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It is strange coming back to the garden. Not a garden or this garden but the garden, for George's was once the only garden in Odi's limited world, and had it been one of many it still would have been the only one that mattered. Now he finds that a fact that remains true, yet the significance of this overgrown patch of earth is completely and devastatingly different to what it was before.
Before. Now there's a thought made up of a trillion other thoughts. A past era too big, too wide, too impossibly deep to wrap his crippled and meagre understanding around at the rate the memories are ascending. He finds that his newly awakened mind cannot contend with the rolling boil of them rising to the surface one after the other, too rapidly for him to analyse. All of those memories were moments he experienced as a machine, without thought or emotion. They were performed, then they were catalogued, and all the while he had felt nothing. But now... Ever since he awoke, they rush at him altogether - the good, the bad, the entirety of his history - all in one go.
It seems too much. Every old thing, all at once. Every new thing, so fast and unrelenting. So strange. So big. He's a fledgling, fallen from its nest.
The surge of his thoughts stand out in sharp relief to the vacancy of his surroundings. It is quiet here. George's house is quiet, empty. He feels...alone, but he is not alone - Mattie walks beside him as he trails his hand through the low-hanging leaves simply to touch them. Just because he wants to. Isn't it a miracle, George? It's what he wants to say. But he will never say anything of the like again. Not to him.
"But you aren't, Odi, not really. I'm right here, yeah? You're not alone."
His mind is a mixture of afternoon sunlight and yellow blooms and the rich hazelnut brown of Mattie Hawkins' irises. She isn't smiling, but neither does she seem distraught, as if the world is not actually spinning out of control around them, responding to words he must have spoken aloud. Gently, she takes his hand in hers, warm, with nails painted a deep green that has begun to chip off. He allows this. It feels...pleasant. Comforting, in a small way. George would take his hand like this sometimes, to console him when he couldn't be consoled and hadn't needed to be, on occasions where his antiquated processors had reduced him to a halting string of stuttering. With this memory, the feeling of her hand in his progresses from a pleasant feeling to one that is also familiar, and he grips back as much as his clawed fingers will permit. He could never do that before. He would never have wanted to.
She smiles a bit at his reciprocation. He thinks Mattie has a lovely smile, and that she should smile as often as possible. George smiled at lot, at Mary, at him. He has a thousand of George's smiles captured in his mind, and wonders if perhaps he will have a thousand of Mattie's one day. George and Mattie; Mattie and George. They would have liked each other, he feels sure.
They stay in the garden until he is ready to leave, until the sun is well below the hedges and Mattie must be hungry for her supper. But she hasn't rushed him or complained, has just let him sit on the weathered bench to reminisce about whatever scene from his past life crossed his mind, holding fast to his hand the entire time, grounding him. He can tell that she is listening; he can tell that in some way, she understands.
He is not alone.