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You look at her, and your bloodpusher aches. It feels so strange to be alone like this, truly alone. You love your friends dearly, but a spaceship only has so much room. Dirk isn’t watching you any more. This you know. But in this perfect privacy, what can you even start to think to say? I missed you? I’m sorry? Are you okay? She already knows the first two statements are true.
(The third, the question, has no answer. “Okay” is such a flimsy concept. You would ask if she was okay after spilling hot coffee on herself or cutting her hand open on some sharp cooking implement. Did Dirk ever ask her how she was? Did Terezi? Was she able to answer?)
Red glass eyes glow at you dully. Her face, her new face, was not built to emote. If you touch her, she will be hard and cold. You have never been more painfully aware of your own life.
(You once marveled at how soft humans are, at the intense body heat emanating from them through their thin, delicate skin. At night you would fall asleep wrapped in her warmth. Tangled up with her, you had never felt more loved or safe. You now know you will never feel that unique physical sensation again.)
ROSEBOT: Kanaya…
You blink at the sudden sound of her voice, distorted though it may be. Wordlessly she approaches you. You, Kanaya Maryam, are frozen. You are inches apart when she stops. The space between you is almost suffocating in its sudden smallness, and it’s hard to look at her without seeing every plate of metal, every screw that holds her together. A facsimile of your wife, built by someone else. You wonder if she can feel your breath on her face.
(You know your reaction hurts her too. Sometimes a part of love is people hurting each other; not in the purposeful way as means to an end, but accidentally over the sweeps. Holding back information for fear of a bad reaction. Conflicting feelings getting in the way. Rifts caused by poor communication. You and Rose were not the picture-perfect couple your friends often saw the two of you as. Every realistic relationship comes with tumult at times. Of course, despite the bizarre nature of your journey through Sburb, few people you know can say their significant other was taken away to another planet by their sibling-parent and had their consciousness transferred into a robotic body. You wonder if it would be easier to find the right words if this was a more commonplace scenario.)
Two people stand alone, completely motionless. Two people stand alone, hurting and loving each other in equal measure.
You have to say something, don’t you?
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