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“We have no quarrel with you.”
Ramattra widened his stance, pushing Zenyatta further behind him. With his back, he was pressing him into the wall they had been backed into, only Ramattra’s body left to protect him now. Ramattra’s sensors were screaming as a sharp wind beat snowflakes like pinpricks against parts of him never meant to be exposed to the weather.
He could have avoided this – he could have smashed the shotgun out of the man’s hands before he had a chance to use it, he could have taken the small one’s pistol, avoided the woman’s hammer, wouldn’t have ended up with a hole smashed into his side. As a Shambali, however, he could not afford to attack first, even if every bit of information saved on his hard drive told him his pacifism would not be rewarded.
“Then what’s this?” a woman screamed, high-pitched, pointing at the man groaning face-down in the mud, alongside a smashed pistol and a shotgun with a twisted barrel, which Ramattra had bent with his hands. The other two humans he’d taken down had already scampered away. “We’re going to get you and your rustbucket friend for this!”
“This man is alive, and he attacked first,” Ramattra said, pulling on every remaining strand of patience to keep himself from shouting at her.
There were only two of the humans left standing, but every single node in Ramattra’s head flared danger. He could only use one of his hands anymore, and his chest-plate hiding the main power unit was damaged, cracked wide-open. At least these two had no guns, so if he could just get away from them, get Zenyatta to safety...
The heated energy knife flashed in the corner of his visual array, and, already sluggish from the damage he had sustained, Ramattra could not turn in time. It shouldn’t have been able to do too much damage – his body was sturdy, meant to withstand worse, even the internals armoured –, but the man stuck it deep inside the hole and struck at the main cables running along his spine with surprising precision. Ramattra heard himself produce a stammering noise of pain as his remaining useful limbs locked up.
He was not the first of his kind this human had killed, Ramattra realised, too late.
“No more of this murder-”
The man’s words were cut short. As Ramattra’s body tried to rearrange the flow of data to accommodate for the lost main pathways, Ramattra’s visual display glitched, but he just saw the rock Zenyatta had thrown at the man’s head bounce off his skull, leaving him dazed. The woman stared briefly before she lounged to grab a handful of the precariously loose cables at Zenyatta’s hip, but Zenyatta kicked her right before the sternum, sending her stumbling backwards. He, too, staggered, but managed to fall into an unstable defensive stance.
“Please back off, you have hurt him enough,” Zenyatta said. “We don’t want to fight!”
“What are you going to do, you fucking service drone?!”
The man with the knife shook his head like a dog, throwing back his hand to strike at Zenyatta, wild now. The strike glanced off Zenyatta’s arm, which was defensively raised before Ramattra’s chest, and left a deep, orange-glowing gauge in the metal. However, he’d made the mistake of taking his eyes off Ramattra’s hand. Ramattra shot out his arm, heedless of the damage he might take, and smashed his fist in the human’s stomach, hearing ribs crack.
You attack the ‘service drone’, but forget how breakable you are yourself? Dangerous.
The woman caught the wheezing man, scowling at Ramattra and Zenyatta, but she seemed to realise this fight would be no pretty win. With the other hand, she tugged at the one on the ground, who was slowly getting back up to his knees, and then fled with her friends.
Ramattra tried to force words out of his voice box, but there were too many cross-firing failure warnings to produce more than broken chirps as he clung desperately to his staff to keep himself upright.
“They might fetch reinforcements,” Zenyatta said, looking after the woman as he leaned down to pick up the dented metal sheet that had covered Ramattra’s side. “Brother, lean on me instead. I can lead the way.”
Because he had no choice, Ramattra wrapped the one arm that still – barely – functioned around Zenyatta’s shoulders. Zenyatta sagged under the full weight of Ramattra’s frame, but took Ramattra’s staff to support himself, his other arm around Ramattra’s waist. Through the flicker before his eyes, Ramattra still saw the deep scratch in the metal of Zenyatta’s arm and the pain of his guilt added to the physical agony as he forced his feet to clumsily stumble along.
