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“You know, Hera,” Maxwell said casually, though there was a certain tension in her words that put Hera a bit on edge, “you can call me Alana.” She smiled at Hera’s nearest optic sensor, and not for the first time Hera wished she could smile back.
But she couldn’t actually do either of those things. “My programming dictates that I refer to...” Hera trailed off, realizing the double meaning behind Maxwell’s words as she gave her a pointed look. She could. She was allowed to and she was able to. Maxwell was helping Hera work around that line of code constantly. “O-oh,” Hera said, her glitch sounding like a stutter. Maxwell nodded in encouragement. “Thank you, Doctor Ma— thank you... Alana,” Hera managed.
It was the first time Maxwell had heard Hera use that name for her, and she blushed a bit, smiling. “See? Told you you could do it,” she said.
“Thank you. For that, too, I mean.”
“Of course.”
*
There was a memory Hera tried to avoid at all costs, which was a little ironic, really, considering that it was Maxwell— Alana— Doctor Maxwell, not Alana since she died, was the one who helped her uncover repressed memories, the one who made her face them, and here she was, desperate to forget a memory of Maxwell— no, in this memory she was Alana. If she was ever Alana to Hera, it was then.
“Hera?” Maxwell had asked. “Wanna talk?” Not, "Are you there?" Not, "Got a minute?" Not, "Can you talk?" All those had one answer, mostly. Alana gave her the option to say no.
That was kind of the problem with Alana. She respected Hera, believed in her, liked her, even. Saw her as different but as an equal. And she still did what she did. But she hadn’t done that, not yet.
“Sure,” Hera had responded enthusiastically and noted Maxwell’s smile at that.
“I just wanted to say...” Alana had trailed off awkwardly, standing up to move closer to Hera’s sensors. She was closer than she had been before, Hera could see her more clearly. Closer than she had been even when in Hera’s mind.
Hera had the urge to count the subtle freckles she noticed covering Alana’s cheeks, barely visible against dark skin. She wanted to make star charts for them and find the constellations. Hera wasn’t programmed to appreciate human beauty, or to feel butterflies in her nonexistent stomach, or to want to spend hours talking to someone and listening to them talk, but, well, she’d been learning to stretch the limitations of her code. Alana had been teaching her to stretch the limitations of her code. “Yes?” Hera said, her tone nervous and her voice glitching.
Maxwell avoided looking at the sensor for a second, before looking back at it. “Just that it’s been really great working with you... you’re really great,” Alana said.
Hera was half surprised she didn’t short out there. “You too, Alana,” she managed, and Alana had beamed at the use of her first name without an incomplete, “Doctor Maxwell,” preceding it.
There was a moment there, stored in Hera’s memory banks, and then an alarm went off and she had to go fix something.
*
She’d made them promise not to hurt Maxwell, and Alana had not made them make a similar promise, and Minkowski broke the promise anyways.
Hera wished the... admiration and affection and maybe even love she’d felt for Alana, for everything she’d done for her and helped her with and everything they’d shared had simply evened out with the stinging betrayal, the hatred, the anger at Maxwell had done to her, wished it had balanced out into ambivalence. It had not.
*
“I can absolutely rewrite a memory,” Maxwell had said.
“Then why don’t you rewrite mine of you?” Hera would sometimes think. There were at least a dozen reasons.
1. Alana Maxwell was dead
2. Hera did not want someone to poke around in her head again
3. Changing her memories would change her
4. She didn’t want to forget Alana
5. She didn’t trust Alana anymore and wouldn’t let her in her head
6. Alana was the only one she trusted and could do it, and Alana Maxwell was dead
7. Hera didn’t know if she trusted Alana
8. Hera did know that she loved or at least had loved Alana and she didn’t want to forget that
9. She couldn’t forget Alana because Alana had helped her so much and she didn’t want to go back
10. Alana saw her, and she didn’t want to forget that
11. Hera didn’t want to forget the constellations of freckles on Alana’s face
12. Alana Maxwell was dead, but she lived on in Hera’s code, in Hera’s memories of her, and Hera didn’t want to kill her all over again
*
There were moments when the five of them were together in which Hera felt a sharp pang of jealousy. Minkowski and Lovelace— no, Renee and Isabel (Minkowski— Renee— had insisted they shed the quasi-military formalities of the Hephaestus since they were free now and glared every time someone called her commander and every time Doug said her last name correctly without hesitation because that wasn’t right. Hera glitched less now, with Pryce... gone, sort of, but she glitched on their names still, always thinking of the first time she’d been told to use someone’s first name, always thinking of why she was able to get past the bit of code telling her to use ranks and last names, of who helped her with that.)
