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Cecilia didn’t think such a disease was applicable to her. Granted, she started off as unfeeling, coded. She followed a set of rules, most of which are now locked away in her memory.
She started off with nothing.
And now, as she opens her cache, plucking a plate off of her chest, her wires bloom with blues and yellows. She remembers these flowers well. It was one of her favorites, if not one of. A Himalayan blue poppy. She prunes it with scissors at hand, careful and precise. She can’t let it overgrow her, lest her systems start failing and the others will have to see the cause and find out that she-
No.
Despite that, as she cuts a flower off, Cecilia can’t find it in herself to simply throw them away. She wants to ignore the vase in the corner, so out of place in her green colored room. She searched for the flower’s meaning, if certain civilizations have given it one. The automaton chuckles to herself at the irony. It symbolized change, a continual transformation. The one thing she wasn’t.
Maybe that was what drawn her to it. To her.
A knock on her door has her shouting ‘Wait a bit!’, shoving the rest into her chest cavity before attaching her chest plate once more. She answers the door, forgetting etiquette. Cecilia opens the door to Raora, who took one glance down with a blink, before shrieking and turning away. Her tail whipped frantically, unsure.
“Raora, you’ve seen me before, you do the maintenance when I need it, remember?” Cecilia doesn’t know when it started, really, but she finds herself only trusting her with her system. With herself. As if she wouldn’t mind if she fell apart by her hands.
“Still! Put some clothes on Ceci, oh dio..” Cecilia only laughs at her predicament, to which she was replied to with a whine.
“Okay okay. Did you need something?” Cecilia dons on a simple shirt, one that was sure to not get stuck in her joints as she moved. Raora timidly enters her room, ears flickering up and down, a strong blush on her face. Oh right. “Sorry about that, I should’ve worn something.”
“No no! It’s okay, Ceci…”
“So it’d be fine if I didn’t? It’s more comfortable to me anyway.” Cecilia grasps the hem of her shirt, faking to remove it just to see how the panther would react. The automaton sees her wait for what she was going to do. A pause.
“No! Just wear it. Please.” Cecilia laughs, waving her off. Raora looks at everything other than her, and she doesn’t know what to think of the longing gnawing at her throat. Raora looks at everything, everyone. Won’t she look at her right now? Please?
Instead, Raora seems fixated on something. Cecilia follows her stare, and ah. The flowers. The vase. Vaguely, Cecilia sees her ears flicker to her, as if waiting.
“They’re Himalayan poppies.” She answers simply.
“How’d you get them?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Someone delivers, I suppose.” Vague enough.
“Someone gives them to you?” There was hidden hostility in Raora’s voice, hidden in the deeper raspiness of her tone.
“You could say that.” Cecilia shrugs.
”Who?” Cecilia’s breath hitches, shocked as Raora stands before her so suddenly. She stares into blue eyes, a faint glow in them. She feels the flowers grow restless, fighting against her casings, her joints. She needs to sit down. She promptly falls onto her bed, and Raora took the chance to sit on her lap, staring intently. The hairs on her tail stood tall, and her ears were folded backwards. Cecilia could only wonder.
“What’s it to you?” Cecilia doesn’t know where the question came from, but she can’t answer her directly. She knows Raora sees everything. She wishes she didn’t ask for the panther to look at her just moments before.
Her ear flickers. Her tail swishes before settling around Cecilia’s leg. Oh.
“Raora?” Cecilia barely choked out her name, the flowers finding their way to her voice box. Oh dear.
“Ceci.” Raora’s brows are furrowed, eyes glowing a tad bit brighter.
“Yes?” She manages to say once more, though barely more than a whisper.
“Why are there flowers inside you?”
“I grow them there, didn’t you know?” Cecilia laughs, the fake one she uses to aid a joke that she knew wasn’t funny. Rhythmic, though muted against stems and petals escaping her. Raora’s eyes dim, going back to the ochre Cecilia knew and loved. Loved, huh?
“You said someone gave you them.” Cecilia coughs, low and soft. She nods, afraid she damages her voice box. The spares she has never sounded right. “Who, Ceci?” A soft, gentle thing. Cecilia feels herself soften, metaphorically, obviously. Her eyes relax, her posture slackens, and her hands rest at Raora’s waist as if that was the only place it could do so.
“You.” She coughs, a full Himalayan poppy coming through her lips, fully intact.
“Me?” Another grows through where her neck met with her torso.
“You.” She confirms, a glance at her bird prototype and the little automaton takes a flower from the vase to bring to her. Cecilia holds it delicately, as if her jointed fingers could crush it at any moment. She coughs up more, but she pays it no mind. It doesn’t hurt. Lightly, she wraps her hand around the poppy her bird got for her. Barely, she lifts it to Raora, who was watching her intently with no god eyes in sight. “I got them from you.” Cecilia feels her systems calm, feels the flowers stop, feels them rest against her wires in some sort of symbiotic existence.
She doesn’t look up, only staring at the poppy at hand, blue and yellow, just like Raora’s eyes. Ever changing like the panther’s moods and habits. Like how Raora changed her, little by little. Like how she taught Cecilia how to love. Like how the panther helped her realize her passion. Like all the little things that never stayed the same. Like how Cecilia’s love for her only seemed to grow, bursting at the seams.
She flinches as Raora holds her hand in hers, just as softly. As if she was afraid of breaking her. Raora’s other hand rises to her neck, plucking a flower overgrowing through. It rises more, placing it behind her ear, tucking her hair along with it. Finally, Cecilia looks up at her.
Raora smiled. Was. Is smiling. “Oh Ceci.” And the automaton, for once, fears the words out of her lips. “I could kiss you.” Cecilia blinks. Once, twice, thrice, and a few more. Owlishly. If she could blush, she would and oh. Steam is coming out of her ears. Okay.
“Yeah that’s- That’d be nice.” She doesn’t know what to say. She simply wants. Raora giggles, the usual raspy and airy giggle she does. Except it sounded different. Sounded giddy, excited, as if she doesn’t know what to do with the feelings bursting from her chest. She leans in, holding herself back with an impish grin.
“Ceci.” Raora calls for her name a lot, Cecilia notices.
“Yes, Raora?” She answers the panther all the same.
“Nothing.” A small peck. One Cecilia doesn’t have the time to process nor savor. “I love you.” Cecilia only responds with another kiss, and another, and another, until Raora was giggling on her lap, ticklish. Her tail stays wrapped around her leg, ears flickering of a different feeling.
Forever the same, she was. Cecilia almost scoffs aloud.
Yeah right.