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Collins thinks.
It's something he's been doing a lot of recently. It's all he can do, really. He eats as much as he can swallow, but it never makes him feel full. He tries to sleep. Keyword — tries. It's a lot of tossing around more than anything. He just ends up with a headache at the end of it all.
Collins can hardly get himself to rest with his brain filled with knowledge he relearned not even a month ago. It feels like years of suppressed thought suddenly started flooding back into him again. Collins wants to be at least somewhat happy; his mind and agency returned after god knows how long.
But he's not.
It suffocates him more than anything. It presses against his throat and doesn't let him breathe. The coward inside of him wishes he could forget; yet at the same time, he feels like he deserves it.
Collins lounges in the living room, spreading out in a quite frankly embarrassing position that he wouldn't want to be caught in when he was alive. He pulls a blue, patterned blanket closer to his chest. The texture rubs against his… claws.
He holds it tighter.
If there's one thing Collins misses about being alive (besides everything) it's his body. He was never too fond of his own appearance. Rough around the edges, constantly disheveled. Not that it bothered him too much, he was always second priority compared to his projects. He wasn't exceptional when it came to taking care of himself. The soot covered coats, the tired eyes he always saw staring back at him.
It wasn't great… but in the end, it was him.
Now a stranger is all he can see in the mirror. A robot. His robot.
Something he was once so proud of. The feeling seems too foreign and too familiar at the same time. This long-limbed body hardly makes him feel anything but clumsy. Comparable only to a single wet piece of spaghetti.
His own creation trapping him like this. It's almost poetic. It's certainly pathetic.
Collins rests his head on a pillow and curls into himself more. The television plays a movie in the background; it's one they've already seen a thousand times or more. He wants to pay attention to it, he really does. Alas, it slips from his grasp again like rivulet water cradled in his hands. His mind just can't focus on it.
His body shakes, but he's not cold. In fact, he's way too warm, nearly feverish. Collins never thought he would be wishing he could sweat. Just to feel something familiar from this alien body. To convince himself he's still human.
A fool's fantasy, one fitting for him.
Collins slowly drags his head to the flashing screen again.
He gave up everything he had (even if it wasn't much) — his time, his projects, himself. To 'protect the world.' And he got meaningless, unnecessary deaths thousandfold as a result of his sacrifice. All caused by him no less.
Collins was never a social man, so he had the luck of not knowing anyone he slaughtered. They all blended in his head into a pile of bodies, but they were still people. Children with lives ahead of them, their tired parents. Priests, college students. Someone seemingly unimportant who was just unlucky. Imaging the mass of corpses makes him want to vomit. He doesn't want to think about how long he had been doing it. (At the same time, he has to know.)
Collins closes his eyes, rolling over to his back. He wants to cry, though there's not much he can do without tear-ducts. He wishes he was still mindless.
Well, not really. He wishes he didn't remember anything. Acting off of mostly instinct like a skittish animal with a selection of scattered, elusive memories wasn't exactly ideal. He's not sure if he feels less like himself now or back then.
At least now he's aware of that now. There's that, he supposes.
And there's only one person who's really responsible for it. The girl, one of the few he remembers attacking, one he didn't manage to slaughter. The one who he's recently learned is called Ellie Stein.
Collins' memory of everything is hazy, but he knows some things are certain. She was the only one who noticed he wasn't as mindless as he appeared. It was her who took the risk to plunge inside his mind, even if it wasn't him she was particularly looking for.
He's no expert on digging around in someone's brain, but it doesn't take one to realize how dangerous doing that is. Ellie hardly hesitated.
Collins remembers her mentioning a friend of hers, one who's name he can't recall; she's likely the reason why.
Isn't it weird? The things love makes people do?
…he wouldn't know.
Collins expected to be thrown back out when it was all done, but for whatever reason, he wasn't. Ellie seemed to pity him a lot after that. He knows she means well, but the glances she gives hardly makes him feel any better.
She wants to help him get better, but Collins doesn't know if he can. He doesn't know if he deserves to. After all, there's so many people who's chance to grow he had taken.
Ellie doesn't seem to mind that too much though. She doesn't seem to hold the scar adorning her face against him anymore, since they are now supposedly 'even'. She wants to include him whenever they do something.
She cares.
Collins thinks it would all be a lot easier if she didn't.
The other two are a little more… reasonable in their reactions.
The water elemental, Kropel, seems hellbent on not taking him seriously. All he seems to do is fool around. Collins is… not sure what to think of him. He doesn't know why he's so attached to the idea of him being their pet.
He doesn't get why that idea makes him feel so strange.
Kropel has talked to him very briefly after what has transpired, but nothing he said really remained in Collins' memory. Nothing besides…
Him.
Collins jolts upright. He throws the blanket down to the floor, just to get it as far away from his as possible. The warmth fades away in an instant.
He can't think about him right now. He can't, he can't stomach it. Yet no matter how hard he tries, his face still lingers in his brain. The way he talked, his smooth voice, and the way it made him feel.
He shudders with the entirety of his body. Everything feels hazy. He can't think about him right now.
Collins needs to stop thinking about him.
He shakes his head, trying to clear it out. He hadn't even noticed how his breathing had sped up until it had started evening out again. Collins needs to think about anything else. Anything to get him to stop appearing. Anything else. Anyone else.
And one person certainly comes to mind.
Grant. The last member of the trio. The one who hates him the most.
He never said it to his face, but he never had to. It's clear from the way he acts, how he looks at him. His loathing and distrust towards him seem to run deep; Collins wants to cower whenever their eyes meet. To make himself as small as possible, or to simply cease to exist.
Something inside him almost tempts him to apologize. To say something about what happened. He knows better than to poke the bear, but it's really all he can think about whenever he sees Grant.
It's likely hardly different for the man himself. A killer robot living under your roof, the same one that ruined your entire life. It's more than just salt in the wound at that point.
Collins doesn't feel cold, yet he leans to the floor to grab the blanket back anyway. The fluff around him feels comforting at least. He puts it around himself and his vision drags back up to the television. It's not blaring anymore (it stopped a while back); a more serious, somber scene seems to be playing.
He wants to make up for what he did, desperately. But how can you make amends for a genocide?
Just thinking about it makes Collins' guts twist in on themselves with shame. It's a pointless escapade — he should quit while he's ahead.
Collins looks at the television again. Its quiet.