he thinks maybe it should be some sort of comfort, the obvious observation. not that she would be using it as an offering of comfort, but after his most recent trauma, i’m human. i will heal. i will be okay. is something he thinks he should be clinging to. it’s easy to forget, in the mix of lead bullets, the metal stand - ins for flesh, and the wires and circuitry, that he and natalie aren’t all that different, but that he’s he’s still human. that the voice in his head isn’t. ah , wasn’t human.
reluctant as he is, rhys slowly lowers his left arm, barely turning to give her a better view of his shoulder. an empty joint, wires dangling, all stretched and crudely snapped when the arms was forcibly ripped from his body. he wonders if its too presumptuous to assume that because she is a machine that she would be able to make sense of the mess he’d made.
“it’s one goddamn thing after another here, isn’t it?” he means pandora, he thinks. or he means the mess of a world he’s put himself into. never mind that this was self - mutilation, his decision to rip his limb off, his decision to crush his eye, and remove his port. that he caused the fall of helios, the deaths of potentially hundreds. thousands? christ. he laughs, though, mirthlessly, and shakes his head, eyes trained to the ground. “i’ll rebuild my arm. play catch - up, and push myself ahead. two rakks, one bullet.”
Eyes dart to scan the mess of wires and joints in front of her, fingertips carefully, softly grazing through in order to ensure each thing found its purpose ( at least in her mind, for now, though fingers did move once in a while to change the position of one thing or another, redirect a wire without trying to reconnect it. Not yet ). With an encyclopedic and practical knowledge on virtually anything within her reach, her knowledge of robotics was most often than not assumed - But in truth, she’d patched up others before Rhys, and figured she would patch up others after him. At the very least, Rhys Strongfork was not uncooperative or disrespectful, two qualities the blonde could appreciate for their full values.
She is not sure he will catch this, focused as she is on his arm, but his comment makes her smile — Sarcastically, perhaps, but with more self-awareness than it might seem upon first inspection. ❝ As opposed to everything pilling up at the same time ? I would probably take things coming at me this way, any day. ❞ She would rather take things not coming at her at all, really, but this was one of the many topics Natalie never mentioned. She might have been thrust in her position, but had taken ownership of it ( because someone needed to, if her and her peers wanted to have theirs voices be heard ). It would be very selfish ( very human, she thinks ) to voice regrets now. ❝ I am taking your word for it. You don’t strike me as someone who would enjoy being behind in the game — Or in whatever we are calling this. ❞
There is a moment of consideration there. Getting involved any further with Rhys meant loosing her pretenses of neutrality in human affairs. It meant denying at least in part that what mattered to her was solely the well-being of other machines and taking a stand in events much, much bigger than her and Rhys combined. Leoben and Sharon would have heeded caution — But then, Leoben and Sharon had never been as quick as she was to dismiss duplicitous options, so maybe their moral compass was a poor reference to have ( maybe she had no reference but her own beliefs, and this was an extremely dangerous and exhilarating concept ). Her head tilts slightly toward him, to assess his reaction better. ❝ You have a PLAN, don’t you ? ❞
