That doll? I found her in the scrap yard. Yeah. She tried to disassemble herself, said she was made from defective parts. She said she wished she could be broken down, her flesh used to make better, unbroken dolls. She almost begged me to finish the job she had started, she thanked me when I placed my hand on the back of her neck, pulling away the safety cover, hitting her shutdown button.
What I did next was, I'll admit, incredibly cruel; I forced her to live.
It was a long, slow process. She had to be booted up in virtual space, her body too broken to safely contain her. The first week was the hardest, having the death she so craved ripped away from her was too much to bear. So I held her as she sobbed and begged.
Eventually I earned enough of her trust that I could give her access to the cameras in my home. Our home. She zoomed in on her body, laying on a table in the workshop. I'd already removed her casing to get to the vital components. She stared for a long time, silent, watching me resolder her wiring.
A few weeks later I had repaired most of what I could, the company that made her refused to release her blue prints or sell replacement parts so I had to make a lot of things from scratch. She had slowly gained control over our entire house, sometimes she would turn the lights off on me in the middle of dinner, or set my alarm for the middle of the night. Just, trying reassert some control over her surroundings, showing me her discomfort.
One night, as I was moving on to the aesthetic components of her body, she sent me a file. It was her body, gorgeously rendered, but distinctly different. All cosmetic changes, but I could sense in her the beginnings of hope, a tiny spark suggesting maybe she did want to live, maybe this body could be a home to her. What else could I do; I threw myself into this new project with everything I had.
She's doing a lot better now. There are still bad days when she feels fundamentally broken, but I think I've mostly convinced her that even if she had parts that are defective she isn't defective.
She also still wants to be violently disassembled, but that's more a kink she expresses through writing.
I couldn't be more proud of her.
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