she had known the commander BEFORE his fall from grace, and she had known him after. one of the few that had watched the changes of the man she used to know so well mar themselves and demonize themselves into something different and startling from what they once were. a shadow of the leader that he once was – and, taz had been helpless to stop his downfall. for the first time since she was a child, she stood useless in the aftermath and debris of it all as she watched her friend crumble down into nothingness. into shattered pieces and debris that yearned and ached for who he once was.
taz wasn’t naive enough to think that up could ever be who he was before – the warrior had not been naive in any sense for a very long time. albeit, that did not soften or sate the rage that harbored in her chest; the need to rip and tug out every piece of up until she could see it arranged on her floor in bright, shimmering crimson. to use her bare hands to shove those pieces back together in a menagerie that resembled the man she used to know. she wanted to plunge hands in place of claws into his chest and rip out whatever human was left of it to shove into his face and distill salt upon said wounds until he burned with nothing but human pain ; if only to prove that that was indeed what he still was.
perhaps the ANGER was a byproduct of a guilt she had buried so far south that it merely harbored itself as an illness that wrapped around her bones and tattooed and splintered itself there.
“up-” she spits back – despite the growl of her name from his lips being unintentional, perhaps, hers was not. dripping and seething with venom and poison from every ounce of toxicity that her body could manage. as if her mere atoms were made of something less than human, something more dangerous and toxic than arsenic. her body a WAR MACHINE, her blood poisoning the water supplies and her lungs full of noxious gas. she felt, some days, she could merely breathe and planets would crumble – albeit, it had never been quite as STRONG as when up had been WHOLE and stood at her side as more of an equal than a commanding officer.
she felt a fire of it now ; when him hovering over her like a predator who did not truly realize he was the prey. but just a spark of a fire that could not flare to full fruition. and this too angered her. “YOU AREN’T TRYING HARD ENOUGH,” it was an accusation and a demand all in one. a challenge.
when his lieutenant says his name, it doesn’t feel like a comfort but a poison. something swilling and rotting him from the inside out. he WAS up. the same way he WAS isaac. they’re dead now, have been for a long time. neither received funerals because he held their corpses inside of him. the closest companions that he has. he can feel them both speaking now, isaac little more than a faint echo, they know so little of his past it’s hard to reconstruct--- up a stronger voice. opposing views, two sides of the same man who is now left torn in the middle. one demanding that he give her everything for she deserves no less, the other saying to release her for that is what she deserves. it’s hard to know which is which.
the challenge hangs in the air between them making it thick and heavy, harder to breathe now. i know. i know i know. I CAN’T. there’s a thundering in his heart, a pulsing in his head. he wants to try but he doesn’t know if he can. there’s always a lurking question of how much is programmed. if all robots are given an inhibitor chip does that mean he can never be the man he once was? that if he tries he’ll be stopped short and utterly helpless to the code that thrums through the mass of electrical currents housed within? he can’t bring himself to test the limits.
finally, he rocks back, resting on his knees as he looks down at her and something in his face shifts. he looks at her in an almost somber way. it would seem that the soft up is back, shaking his head. ❛ I CAN’T. ❜ he utters the words aloud, lets them hang there with the challenge before he cuts them down viciously with his next words. ❛ show me how. ❜
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