The town was not large, long sightlines allowing Zenyatta a way to guess its borders. He turned down a small alleyway, out of the sight of humans, and brought them into the mountainous, snow-covered countryside by dragging Ramattra down a series of narrow paths. Without the shelter of houses around them, the cold wind bit even harder and snow came down in droves now, adding another layer of warnings to the deafening blare in Ramattra’s head, telling him he was in dangerous temperature conditions.
But apparently, fate decided to be kind to them once this day. Behind jagged mountain edges and a copse of gnarled trees, there was a slim entrance into a cave which he only spotted when Zenyatta had already turned their way there. The small, round hollow dug into the rock wall was empty but for the nests of a few rodents, and Zenyatta helped him lie down on his back.
“Are you in danger of shutting down, brother?” Zenyatta asked, kneeling by his side and assisting Ramattra in spreading out his limbs properly.
Ramattra gave a slight shake of his head, more of a twitch. He would hold on if it was the last thing he would do, and not leave Zenyatta responsible for his useless body in standby.
Engaged in keeping his silent promise, determined not to let the chaos submerge him, he was suddenly supported in this endeavour by a thin warmth that crept along his sensors, bolstering his efforts, pushing his consciousness to rise. Confused, Ramattra flicked on his visual array to see a dim light reflected on the dark walls of the cave, painting it in swaying shadows. Turning his head laboriously to look at Zenyatta, he saw a golden orb hovering over the palm of his hand.
“What?” he managed, garbled still.
“This should help,” Zenyatta said quietly.
It did help, but it was not merely comfortable. Ramattra felt a ticklish sensation over the scraped inner parts of his machinery and torn wires, and several pings told him that self-repairs had been started. He would have suspected nanobots, but he intimately knew the feeling of that sort of technology working on his body, and it was not this diffuse warmth.
With force, he set aside his amazement, instead grasping with both hands the opportunity, mysterious as it was. He could still feel himself twitching and shuddering as he tried to get every part of him back under control, but without the constant distraction of blinding pain, he could bring order into the processes, begin some sort of triage between the many broken parts of his beaten body.
“I am sorry. This will not be able to assist you very quickly,” Zenyatta noted, hands curled tight around his own knees like he had to stop his fingers from fidgeting.
“How... ?” Ramattra managed.
“I do not know,” Zenyatta answered. “Almost as soon as I gained consciousness, I was able to do this, too. It is as if a wish to be of help somehow solidified. As I started meditating with the Shambali, the ability grew stronger.” He shook his head. “Since I cannot say what is happening, I do not like to use it on people much. However, I am afraid we have little other choice now...”
Are those the gifts of the Iris? Ramattra thought, blearily, staring up at Zenyatta cast in the glow of that golden light. Did he himself believe such a thing was possible? He was a dedicated monk, but more pragmatic than many of his brothers and sisters. The details of the faith had never interested him so much as its real-world uses. It was foolish to hope for miracles.
But if anyone could have been granted such powers, it seemed strangely fitting it would be Zenyatta, though he had only been a monk for a couple of short months. He had taken to the underlying philosophies of the Shambali, readily embracing them, incorporating them into his calm nature that Ramattra had found so admirable from the first.
Zenyatta seemed to take his silence for doubt. He lowered his head. “I promise I will answer your questions later.” He gestured at the ball of light. “I can leave this here for a bit, as long as I don’t lose sight of it. I just want to gather some wood for a fire.”
He was on his feet quickly, slipping through the narrow opening of the cave. The light he had left with Ramattra still illuminated the space. Though he felt how it raised his temperature, Zenyatta was probably right that they would need a real heat source to keep their processes from slowing down, stop their bodies from burning too much energy on keeping their finer machinery from freezing.
But he was like a bug on his back, so useless, so dependant, and Zenyatta walking away a few steps already caused a deeper cold of fear to settle within him. He tried to clamp down on the feeling, focus on getting his systems in order, reboot the connection to the voice box and visual array to get rid of the glitches. He’d fought in a war, he should not need to cling to a friend like a scared human child – but the memory of the former battlefields did not help at all, and as his eyes shut off for the reconnect, it was as if he’d summoned a deluge of photo-perfect images of pain and death into his head, mixing with those of today’s violence. Concentration did not come easy.
