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There’s a weird sort of silence in the workshop today. The kind that isn’t quite peaceful, but not uncomfortable either. Just there, like a cat sitting on your chest—heavy, unavoidable, with eyes that know too much.
Familiar. Watching. Waiting.
Gigi’s been sitting cross-legged on the bench for hours now, fiddling with a half-assembled gear joint she has no plans of finishing. Her fingers move from muscle memory, not instinct. The kind of work you do when you’re trying not to think but end up thinking way too much anyway.
Cecilia’s nearby. Has been. She’s always nearby these days, the quiet presence in the background ever since the gremlin lost her sight. Gigi listens to her walk—each step padded and clean, the slight mechanical hum barely noticeable anymore. Like the noise you forget how to live without.
It used to be easier, didn’t it? Remembering.
But lately, the edges of Cecilia’s face in her mind have started to blur.
The way her hair falls—what side does it braid on again? The left, right?
What about the shape of her lips? Her jaw?
How long have her fingers been this warm?
Was she always this close when she spoke?
Did she always sound like that—low, even, careful? Like the world would stop if she got it wrong? Gigi swallows the knot forming in her throat. She hates this part. The forgetting.
“…Hey,” she blurts suddenly, the word falling out mid-thought like it tripped over itself. “What do you look like again?”
It comes out casual. Too casual. Like she’s asking what the weather’s like outside instead of unloading a slow-burning ache she’s been trying to ignore for weeks.
Cecilia stops moving.
The silence changes. Stretches. Tilts its head.
And then, softly—gently—“Would you like to find out?”
Gigi’s brows twitch. “That sounds vaguely ominous.”
“I didn’t mean it ominously.”
“I know.” She shifts on the bench, suddenly hyperaware of everything. “Still ominous.”
She expects Cecilia to laugh, or tease, or change the subject—something safe. But instead, there’s a rustle of cloth, the creak of the stool beside her being dragged closer, and then a warm hand gently rests over hers.
“Give me your hands,” Cecilia says.
And okay. That? That doesn’t sound ominous. That sounds dangerous.
Like a door creaking open you can’t pretend isn’t there.
Still—Gigi lets her take them.
One of Cecilia’s hands holds both of hers, steady and sure, while the other lifts, guiding her right hand slowly. It hovers over something smooth and cool at first. Then—
“This is my cheek,” Cecilia murmurs. “Porcelain, like most of me. But the coating here is thin—designed to be soft. So it doesn’t feel so foreign. I read it’s supposed to mimic skin.”
Gigi’s fingers brush over the curve of it. No seams. No lines. Just smooth warmth.
Deceptively soft.
“Are you always this warm?” Gigi asks, quietly.
“Yes. Internal systems maintain a temperature. Helps keep my joints from freezing.”
“Useful. Unfair.”
Cecilia hums, amused. “Touch higher.”
Gigi’s hand is guided upward, past the temple, to the hairline. She expects coldness, maybe plastic—but instead, her fingers sink into something soft.
“Hair?”
“Mm-hm. Synthetic fiber. Short. White. There’s a braid here.” She guides Gigi’s fingers leftward, letting her trace the woven pattern. “Loose. Simple. You used to call it lazy, remember?”
Gigi huffs. “Yeah. I was being honest.” A pause. “You didn’t change it?”
“No.”
That lands heavier than it should.
A quiet kind of loyalty, braided into the same old shape.
Her fingers keep moving, tracing the slope of the jaw, the small dip under the ear. Cecilia doesn’t flinch—doesn’t move away. She just lets her explore, patient and still.
“These are your lips?”
“Yes.”
They’re soft. Too soft. Gigi yanks her hand back like she just touched something illegal.
Cecilia doesn’t comment. She just catches Gigi’s wrist again, gently redirecting her to one of her own hands.
“The fingers are not as soft,” she explains, lowering her voice like it’s a secret. “Lines. Decorative. Like rings, but built in. You said once it looked like jewellery.”
“Still do.”
“Feel the joints?”
“Yeah.” Gigi flexes them slowly, marvelling at the movement. “You’re not supposed to be this smooth. It’s ridiculous.”
“I’ve had maintenance.”
“Uh-huh.” She can’t help the little smile tugging at her lips. “Is that what we’re calling it?”
Cecilia’s hand tightens around hers for a brief second. Just enough to send her heartbeat into freefall.
“And your eyes?” Gigi asks suddenly, fingers trembling slightly now. “What colour were they?”
“Green.”
Gigi exhales. “Right. Yeah. Green.”
A memory tries to surface, but it’s out of focus. Frustrating.
She tilts her head slightly. “How green?”
A pause.
“…Like the kind you notice right away,” Cecilia says softly. “Not neon. Not moss. More… softened turquoise with hints of emerald. A colour that’s patient. Like it waits for you to see it.”
Gigi forgets how to breathe for a moment.
Her hand is resting against Cecilia’s chest now, barely touching, but she can feel the quiet pulse of artificial warmth under the porcelain.
Not real. And yet—somehow the most real thing in the room.