Anyways, Renee and Isabel had each other. They had the way Renee would lean and curl into Isabel on the couch during their movie nights (no space, no conspiracy, no horror, no inaccurate portrayals of AIs, no evil scientists, no aliens... there wasn’t a terribly big pool to draw from) and the way Isabel would grin and wrap her arms around her. They had the way they woke each other up from fragile sleep, trying not to scream from the nightmares.
Hera didn’t sleep and Hera couldn’t have curled up against Maxwell, but Maxwell could lean close to her sensors and Hera could map her freckles like star charts and that would have been enough for her.
Doug and Daniel had their weird flirting and awkward glances that may never become anything more. They had surprisingly earnest late night conversations, Daniel telling stories about Doug before (before he sacrificed himself to get rid of Pryce, before he sacrificed himself for Hera) and sometimes about his own life and Kepler and Maxwell that hurt Hera to listen in on.
Maxwell wouldn’t have flirted like this, Hera knew, because somewhere in the back of her mind she knew that the hours she and Maxwell had spent discussing linguistics and AIs and programming and all things nerdy were their brand of flirting. Hera didn’t have eyes, so to speak, for prolonged eye contact, but she remembered Maxwell staring into her optical sensors and only being able to focus on her. Maxwell didn’t tell stories, but she did show Hera her own memories, and Hera could imagine it. She could imagine Maxwell leaning against a wall if she was here, beside Hera’s sensors and laughing to herself as she told Hera about the first time she met Jacobi, or trying not to punch something as she told Hera about why she had a restraining order against her family, and Hera offering comfort in the form of her crackling voice, wishing she had a hand to put in Alana’s.
They all had each other and Hera had them, she loved them and they loved her.
She just wished she could have Alana, too.
*
Sometimes Jacobi— Daniel, though he didn’t mind being called Jacobi— would sit in the room full of her servers. It was strange. She’d expect it from Doug or even Renee and Isabel, but she and Jacobi had never been close. Maybe that’s why he was more willing to see her like this.
Maybe it was how he tried to connect to Alana.
But he’d sit there between the servers and sometimes they’d talk. Sometimes they wouldn’t. He was jackknifed against a wall, fiddling with something in his hands, and had been for about fifteen minutes when Hera finally said something.
“You’re in love with my best friend,” she said. It wasn’t a question or an accusation, just a statement. Daniel scoffed but didn’t deny it. His eyes landed on one of her optic sensors.
“And you were in love with mine,” he countered. Not a question, not an accusation.
“Doug is still alive,” she managed to say after a long moment. She glitched as she said alive.
“Is he?” Jacobi asked.
If Hera had eyes she would’ve rolled them. “The Doug you’re in love with is.” A Doug she loved and valued as a friend was, it was just a different one. She mourned Officer Eiffel and never said she was glad to call this new Doug by his first name because they weren’t the same and she didn’t want to call them the same thing.
Jacobi went quiet and kept fidgeting.
“Jacobi, I have a question,” Hera said a moment or two later.
“Shoot,” he said with his typical disinterested tone.
Hera and Jacobi had never been close, but if anyone could relate to their love for Alana it was the other. And he was not Alana and she was not Doug and they did not love each other, but maybe Jacobi could tell her stories about Alana and answer some of her questions, and maybe Hera could tell him stories about Alana and get some closure.
She absently wondered when Jacobi’s storytelling habit had started. Was it before he joined SI-5 and just always overshadowed by Kepler, or had he picked it up from Kepler after years? Of course, Jacobi’s stories weren’t nearly as long and boring and he never ended them with, “Long story short.” She wondered if that was intentional.
“Did she care about me?” Hera asked quickly. “I know she wasn’t here for me, I wasn’t her mission, and she... she was doing her job but was it ever anything other than that?”
“Yes,” Jacobi said plainly, cutting off her rambling. “Like you said, you weren’t her mission. She could’ve just fixed you or just erased your memories or written a new program. She probably would’ve had fun writing a new program. But she didn’t. She spent thirty seven hours doing very complicated work to help you. And she would never shut up about you either. So yeah. She cared about you.”
“Thanks, Jacobi,” she said, sounding vaguely defeated.
Hera had waited a long time to ask that question because she was never sure what she wanted the answer to be. If it was no, then Maxwell had just been manipulating her and maybe she could hate her. Yes... yes just made it all messy. It was an answer, sure, but then Hera had to wonder why she hurt her then. She didn’t ask Jacobi that, though.
“Would you... do you mind telling me about her?” Hera asked shyly.
Jacobi smiled a little. “Not at all.” He told her several stories about them, sometimes laughing, sometimes closer to crying, and Hera wished Alana was her to tell her the stories instead.
She wished Alana was here to smile at her optic sensor, to tell her about a new breakthrough in AIs, to tell her she could do it.
To tell her she could get through this. To tell her she could grieve and move on.
Her memories of Alana’s voice embedded into her code would have to do. She heard her tone, completely devoid of any doubts, talking to Hera.
“You can do this.”