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The Bride hadn’t wanted to leave her cell since she got back. Being even a few feet outside of it, she couldn’t help but look at all of the places where she used to be, before it all… happened. It had taken actual days of coaxing on Alex’s part to get her to do anything but sleep, eat, and stare mindlessly at nothing.
And now she was standing by the ping-pong table, making small conversation with GI Robot while Alex was attempting to coax Weasel out from under the other ping-pong table. She still wasn’t sure why there were two ping-pong tables. Whoever had designed their rooms had vastly overjudged the sheer amount of ping-pong most high-security prison inmates played. The Bride read, somehow, in Alex’s sockets that he was keeping an eye on her. It was some comfort to her.
“...of course without dead Nazis it won’t look the same,” GI was saying. “Truly the best decoration.” The Bride had no idea what he was talking about, but at least she was talking to someone, not just staring at the floor, fighting back tears, like she had been the past month.
“GI Robot wonders if Friend Nina will like it, when she sees us again.”
What?
Oh.
Oh, right.
Oh, fuck.
The Bride blinked, coming back to reality. “I’m sorry, what?” she asked.
“GI Robot was wondering if Friend Nina will enjoy the interior decoration of the prison, when she will see us again,” GI stated.
The Bride said nothing, feeling her heart sink. Right. She hadn’t told GI what really happened at the end. She hadn’t told him anything, having gone into shock virtually the minute she got on the helicopter back to the prison, and Alex simply had told GI that she just wasn’t with them at the moment. He had mentioned to the Bride that one or both of them ought to come clean and tell GI the truth about what had happened that night. She had been dreading it, hoping it wouldn’t come up. She still wasn’t sure if she could talk about it without crying. The Bride saw Alex staring at her, evidently concerned, from the corner of her eye. She didn’t want him to get involved. She didn’t want anything to happen. She didn’t want to be here right now. She surveyed the room with her eyes, the urge to flee setting in harder than it ever had before.
“GI, she’s…” the Bride began. She took a deep breath before saying her name for the first time since that day. “Nina, she didn’t…” Alex looked like he was about to go over to them, but the Bride put her hand up to stop him. He stayed where he was, but still looked concerned.
“What happened to Friend Nina?” asked GI.
The Bride swallowed, crossing her arms and looking GI in the eye-cameras. She was strong. She could do this.
“Nina’s dead.”
The Bride felt the tears welling up behind her eyes, but held them back as best she could. “She…” the Bride continued, hating how quiet her voice came out. “She was trying to kill the princess, and…” She chewed on her lip, focusing her face into nothing. “It… went wrong.” She looked at GI, mouth drawn into a tight line, scanning his robotic face for any sign of emotion.
“That is tragic,” said GI after a moment of silence. “She died a hero.”
“Yes,” said the Bride, cringing at how she sounded like she was about to cry. “She did.”
“It was a good time killing Nazis with her,” continued GI. “Friend Nina Mazursky will be remembered and missed.” He said it blankly, without inflection, the way he said most things, but the Bride could tell that beneath that, he had quickly become despairing. They all had, in turn, when they learned of it. And GI… Nina seemed to have been the closest thing he had had to a friend. She was the closest thing a lot of them had had to a friend.
“I’m sorry, GI,” the Bride said. “I really am.”
GI smiled. “It is alright.”
The Bride could tell that it wasn’t.
---
The Bride ate outside of her room for the first time in weeks that night. The food was the same colorless, tasteless slop, the benches the same hard, uncomfortable plastic, but it felt less like drowning alone in her room again like she had been since they had gotten back. She and Alex had made awkward conversation with GI while Weasel licked at his tray.
After dinner, they were allotted their usual two hours of nothingness and socialization before they were forced into their rooms again to sleep. The Bride considered retreating back into her room, but had decided against it. Now she was once more by the ping-pong table, this time attempting to play ping-pong by herself (it wasn’t going very well), while GI Robot watched. Alex was reading a book that the Bride was certain nobody else would understand and petting a sleeping Weasel. The Bride wanted to talk to GI again, about the death, apologize for not telling him sooner, do what she could to make it somewhat better, but whenever she tried, no words came out.
“GI…” she started, looking away from him.
“Yes, Friend The Bride?” Were it any other occasion, the Bride would have laughed at the outragous combination of those words, the title of “friend” combined with the article in her name. She had told him before that it would make more sense to just refer to her as “the Bride” or “Friend Bride,” but he had insisted on calling her by her full name.
The Bride sighed, and looked at GI’s expressionless, metal face. She tried to muster up the courage to ask a specific question, to apologize to him for not telling him sooner, say anything of substance, but the words froze before they even reached her throat.
“How are you?” she asked instead, quietly, trying to make it sound deeper and less like she had run out of things to say.
GI Robot gave what sounded to the Bride like a sigh, but she couldn’t tell. It would be odd, but not implausible, that he had had some sort of sigh feature added on at some point, but she didn’t dwell on it.
“GI Robot misses Friend Nina,” GI said.
The Bride crossed over to him and put her hand on his shoulder, for what it would be worth.
“I know, GI,” she said to him, softer than she wanted it to come out. “We all do.” She looked in his eyes. “I’m sorry.”