Chapter Text
Elliot Manor is silent. Elliot Manor is dark.
After such an excruciatingly long day, it’s a faint but welcome relief. The night is ripe for sleep and the low battery warning flashing on the bottom right corner of N’s visor won’t let him forget it. It’s like a yawn is hanging to the back of his throat, but it just refuses to make the jump out of his mouth.
The dim light of the basement hangs above, but that’s not what’s keeping sleep from him. It’s V he’s worrying about. She’s sitting right in front of him, arms loose to her sides, her head bobbing up and down, drifting in and out of consciousness. It almost looks like exhaustion.
Her visor flickers on and off. Sometimes it stays dark long enough for N to see his own reflection on it, legs crossed and hunching forward. He’s so tired. His hair is a mess. Sometimes it stays on long enough for her eyes to dart around the room, wide as egg yolks.
One time, they don’t flicker off. It seems to take a moment for V to register N’s even there. She usually only does that when she’s lost her glasses.
“O-oh hi N!” — She smiles, though her eyes stay wide. Her arm jitters.
“Hey glasses. Long day huh?” — He does his best to smile through the fatigue.
“You tell me! Hah-hah. Cleaned up after the gala, on my own. Where even are the other workers?!” — She’s trying to move her arms, but her shoulder servos are offline. — “But it’s all nice and tidy now. Tessa’s folks are gonna love it.”
A grimace threatens to break through N’s smile. The gala was two weeks ago. He’s too tired to come up with anything to respond, aware as he is of how quickly silence tends to dig into V.
“Hey. You look… Uh… Roughed up.” — She says. Her smile warms up the basement, even as it wavers with worry. He really should’ve at least gotten his hair under control before this.
“Oh. Pfft. One of the Frumpterbucket kids. You know how they are.” — N pulls a bit at his hair, but abandons the attempt immediately when something catches his eyes. The way she’s looking at him. The white light of her left eye is leaking out through a crack on her visor.
“The little runts! You should’ve stayed with Tessa, dude.” — A long, gaunt something descends from the ceiling from behind V as she speaks, staying just out of the light. It wraps around her right shoulder, and starts to pull. Her left eye twitches.
“I wish… She and J got to stay in the library, but her folks had me help with dessert.” — N tries to keep his eyes off of her shoulder, but that becomes impossible as the thing wrapped around it adjusts its grip, pushing far enough into the dim light for its white, wrinkled exterior, not quite skin or plastic, to be fully visible.
“Where are they any–” — Her face contorts. The joints in her shoulder creak. Her arm visibly stretches to the limits of the elastic bellows covering its inner mechanisms, and a damage alarm croaks. — “Any– Anyw– Any–...”
N fights with the impulse to cover his eyes. His hands are shaking. Faint snapping, barely audible behind her voice, tells him the soft fabric covers that protect the main servo of her left shoulder are giving out.
“Any– Any– Anywa– Any–...”
Her eyes drift off into the dark, quivering. N can’t tell if the little white shine below her eye is a crack, or a tear.
“Any– An– Any– Where–...”
He can’t help but whimper when the ripping goes silent and another noise begins: snapping and clacking at the same time. Snap-snap-snap. Clack-clack-clack. With the cadence of typing on a keyboard. The insulation of the five or so dozen wires connecting the mechanisms of her arm to the core is tearing up, and one by one every little threaded cord of copper inside them is unraveling, stretching, then snapping.
“Where– They– Any–...”
The frequency of the snaps picks up. That means the thinner bundles of wires that go all the way to her fingers have fully broken off: the main group of cables that power and control her wrist, elbow and shoulder are next. With every snap, the gap between her shoulder and torso grows slightly. V trails off as her visor fills up with error codes, one after another.
N tries to keep his mind off her voice by counting them, then adding up the numbers — 102, 303, 448, 670, 685. It doesn’t do much for him now that he knows what each one means. Damaged connection. Damaged motor. Fine motion controller can’t be found. Articulation missing. Tears sometimes glitch and show up over the error windows, entirely ruining his effort.
“An–... Whe… Are th…– Any…”
The snaps stop, every last wire broken. Loud creaking takes its place. The main servo group that allows V’s shoulder to move is bending and stretching with unbearable sluggishness. The noise just keeps going. It doesn’t stop. N’s squirming inside his own plastic skin, clutching his hands against his chest. A scream so badly wants to break out but it can’t. V’s mumbling mingles with the creaking and becomes a sort of constant cacophony. He waits and waits for it to end, but it just keeps going, going, going, relieving only slightly when a second limb, N can’t see what exactly it is, emerges from the darkness and wraps around V’s wrist and helps the first one pull, changing the pitch of the creaking slightly and making the metal give out a little faster, and through all that N’s mind can’t stop toying with questions, questions like why, just why is it taking so damn long? She’s done this a hundred times already, why can’t she do it quicker? Does she never get bored? Of them? Of me? Of how I still can’t stomach what she’s doing? Of—
Finally, mercifully, a loud snap ends the cacophony, halting N’s train of thought. V’s arm breaks off, and he winces back. Her face is deadly still: visor wrapped in error codes, mumbling “and” over and over. Her upper torso slides off the chair, head hanging to her right.
