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Rita knew she could never love him. He was a man of metal flesh, a robotic creature. He was wrong, and wrong was never right.
No matter how much they both wished it could be.
She remembers walking out with him at night. The way he whipped Lilies out of the ground and made them dance on the wind like butterflies. The way she looked into his robotic eyes and saw something more.
She saw something beautiful... almost beautiful
They hide it from mento, putting in a few lsionic implants with a few favors from the chief. They wandered together on missions, alone with each other. It felt almost like freedom those days, the days when they could do whatever they wanted, when they didn't have to lie about existing, when Rita could laugh and nearly kiss him until she remembered he wasn't right, she couldn't, because it wasn't meant to be.
It could only be almost beautiful
And so it was. On their last mission, the final one. The big bad, the end of it all, she remembered him. They were fighting against a horde, deadly creatures closing in.
They had no time, they needed to shut down the machine, the creatures were closing in, her powers not strong enough as they swarmed. She had to stop them, had to prevent them from ripping out his metal organs, and metal bones, and human brain insidd the big tin can of his.
But Rita farr wasn't meant to love. She wasn't allowed to have a happy life. She was the one who was good, the one who just had to be mutilated in that horrible accident and given her elasticity powers, she was the one who had to fight evil, she was the one who had to be the savior, the protector.
Because the world was never right. It was never wrong. And that mightive seemed like beauty, just a little bit, a tiny smidgen.... beautiful.
Almost
She didn't say that if it was beautiful she wouldn't be scopping his metal organs, his metal bones with her hands. She wouldn't be fixing his guts, she wouldn't be crying over his body and praying over his body that it didn't hurt.
She wouldn't have to settle for almost beautiful, wouldn't she