Lucky for his pathetic mental constitution, Zenyatta was not gone for long. He returned with an armful of twigs and branches and built them a ring of stones. From his satchel, he took a lighter and set fire to the heap. The red light of the embers mixed with the golden glow of the orb, dancing over Zenyatta’s unpainted chassis, a vivid play of lights on his kind face, and Ramattra drank in the sight, made it his focal point just like he would choose a spot to stare at during meditation.
“Are you feeling any better, brother?”
Ramattra meant to say something that could reassure Zenyatta in the same manner that Zenyatta’s presence gave him comfort. However, what emerged from the swirling vortex of messages in his system instead was: “You are beautiful.”
Maybe he should not have reconnected his voice box yet, after all.
Zenyatta looked at him for a moment, sitting still with a branch in hand. “Thank you,” he said, a little concerned. “I’m sure you still need more rest...”
“I am sorry,” Ramattra managed, finally forcing control by pouring all his resources there, unable to stop a frustrated sigh. “I did not mean to – I do feel better.”
“Do not worry. I know you took a lot of damage.”
“It would have ended worse for me without your intervention.”
Zenyatta turned towards him as the fire crackled weakly over the damp wood, sputtering smoke.
“I only returned your favour. You didn’t have to shield me so fiercely at the expense of yourself.”
But he had had to do it. Ramattra was the one who had invited Zenyatta along on his travels. Zenyatta’s presence had been a boon to him at the monastery, his acquaintance a constant source of enlightening conversation and easy affection. Happy to have found a soul that matched his own so well, he had taken Zenyatta perhaps too early from the focused studies at the monastery, and selfishly brought him onto a journey with an R-7000 – the generals, the leaders of the omnic war, and now humanity’s favourite targets.
“I shouldn’t have asked you to come,” he said, in a low voice.
“But I am glad that you did,” Zenyatta said firmly.
“I knew this could happen.”
“As did I,” Zenyatta answered. “You have told me about the way your model has been hunted. Besides, I wanted to travel with you. It would have been naive to only expect to see the good parts of your life. Mine hasn’t been so peaceful, either.”
“I didn’t meant to say you are sheltered,” Ramattra answered quickly. How could he, considering in what circumstances he had found Zenyatta not so long ago? “Just that I didn’t mean to make things worse.”
Zenyatta gave a soft shake of his head, moving his hand again to position the orb of light closer to Ramattra’s open side. The fire was slowly growing, spitting sparks into the draft that blew through the opening of the cave.
“Ramattra, whatever has happened or will happened, I will always remember that you changed my life for the better. I hope that you know that.”
Usually, Zenyatta was so good at aiming for a tone of stern kindness that befit a monk, had known to do it even before he joined the Shambali, but he failed now. There was a pleading note to his voice instead, and his hand curled around Ramattra’s arm as he spoke. The open honesty tore at Ramattra’s own shaking walls.
“I just want my existence not to be a threat to my friends,” Ramattra said, with deep exhaustion.
“I hope that very soon, we can make people see. Until then, I can at least say for myself that I am glad to be around you.”
Ramattra looked up at Zenyatta and slowly pushed himself up to sit, silent. Right now, he wanted to tell Zenyatta to leave, but he also knew that he would offend him if he did. Wouldn’t he have been just as insulted if Zenyatta had tried to send him away for his own safety, like Ramattra wasn’t willing to pay such a price, wouldn’t stand by an innocent?
“I won’t be able to heal some of the more serious damage,” Zenyatta said, eyeing the hole in his side.
“That’s fine, I can repair it myself. I’m surprised this... whatever it is you are doing is as effective as it is.”
There were cables re-knit within him, metal reconstituting itself. Some of the conducive wiring in his back was even restored, though fragile like flesh fibres, their coating missing.
“I could do more,” Zenyatta said hesitantly. “I would have to get close to you, however. I can’t project so much energy outside very well. I should have practiced more.”
“Feel free, brother,” Ramattra said, undeniably both in need of more help, and curious.
