or read it, but it felt as though it had meant a lot to me, a long, long time ago.

My name is 9S, and I was a Scanner for YoRHa.

I've been with my partner, a combat unit designated 2B, for a long, long time.

We're finally free; there are no more secrets between us.

I’ve never been so happy in my life.

Notes:

Thanks wordbending for beta reading.

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