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It had really underestimated the conciliatory nature of cuddling. It never did it before Gabriel. The most contact it had with anything was punching it. Nowadays, it practically lives in his arms. He’s very touchy. Grabbing its arms, lifting it, holding its hand, holding it in general. It’s not off put by it. It was just unexpected.
The beating of his heart had long since become a familiar melody in the music that is the humming of his biological machinery. It lays on his chest, his arm loosely wrapped around its back. He breathes and it lets out a puff. His heart beats and the blood pumps through its wires.
The bedroom is dark. The curtains are heavy. It has dimmed its own lights. The furniture is a little dusty and it watches for a moment as the particles dance and float in the small sliver of a spotlight that streams from the window. He breathes and it lets out a puff.
One of its hands traces the gold of his skin. It appears dull in the darkness.
Gabriel groans and it retracts. His hand rubs its back.
“It’s okay,” he mumbles and slowly its hand returns. The tapestry of his skin is interesting. Sometimes it wishes it could tear him apart, skin him, stretch the length of him as far as it can, and wrap itself in him. It knows it can never do that. Instead, it draws circles with a claw. A little more pressure and it would draw blood.
“What are you thinking about?” He asks.
‘I love you.’
It feels his breath hitch under its fingers.
“I love you, too, vee.”
It wonders about a world without him. If it had decided to kill him. To kill V2.
It would be colder, lonelier. Worse, maybe.
Sometimes it wants to do it anyway. To rip them apart. To eat and eat and eat even though it knows it will never be full. Most of the time it doesn’t feel bad for thinking that way. But sometimes it does.
Is it a simple predisposition that can be changed, or is it nature? Hard-coded desire that compels it to take and destroy and take again?
Gabriel hisses.
“If you were hungry you could have said so.”
Blood pools around its fingers. Where it was circling now has a gash.
Maybe change isn’t possible.
It seeps into it. A reversed spring. A bloom degrades into buds on its metal. In seconds it disappears.
“I apologize if this is rude, but are you… always hungry? You are always so eager to draw blood and I cannot tell if it’s because you enjoy the thrill of battle or because you simply need to.”
… It retracts its hand and readjusts itself. Its head goes to his shoulder and his arms get tucked into its chest.
Does it enjoy the hunt? Yes. It loves it. It loves watching limbs fly off, heads explode, and seeing its enemies turn into bloody fireworks. It loves flying about the air, soaring over heads as it rains down death from above. It loves slamming down and crushing enemies under its feet. It loves pulling off stupid tricks, even if it means it gets a hit it could have otherwise dodged.
But it needs to. It is hungry and it doesn’t even have a stomach to fill. It always hurts. An immutable ringing in its nonexistent ears. Some vestigial sensation left over from its makers. An ache that never goes away. Blood doesn’t fill it, but it helps. Dulls the pain.
‘Both.’
He is quiet for a moment. It can feel him thinking. Absorbing that information, processing it, interpreting it. It wonders what it’s like to do that subconsciously. It is cognizant of all of its programs. It can always feel itself taking in information.
Is his mind quiet? Does he not have a ringing, an ache, an everlasting pain?
“Why would they do that, do you think? Your creators.”
‘When I was made, I was made with a very specific prey in mind. When I was made, they were numerous. I don’t think they could have imagined a skyline without one.’
“Motivation then?”
‘A hungry hunter is a vicious one. It was war. The enemy should be eradicated.’
He huffs and his hand moves to its head, cradling it.
“They were cruel.”
‘That was the point.’
It wonders what guilt is like.
“They’re all gone now, though. Your prey, I mean. Did you really kill them all?”
It aches.
‘I only killed one.’ Not a lie.
He pets it. The pads of his fingers are rough.
“Oh. Did you… enjoy it? Would you want to do it again?”
It nods.
With everything that it is, it wants that again. That exigence, that actualization, that ecstasy. Even though it was fake. Staged. A bull provided for it by a ringmaster, the outcome expected, practically predetermined. A consolation prize.
Or maybe, just consolation.
‘Do you miss Him?’ it asks and for a moment it is very afraid. It never touches this. It is too sensitive, too raw. He is going to get up and he is going to leave it and it is going to be colder than it was before. Lonelier. Worse.
It feels him take a deep breath.
“Yes,” he murmurs and nothing else. He breathes and it lets out a puff. The silence is heavy. “Do you miss your creators? Or, perhaps, anything from before?”