Zenyatta shifted, awkwardly looking for a way to get closer, and finally decided to throw his leg over Ramattra’s thighs and straddle his legs. The sudden fire of reactions this chased through Ramattra’s system threatened to overwhelm him for a moment, but Ramattra kept firmly quiet. This base, unworthy instinct was silenced, anyway, since the golden light that had only hung as a diffuse flame in the air before suddenly started to shine between Zenyatta’s plating, a glow from within, bright and hot. Ramattra felt it fill him like water, gently submerging him.
He wondered if Zenyatta put any stock in Ramattra calling him beautiful, if he was thinking about it as he sat pressed against Ramattra’s front, because Ramattra could hardly think of anything else as Zenyatta shone so terribly bright, like a star in his arms. He was only distantly aware that his body went into overdrive reassembling, rebuilding, the cables at his spine taut as new.
It lasted only for a moment. Zenyatta stuttered a voiceless tone, collecting himself when the light drew back into that one small orb.
“Do not tire yourself out on my account,” Ramattra cautioned him, automatically raising his good hand to support Zenyatta’s side. He could move the other arm again, too, if stiffly.
“It’s fine. I hope it helped.”
“What – are you?” Ramattra asked, looking at him for a long moment. “Are there truly no modifications?”
“I am a factory-standard Sev-4300 D 2.0, as far as I can tell, anyway.”
Ramattra shook his head. There was no reason for Zenyatta to lie to him. “Thank you. Truly. And forgive me being nosey.”
“I’d be more concerned about how hard your main processes were scrambled if you weren’t interested in how I function,” Zenyatta said with mild humour in his voice.
Ramattra found it in himself to laugh. They were still sitting together. Zenyatta did not seem to be about to move, and Ramattra did not want to remind him to do so. Zenyatta’s weight on him was grounding.
“You are welcome to run diagnostics on me when we are back in the monastery. In fact, I would welcome it,” Zenyatta added.
“You know how to talk to an engineer,” Ramattra answered, amused.
Zenyatta chuckled quietly. “Is there something I can ask in return, brother?”
“Always.”
“Do you think there is anything someone of my model could do to participate in a fight? I don’t like hurting people, but obviously the choice won’t always be ours. You are a tactician – what is your verdict?”
Ramattra remained quiet for a moment. This was not a question most Shambali would have thought to ask. Had he pushed Zenyatta there? But as Zenyatta had pointed out, he had experienced and witnessed violence before, and Ramattra knew how painful it could be to stand by helplessly as others got hurt. If he put himself in the shoes of Zenyatta today, squeezed between Ramattra and a naked concrete wall as those humans tore holes into Ramattra, he could imagine why it would be on his mind, too.
“You won’t ever be a Ravager, but there are always some things that can be learned,” he said, and clarified: “For a start, I can teach you. You are bright and quick, so I am sure you will learn to adapt. If you put your mind to it, you might end up figuring out strategies I wouldn’t even have considered for you.”
“You have a lot of confidence in me. I hope I can live up to it,” Zenyatta said, cocking his head. “I’d be glad if you would guide me, even though I have asked that of you a lot in those last months.”
“You can’t think that I mind.”
As he said those words, Ramattra considered their position once more, Zenyatta in his lap, Ramattra’s fingers still between the gaps of Zenyatta’s core waist pillar and pistons, their faces only a hand’s width apart. No, Zenyatta really could not think so. In fact, Ramattra had been embarrassingly obvious this evening in every respect.
“I’d be glad if you didn’t,” Zenyatta said slowly.
Ramattra’s system, still smoothing out re-established connections and cataloguing repairs, stopped dead for just a moment, only focused on those words. He pulled Zenyatta closer, until Zenyatta’s face leaned against his shoulder, saw the flames paint his back in shades of red and orange and yellow as Zenyatta embraced him, the golden orb still dancing above them.
Usually, Ramattra would have been silently fuming that he had been driven to hide in a cave like an animal, and he could not say that he was happy now. However, for tonight, he would lick his wounds and consider it a shelter from the world. He felt safe, not something he was at all used to, and the reason why was in his arms.
“Then stay with me for now,” Ramattra said, and Zenyatta nodded his head.