Both limbs briefly return from the darkness to set V upright. A third one — a long tentacle terminated by a human hand — emerges and immediately sinks inside V’s head through a hole above her nape. Some button or switch in there clicks, and her visor resets.
“--and… And– Oh, uhm… Where was…? Right, where are those two anyway?”
She’s smiling again. Something inside N lets up, but he can’t answer yet. He tries, but nothing comes up. Every internal process spirals off into tangents and tangents and times out, failing to output anything. He can’t move an inch.
“O– Ow! S-sorry, I think I’ve got a sore arm. Ouch. Must be all that cleaning…”
Through the corner of his eye, he can glimpse oil pouring out of the gaping hole where her shoulder used to be.
“... N? W-what’s up? Is something the matter? O– Ow!” — V looks vaguely aware that something’s amiss but it seems to evade her, even as the oil streams over her dress, stains spreading outward and covering her chest. She waits for an answer that N wants to provide but can’t, finding himself too far from his own body to make it say anything. Her voice lowers to almost a whisper. — “Oh God… Did something happen with you and Tessa…?”
Her remaining arm shakes and halts, then again and again. A hint of dread creeps up her face, putting pressure on N’s chest as it does. It’s all going wrong. Maybe if he says something now, right now, he can still salvage it, but when he begs to himself for an answer he won’t give it. She’s horrified now, still trying to hide it, but still not aware.
“Agh. I can’t… I don’t know why I… Sorry. I-if you need someone to talk–”
Her eyes disappear, replaced by a flashing pause symbol.
A hundred bright eyes open in the darkness around N. Dozens of limbs ambush them both, a few of them like cameras or projectors, the rest some manner of sharp grabber, hand or claw. His worn optic sensors can’t parse the movement around him. Dread should be taking him over, but he can only feel a numb wariness.
Falsetto Voice. Oh Brother… This Is Not How You Promised To Do Things… You’re Making This Harder For Her.
Talk. Come on. Move!
Whisper. Would You Like To Take A Break? Shoulder Pat.
Something wet and greasy lands on his shoulder, sending shocks across his limbs. The numbness vanishes in an instant, panic forcing itself in its place too fiercely to hold it back. A shout and gasp leaves his mouth as he returns to himself.
“No. No please.”
That’s The Spirit! But Remember, N…
Something grabs him by the cheek, forcing him to look at the blinding lights.
You Made A Promise. Threatening Glare. If You Break It, I Won’t Take Her Memories When Your Turn Is Up. You Don’t Want Her To Remember Being In Your Shoes, Do You?
He struggles to get words out of his mouth. It’s like his jaw is gummed up, or rusted, moving so slowly and with so much effort.
“Please just make it quicker. Please.”
Giggle. Fine By Me.
Suddenly, it’s like all of those limbs and lights were never there. It’s him and V again, pause symbol flashing for a few more moments before her eyes come back and she starts speaking again.
“--to about it… Y-you can tell me, a-alright? Gosh, I’m a bit of a mess today, I’m sorry.”
Deep breath — release. Hold it together.
He hides everything haunting him in the gap between this second and the next. He’ll go back to it later. It’s not important right now. Not as much as V.
“Naah. I’m fine! Bit low on batteries though… Can’t wait to clock out.”
For just a little longer.
Something different enters the scene: a stark white right arm, wrist decorated by a hazard stripe, wrapped by soft and bony limbs. They’re holding it up to the wound on V’s shoulder.
It’ll be worth it.
“Hey uh… We’re staying up for a few more hours, right?” — V says. Somehow, her pained smile can still look sheepish. Somehow, it stays sheepish when a sort of crab claw starts to dig at her wound, gouging out what’s left of the articulation.
For us both.
“Yeah! What’cha thinking? I don’t think we’re allowed to go out for fireflies today… Or all week for that matter. You know. Cyn. Heh.”
The new arm is slowly lined up with the open shoulder, carefully closing in, inching forward — then pushed inward, gracelessly forced through remaining splinters of wire and membrane.
“W-what’d she do now?” — V blurts out.
“Talked back to Tessa’s mom. Again. It’s fine though, it’s not been… Great, for her lately.” — He eyes the darkness around him. What for? Looking for approval from the devil herself?
Without a joint to keep the new arm in place, it immediately starts to slough off. Forgot a part, maybe? Another claw immediately jumps in to correct the mistake, armed with a welder that slides into the wound and flares on straight away. There’s still some sensitive membrane in there getting burned up, melting together with remains of oil. V’s smile vanishes and she drowns the basement in screams.
The sound threatens to pull N’s soul from his body, somewhere far where he can’t hear it — but he has enough in him to hang on. Between cries, V’s mouthing something, like she doesn’t know the pain she’s in.
“Hey-heyheyhey. Stop. ‘s alright, ‘salright. Don’t talk.” — He reaches out, holding his palms at her.
