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His lips pursing into a thin, hard line, Wanshi hooked his thumb under the mask and pulled it off of his eyes.
Beyond the glass pane of his sleeping pod, the room was coated in thick darkness. The rest of his limbs responded to his activation signal, making the pod shine a dim, cyan light. Wanshi stared at his blurry reflection above, listless, wondering if those dark circles had somehow deepened after his third night awake in a row.
There was always that fog in his restless sleep. It obscured much of the things stored in his M.I.N.D., left him groggy and tired when next he woke up. He was used to the blanks in his memories, images that cracked away like candy before he could grasp them. He had forced himself to be familiar with it. To endure it.
This, however, was entirely new to him. Wanshi didn’t get the chance to properly shut down in the first place. He floated in a limbo — drifting between operation and rest mode — stuck in a state of stasis. He was kept hanging by a persistent thread that refused to unbind itself from his core. Within that liminal darkness, there was only one thing standing ahead of him, reaching for him.
Wanshi rubbed his eyes. He’d recognize that person even if their shape was nothing but flickering phosphenes.
Some months had passed since their little gambit at the coastal wasteland, and a few weeks since Wanshi heeded their emergency rescue signal. He played around with the idea that it was all a coincidence at first, him sleeping less and less. That he ended up lazing around in the training room, the classrooms, or the old and abandoned shooting range. That he no longer stayed behind when his squad had to visit Gray Raven’s lounge either.
By the time Wanshi went as far as calling the human through his terminal during downtime, the matter was anything but coincidental. How could it, when the roughness of their injuries lingered on his fingertips?
Sinking deeper into the memory foam pillow, Wanshi sighed out some of the tension from his face. He loved this gift — not because it was just that comfortable, but because the Commandant gave it to him. They wanted him to sleep better with it. Shame that all it did was remind Wanshi of them, stirring him half-awake each night. How troublesome.
Shadows swam against cyan light as Wanshi adjusted his visual module. The rest of Strike Hawk was probably resting as well. He’d only be waking Chrome up and worrying his Captain by wandering out of his room. Then Kamui would follow up, having heard them through his game’s sounds, and Camu would later saunter out to complain about the noise. So once again, Wanshi would stay inside that contraption, in the muted dark, alone with his thoughts.
More than just troublesome, it was strange; Wanshi should’ve had no problems passing out when his fatigue won him over. He was indeed a light sleeper, but his M.I.N.D. no longer had the decency of quieting down. Small, persistent waves crashed onto the shore of his consciousness now. The foam lapped at his body, tussled between agitated currents, bringing him a sensation too familiar to ignore.
When the two of them had been extracted from that mission, Wanshi remembered slipping into the Commandant’s bed while they recovered. He had huddled up to them, the soft bedsheet and the human’s warmth grazing his bionic skin. It was that exact feeling that his M.I.N.D. was simulating, torturing him with. That, and the weight of the piled gifts Kamui had dropped on top of him moments after.
He turned to his right. His shoulder joint clicked awkwardly under his weight. Wanshi flipped to his left, and grumbled when his leg started sliding off of the other, refusing to settle. This would be another long, long night.
And like the past couple of nights, he’d imagine the Gray Raven Commandant opening the sleeping pod’s cover, leaning in to caress his curly hair, and asking if they could sleep beside him. How Wanshi yearned for it, praying it’d relieve his addled M.I.N.D..
Naming the sort of affliction that beset him seemed too bothersome. But the truth was that Wanshi missed them terribly. He was drawn like a tired hawk to a sturdy perch.
His memories of that lone human, standing valiantly against all odds, replayed in the cyan light around him. Something about their courage, their determination to spare lives from an untimely death, had ignited something Wanshi had snuffed out within himself. No amount of aloof words and questioning had quenched that person’s hope. His vital fluid burned with their ardor — he hadn’t felt so alive and awake since before his modification.
But to save those they could still touch, both of them had run themselves ragged, came back bloodied and battered. Wanshi found the Commandant’s condition more worrying than any of Chrome or Lee’s nagging. They did bring this upon themselves, although the fact didn’t make Wanshi’s gears any less tense at the time. Once again, he had lost his common sense to his emotions.
He curled up in the pod. Wanshi fiddled with the soft padding beneath him, writing the human’s name upon it with his nail. Their conversations and fleeting encounters clouded his M.I.N.D.. He thought about what could’ve been had they but a moment more to spare for him each time. In the midst of dead silence, Wanshi whispered their name.
Wanshi wanted to take them into his nest — under his wings, and away from the world.
Away from other Constructs, from other humans.
Away from the war, away from the Punishing Virus.
Far away from reality, and right into his dreams.
He groaned into the memory foam pillow, frustrated, unfamiliar with the enormity of his desire.
What could he do to keep them safe? What lengths should he have to go to keep them from vanishing from his life? They were humanity’s hero, yet also one of his handful of reasons to rise from his long, lonely slumber — his sobering light from the emptiness of sleep. He could only, painfully, wipe the blood off them and bandage their wounds. Wanshi knew they’d reopen soon enough, just as he knew they’d show up with worse ones too.
That stubborn, righteous torch-bearer. Wanshi sighed.
He thought the bodily reactions caused by emotional stimuli were a bygone thing. Since becoming a Construct, he no longer felt his stomach churning, or his chest tightening when guilty thoughts crossed his imagination. He had concluded all that was left in him was the steady flow of energy through his components.
He placed a hand on his metallic chest, felt his core beating, warming up, through the artificial skin. Traces of his humanity lingered in his M.I.N.D. still. Wanshi’s circulation module seemed to respond to it with a will of its own.
And that person was to blame — they who shined as bright as amber in his eyes, who smiled so tenderly at him before returning to their Ravens, leaving him to stare at their departing silhouette.
If he had asked them, would the Commandant have followed him to his sleeping pod for the night? Kept him from tossing and turning in its cold sheets? Let him draw closer while conveniently half-asleep, so that the nightmares would flee from their gentle embrace?
Wanshi smiled. He’d be happy to give it a try next time they met.
Curling under the blankets he draped over himself — bundling them up in his arms so as to fool his M.I.N.D. into thinking he was holding that human — Wanshi closed his eyes and finally powered down, having exhausted the last of his energy.
Even in his foggy dream, their smile was still as sweet as plum wine.