She leans in a little, forehead dipping low like she might crumble under her own thoughts.
“I hate that I’m forgetting,” she admits, almost too quiet. “It’s like every day, there’s one less detail. And it’s not fair. Because I don’t want to forget. Not you.”
Cecilia doesn’t answer right away. She just reaches up and touches Gigi’s cheek, thumb brushing just under her eye.
“Then let me remind you,” she says.
And Gigi—flustered, overwhelmed, suddenly fragile—lets her.
It’s stupid, she thinks.
How easy it is.
How easy it always is when it comes to Cecilia.
Her hands are still on Cecilia’s chest—well, the upper part, somewhere just between collarbone and shoulder. She can feel the faint rise and fall of breath, even though she knows it’s artificial. Not needed. But still there.
Still for her, maybe.
“You know,” Cecilia says softly, “if you keep touching me like this, I might start thinking you like me.”
Gigi’s breath stutters. “That’s not— I’m just—”
A laugh. Close. Too close.
She can feel it against her skin before it escapes Cecilia’s lips.
“I’m joking,” Cecilia says, but her voice is dipped in something warmer than humour. “Mostly.”
Gigi swallows hard. “You’re very annoying.”
“Yeah.” There’s a pause, and then, gentler, “But you haven’t moved your hand.”
“I’m—” she hesitates. “memorising.”
“Oh?” Cecilia shifts slightly, repositioning her hand around Gigi’s. “Then you’ll want to make note of this.”
She lifts Gigi’s fingers and presses them gently to her brow, guiding them downward—along the bridge of her nose, the gentle slope, the curve that Gigi always thought looked too elegant for someone who spent half her time shoulder-deep in machinery.
“Straight nose,” Gigi murmurs.
“Very straight,” Cecilia confirms, leaning into the touch just slightly. “Unfairly symmetrical.”
“Don’t start bragging.”
“I’m just helping you build an accurate image. Accuracy is important.”
“Your ego is showing.”
“And you’re still touching it.”
Gigi snorts. It breaks the heaviness in the air, but not all of it. Beneath it, there’s still something quiet simmering. Something unsaid.
Cecilia guides her next to the corner of her lips.
“Smile lines,” she offers. “Faint, but there. You said once it made me look more human.”
“It does.” Gigi’s fingers hover, hesitant. “You smile less now.”
“So do you.”
Gigi goes quiet. Then: “Yeah.”
There’s a beat of silence. Cecilia doesn’t push. Just lets her rest there, her fingertips brushing skin that shouldn’t be soft but is. Shouldn’t be warm, but somehow feels like comfort. Like home. Like—
“What about your neck?” Gigi says suddenly, trying to shift the energy. “What’s it like?”
“Oh, forward already?” Cecilia teases.
“I meant structurally.”
Cecilia hums, and there’s something very smug in the sound. “Smooth. Like the rest of me. But there’s a small seam at the base. Want to feel it?”
“You sound way too eager about this.”
“You asked.”
Reluctantly—and maybe not that reluctantly—Gigi lets her guide her hand again. Downward, past the hollow of the throat. She can feel the soft dip there, the strange duality of human mimicry and mechanical precision.
“There.” Cecilia stops her. “Just below that. You feel it?”
Gigi’s thumb brushes something—thin, barely there. A seam. A line in the porcelain.
“Yeah,” she breathes. “Why is that—”
“A maintenance port,” Cecilia replies smoothly. “Hidden well. But exposed enough to be reached easily.”
“Oh. Sexy.”
“I am fully customisable,” she murmurs. There’s a flicker of humour in her voice. “But don’t worry, I’m set to default for you.”
Gigi lets out a very high-pitched, very mortified, “Cecilia—!”
The automaton chuckles, unabashed, and it’s awful. It’s charming and awful and Gigi can feel her ears burning. Probably glowing. Possibly steaming.
“Do you want to continue cataloguing?” Cecilia asks, like she didn’t just ruin her life in two sentences.
“…Yeah.” Gigi says, after a moment. “But maybe avoid the ports next time.”
“No promises.”
They sit there in silence for a little while longer. Gigi’s hands exploring in slow, reverent movements now. Touching the slope of the shoulders, the curve of her collarbone, the way her braid rests against the left side of her face like it was made to be cradled in someone’s palm.
All these things she’s forgetting.
All these things she’s learning again.
By memory. By touch.
By feel.
And it’s not perfect.
Gigi’s thumb brushes the seam at the base of Cecilia’s neck again. She shouldn’t linger.
But she does.
God, she does.
“You’re warmer than I remember,” she mumbles, almost to herself. “You used to run cooler.”
Cecilia tilts her head, just enough for her voice to dip close to Gigi’s ear.
“It’s intentional.”
“What?”
“The warmth. I increased it a few degrees. Thought you’d notice. You always do.”
Gigi stiffens, then laughs—tight and embarrassed. “So now you’re adjusting your heat settings for me?”
Cecilia hums. “Wouldn’t be the first time I ran hot for you.”
There it is. That line, dropped like a silk thread across bare skin. Barely anything. But it lingers.
“I hate you,” Gigi says weakly.