She still tries to talk through it, but the words don’t come out right. It’s ripping at him, drilling into his audio input. Every other drone had lost their voice by now, but V’s won’t leave her. Mangled as it is, she’s still holding on to it. That’s just cruel.
It’s not until a few moments later, when the welder finally turns off, that she manages to say something. It comes chopped up, halfway between stutters and clipping.
“I-I just– I’m not feeling well… Do y– thi–nk that you can… S–tay with me, f-for a while, N?”
He’s barely there, losing track of what he’s looking at between blinks. But from the pit of numbness weighing on his chest, N manages to drag out the warmest smile he has left.
“You didn’t need to ask, buddy. I’m with ya. Wanna read something together?”
A hand opens up a latch on the new arm, holding what looks like a tester inside it. A jolt flashes out, and the arm shifts: the hand retracts inside the forearm, and three sharp fingers slide out. The limbs unwrap from the new arm, but they don’t quite vanish behind V, instead showing interest in her left arm and leg.
“I d-n’t thin-k I c-can read right now… M–uh sight -‘s blurry. Cou-ld you read fo-r me? Pl–ease.”
“Sure can. Just stay there, will ya? I’ll stay here too. What about uh… Dog facts?”
Keeping up a calm voice hurts, but it’s the only thing that comes to mind. Focusing on finding the right tone, the right pitch, the right cadence for it to feel like normal. It feels surgical, like finding the right spot in the skin to dig in with a scalpel. Is it even helping her? Is it making things worse?
The pulling starts again. It does seem to be going faster this time around.
“Sou– Soun-ds nice.”
She seems a little bit calmer. Is she? Is that softness in her voice? Resignation? If anything in that strange half-aware nightmare of V’s feels even slightly better, she’s not saying. She can’t say. He can’t tell.
No choice but to keep going.
“What abouuut… Chihuahuas?” — A screenshot of the index of Dogs From A to Z covers up half his sight. They’d gotten to Golden Retrievers a while ago, but she wasn’t awake during that. Last she was, they read the page on Canadian Inuits, and that comes right before Chihuahuas.
“D-idn’t we r-ad tha-t alre-ady?” — Ripping, clacking, and snapping swim under her stutters.
“Oh. Mmmmaybe Great Danes?” — She can remember that. She remembers, even though she wasn’t conscious. Is this what it was like for her? A half-remembered dream of his voice reading over dog facts?
It gives him a bit more warmth. Just a bit more to clutch to his chest and not let go when he wants to get away.
“Mhm.” — A whisper barely peeking over the creaking of her joints being pulled apart.
“Great Danes, also known as…” — He clears his throat, and prepares his very best German. — “ Deutsche Dogge!” — He holds that second D for half a second, deciding how to pronounce the rest, and likely doing it wrong.
Moments start to wash away with each sentence he reads. The change of pitch of V’s articulations giving way gets buried under a long paragraph about the drooping jowls of Great Danes and a little smile from her. She says something like those dogs look so silly , N can’t quite tell because she’s faded to a whisper and the stutters don’t help, but she isn’t screaming anymore.
When her last leg has to go away, just as new replacements for the other leg and arm arrive and make their way inside where welding flames melt the remaining wires to an ugly blob of plastic, he’s talking about how curious and gentle Great Danes can be, chuckling out loud and definitely overselling it as he describes to V how he imagines a huge droopy dog scared at Tessa’s loud chirpy yelling.
When new claws appear and start to rip into her belly, he pushes that away with a tangent about how much Great Danes love to play with younger puppies.
When they realize the wound is not large enough and they get to pulling her torso apart, almost rending it into two halves, oil and circuits and joints and wires spilling out and drooping down to the floor, he’s flipped pages to another chapter discussing how tall Great Danes are and just how many hold height records.
When they bring a clump of burned flesh out of the dark and shove it together with the remaining beams and circuits, he’s moved on to the floppy ears of Great Danes, wondering how heavy they must be and if they maybe have to train to be able to pull them up.
When the flesh squirms and stretches into creases it shouldn’t, tightly hugging the core holding V’s soul and mind, her mechanical heart, and something burns or pinches and it pulls away to try again, sprawling all over her hollow inside and making friends with the new welded limbs, fitting into the new joints and moving them around, he’s listing the types of coats Great Danes are known to have and yelping at a photo of a black-white mottled Harlequin coat.
And throughout all that V locks her eyes on his, and sometimes he locks back, heartening her with more facts about Great Danes, keeping the widest smile he can even when great machine wings are drilled into her back, even as those wings try to fold into her and there’s not enough room inside so she has to be opened up again so some bits of burned flesh can be digged out to make space.
Even when the hours stop having meaning and the surgery goes on and on with no end in sight.
Even when a human hand gently brings her old severed arm still wet with oil to her face, and she laps it up like a thirsty, hungry, feral Great Dane that breaks into wild laughter when finally sated.
Even as the laughter turns into a howl and he’s no longer sure if she can hear him or if she’s there any longer.
Because if she’s still there, she won’t have to remember now. Because if he keeps his promise, she’ll be made to forget it.
And even if he has to remember it, for her, it’ll be worth it.