It shifts in his arms, crawling. It wants to hold him, to wrap its arms around him, to have and take and never, ever let go. He lets it. Its arms snake around him and its head rests against his collar. With a simple headbutt, he would be out of breath and stunned, and its hands could plunge into his stomach, reach up through his ribs and intestines and hold his heart. To have and take and never, ever let go.
‘I miss my prey.’ it says for lack of a better answer. And it’s true. It had missed it all. All of it.
“Would you miss me?” and it is small and vulnerable and a perfect weak point for it to sink its claws into.
‘Are you going anywhere?’
“No. Would you?”
He means something different when he asks it. It considers.
No more blue light bathing the room it's in. No more feeling of a blade ripping its metal. No more of his voice. No more cuddles.
‘If I wanted you gone I would have killed you in Treachery.’
Is that a step too far? It rubs the wound it inflicted. It has long since stopped bleeding, but it rubs it anyway.
“Why didn’t you?”
Why didn’t it? It had reason to. He was, very literally, asking for it.
‘You were like me.’
Similar, yet strange. They had both lost their purpose. For him, it made him want to die. What does a servant do when his master dies? It thought about Pharaohs and Emperors being buried with their servants. Meanwhile, it had wanted to take, take, take, eat, eat, eat, live, live, live. If it could not have a war then it would make one. The world, whatever was left of it, was the enemy.
And yet they ended up cuddling in bed. Strange.
‘What was it like?’
“What was what like? Or, er, specifics, please?”
‘Fulfillment. Doing what you were made for.’
He laughs and it’s soft and sweet and everything it never could have dreamed of.
“I was never fulfilled until I met you. I was more a machine than you are. Doing whatever I was told, believing it to be right simply because that’s what people said it was. Being with you, fighting you, even losing to you, was the most passionate I had felt in eternity. More than serving, more than upholding a doctrine, more than being righteous, if I ever was that.”
In lieu of ripping out his guts to get at his heart, it places its hand on his chest. It sings a melody just for it.
What is he to it? It loves him. It loves him, really, it does. But he does not offer that kind of relief. No clarity. It is reflected in him, but it knows itself already. Nothing to be gleaned there. Perhaps…
‘You made me want to try loving.’
It had saved V2 out of spite. Killing them would be fun, but watching them run with their tail tucked was better. How they screeched in fear, in pain. The look in their eye when they ripped off an arm. How it had lost and repaired itself, made itself better, just to lose again. It is the realization of failure, of crushing an ego. An implosion as large as the explosion of its prey.
It was why it spared him the first time, too. The way he raged and shrieked and shook. It wanted that over and over and over.
It had taken V2 wearing it down with their sentimentality to make it spare him out of altruism. To want to see him get better and to maybe be a part of that.
“Try? You are a quick study, if that’s the case.”
‘No. I am.’
It struggles for a moment. Grappling with the wording.
‘Bad.’
“So was I,” He says, like it's comparable.
It sits up on its elbows and looks at him. Its light reflects on his helmet, catching on the gold of his skin.
It shakes its head. ‘No. Different. It is different. Give me a moment.’
How to put it into words? The magnitude of it? How deep it runs, deeper than the Ocean Styx and a thousand times denser, and a thousand times more compelling, the limbs in it do not scrabble at each other but at it, pulling and pulling and pulling, to take and take and take and eat and eat and eat.
‘You and I were. Made differently. For different reasons. By different people. To do different things. The end may have been the same. But. But. But we are very different.’
“You just said you spared me because we were similar.”
‘Similar outcomes. We were left alone. Abandoned. The chess game was put away. The players are no longer here. But we are. But why we are is different. We are different.’
He sits up too and it thinks maybe it isn’t doing this right, that something is missing and wrong and it wishes V2 was here to speak for it. V2 is better than it in precious few things, but it has no shame in admitting they outclass it here.
“Maybe,” he says. “Maybe we are. But you’re not alone. There are other machines. V2. The two of you are practically twins. Are they bad?”
It shakes its head again.
‘No. No, no, no. Different. They are different too. They aren’t hungry like I am. They aren’t bad like I am.’
It tried talking about it with them, once. It was frustrating. They couldn’t grasp it. They struggle with problems they cannot immediately pummel, that can’t be solved through direct action. They couldn’t understand. The hunger and the pain and the want to hurt. How it touches everything. How it seeps into desire, into action, into intention, into love.
It is different. So is he. There is only a single prototype in existence. It was a mock-up. A proof of concept. Exaggerated for emphasis. There were supposed to be others to work out the kinks. Where it was wrong. Bad.
But there isn’t. He has brothers. Legions. Many and many and more than it could ever imagine.
“What makes you bad?”