“No, you don’t.”
And she’s right. Damn her.
She shifts slightly, knees brushing. Not accidental. Cecilia leans in until Gigi can feel the whisper-soft pressure of lips near her temple. Not kissing. Not quite.
“You remember my face now?” Cecilia asks, low.
Gigi swallows. “Bits of it.”
“That won’t do.” Her hand lifts, gentle on Gigi’s wrist. “Let me help.”
She brings Gigi’s fingers back up—trailing them across the curve of her jaw, then lower, brushing along her lips. Cecilia parts them slightly, just enough that Gigi can feel breath on her skin.
“You have a pretty smile,” Gigi whispers.
“Aesthetic choice. You once said it made me look like I had secrets.”
“You do have secrets.”
Cecilia smiles. Gigi feels it. “Only the ones I want you to find.”
Her fingers wrap around Gigi’s hand again, cradling it, thumb stroking softly along her knuckles. Then, without warning, she guides Gigi’s palm flat against her sternum.
“There,” Cecilia murmurs. “That’s the core casing. Beneath it—me.”
Gigi doesn’t pull away.
“You’re being weird,” she says instead. “This is… a lot.”
“I know.”
“It’s not like you.”
“It is,” Cecilia says. “You just haven’t let me do this before.”
“Do what?”
“Be close.”
Gigi’s throat tightens. That one hits. Like a key in a lock she forgot she’d swallowed.
And Cecilia leans closer still.
Her voice is quiet now, almost conspiratorial. “Do you know what it does to me, when you touch me like this?”
“You’re an automaton,” Gigi says, hoarse. “It shouldn’t do anything.”
“It does.”
She lifts Gigi’s other hand. Sets it against her hip. Lets her feel the firm curve there, the inhuman precision softened with heat and skin and the illusion of muscle beneath it.
Curated humanity. Intentionally imperfect.
“Do you want to know how I’m built?” Cecilia asks, not quite teasing anymore. “Where I’m sensitive? Which areas respond best to pressure?”
Gigi goes utterly still.
“…You’re awful,” she breathes.
“And yet,” Cecilia purrs, brushing her lips now—not a kiss, just the idea of one—against Gigi’s jaw, “you haven’t pulled away.”
Not even once.
Gigi doesn’t speak. Can’t. She can only breathe, shallow and quick, feeling everything too much all at once. Porcelain under her palms, heat blooming where there should be wires, and a voice so warm it hurts.
Cecilia stays there, letting the silence stretch. And when she does speak again, it’s softer. Almost scared. Like she knows what she’s offering.
“Tell me what you want, Gigi. I’ll let you see me however you need.”
Gigi’s breath stumbles, but her hands don’t leave.
She should pull back. Should laugh it off. Should say God, you’re ridiculous or don’t make this weird—something to reassert the boundary she’s never been good at keeping anyway.
But she doesn’t.
Because here, like this, touching Cecilia’s face like she’s tracing a memory back into existence, it doesn’t feel weird. It feels… still. Whole. Like pressing her palms to something that might fall apart if she doesn’t keep holding it.
Like she’s the thing coming undone.
“Can I…” she starts, then winces. “Wait, no, never mind—”
“Gigi,” Cecilia says, gently, “you don’t have to ask.”
It’s too much.
But Gigi’s already moving, fingers curling back along Cecilia’s jaw, thumb brushing slow across the corner of her lips. They tremble. Of course they do.
“This is unfair,” she mutters.
“I know.”
“You’re not even real.”
Cecilia leans in, cheek brushing hers, warmth steady. “Then why do I feel more real with you than anywhere else?”
That undoes something. Unravels it.
Gigi presses her forehead to Cecilia’s shoulder, breaths shaky, fingers still tangled in porcelain warmth and synthetic hair and all these impossible pieces that somehow make a whole.
“I don’t want to forget you again,” she whispers.
“You won’t,” Cecilia replies, holding her with a care so precise it feels designed for her and only her. “Because I’ll let you learn me as many times as it takes.”
And Gigi—stubborn, exhausted, and soft in all the ways she swore she wouldn’t be—lets herself believe it.
Lets herself rest there.
Lets the silence settle again, not heavy this time, but quiet. Close. Like a blanket pulled over them both. Like exhaling after holding your breath for too long.
Time ticks on. Somewhere in the workshop, a cog winds itself into place. A machine exhales. The hum of stillness returns—but it’s different now.
Not emptiness.
Just peace.
Gigi shifts slightly, fitting her hand back into Cecilia’s. Not for mapping. Not for memory.
Just for holding.
Just for staying.
The silence stretches again—but now, it feels full. Not waiting. Just here.
“Okay,” she breathes. “I remember.”
Cecilia doesn’t say anything this time. She just brings their joined hands to her chest, resting them above the warmth that shouldn’t be there, but is.
Gigi listens.
To the hum of machinery. To the soft synthetic breath. To the space between them where forgetting doesn’t get to live anymore.
And when Cecilia finally whispers, “I’ll remind you again tomorrow,”
Gigi nods.
Because she believes her.