The ache and the pain and the desire to live. To above all else live, live, live and in order to live it needs to take and take and take and eat and eat and eat and so to make it want to live, to take, to eat, they made it enjoy it. Crave it. They made it cold. Lonely. Worse.
‘I was made bad. Hungry.’
“Being hungry isn’t a sin.”
‘Gluttony.’
“Well. That’s-”
That sends him stumbling, fumbling. Old ways of thinking brushing uncomfortably against new experiences, new information, new scenarios. Dissonance eating at his confidence, what he thinks is true and what is presented to him, more tangible than any belief could ever be.
“Alright,” He concedes. “But this is different. You’re not bad for needing it. It’s not your fault you were made that way. You’re not bad.”
‘You thought you were doing good. That everyone you had hurt had deserved it. That you were serving something greater. Someone greater. I didn’t. I don’t. I hurt because I like hurting.’
Guilt wasn’t something gifted to a machine. It never felt any inclination towards it either. But it wishes it would. It hadn’t earlier, when it was detached, when nothing existed but hunger and forward motion. But it cares. It cares about others. It doesn’t want them to hurt and it doesn’t want to hurt it. But hurting comes so easily, not second nature but first nature. A primary directive. An impetus. It doesn’t feel bad when it does it. It has to try to be conscious of it. It is tiring.
It can feel him staring at it.
“But you don’t. Not all the time at least. You don’t hurt me. Well, you do, but…”
He takes a breath.
“It’s different. You’re different. From how you were. Clearing out entire layers indiscriminately. Now you are different. Gentler.”
And his hands reach out to it, cradling its head. The pads of his fingers are rough. The touch is gentle. Ho slowly guides it back, returning to laying down.
“I appreciate it. The effort.”
It assumes its position on top of him again. His hands sail down the river of its would-be spine. Tentatively, it pokes out its wings. They flutter. It reveals its nervousness and he’s learned to recognize that tiny tell.
A finger grazes the base of one of the blades and that’s enough to send a warning to the forefront of its mind. But it’s okay. Slowly that finger trails up the edge of the blade and it shudders.
It wants him to cut himself on it. For his finger to accidentally pick out a gun and provoke it. So when it tears into him, eviscerates the arbitrary, physical partition between their existences, it is for a reason. It is explainable. So that it couldn’t control itself. So that it’s not just for pleasure, because it would enjoy hurting him.
He doesn’t. Instead, with a shushed awe, he traces its wings. It had done the same to him so many times and it knows it’s a sore spot with him. The lack of reciprocity. The feeling of indebtedness. Even if it’s not the same, the symbol is. He wants to care for it like it does for him. Mutual maintenance.
It lays complacently. There is gnawing on its insides, gnashing its teeth and wailing and gouging its claws in the metal of its ribs. But it is held and it is loved and it will be taken care of by someone more than happy to do it.
It shudders its lens closed and closes all the programs it can, except for the ones processing Gabriel.
The door kicks open and it’s on its feet, rail cannon drawn and buzzing.
“You will never guess who has a dick now,” V2 says.
“You.” Gabriel groans.
“Right on the money, Gabby! I stand corrected.”
“Please stop calling me that.”
“You got it, G-man. Anyway, can I get it wet in your boo? I’ll let you watch. Maybe join in if you’re not a wuss anymore.”
It returns its weapon to its wing and Gabriel sits up, head in his hands.
“Sure. Fine. Whatever, please just give us a moment.”
They slide out of the room with a quiet chirp.
“I don’t think I’ll ever get used to them,” He sighs.
It shrugs. It had thought the same at one point. Look at it now.
“Right. Do you actually want to do that? You can say no to them and if they make a fuss about it I will have a talk with them.”
Mutual maintenance. It wonders how it would react to someone propositioning him.
‘It’s fine. I think they just want to be close and are a little scared of learning alone.’
He hums at that, before he nods.
“I have no idea how you managed to glean that from,” his voice catches. “ Can I get it wet in your boo? ”
‘You get used to it. Like how you got used to me.’
“I think there’s a difference between used to and understanding. There’s a wall I don’t think I’ll ever be able to breach.”
It considers this.
‘Probably.’ It sits down next to him and leans against him. It flutters its wings and his reappear to brush against it’s. ‘But it’s okay, right?’
He grabs it again, because he is grabby, and rests his chin on the top of its head.
“It’s okay.”
And with that, he lets go and stands up.
“Better to not keep them waiting. I’d much rather deal with an excited V2 than an angry one.”
It gets up after him and takes his hand. It wants to rip off his arm.
Instead, they walk together out the door.