The world seems distant somehow, like someone had taken his ears and stuffed them with cotton and fog, muffling it into a gray zone that provided nothing but the numbness that grasped at the edge of his thoughts, what threatened to pull him under all those months of unending noiseless silence. He found himself reeling in it, hating the way it made him crumble like smoking ash under a storm’s breath, scattering the embers of his thoughts and feelings across an unfeeling landscape.
Apathy wasn’t the stage of his mental state, however, instead a turmoil of fire and brimstone with no end in sight, and no name to the emotion he wore. It was pain, surely that was what he was feeling, for it made his chest clench like his core was going to seize in agony, but too made him curl into himself as if hiding his face would prevent the hot tears rolling down his cheeks. Pain hurt, pain made one cry.
It wasn’t Vox’s fault that he was stuck like this, surely not, but then he could never blame the one he loved so much anyways. Oh no, it was that Green Bitch’s fault he had been so long without his partner, and his own for not being there to protect that which he held most dear. And he paid for it for every day since. It had been taken care of. There would be no issue anymore.
The android sank into his blue Knight’s embrace, face buried in the crook of his cool neck. It was a wash of relief, to feel that cold touch that he’d longed for all those dark nights. And Ziel sobbed, immobile and unable to lift his arms to pull the stormy one closer, afraid as if his partner would melt away and vanish like icicles in a summer day. To cry like this… To wail like this and be physically comforted the only way his closest friend could, the Dictator found himself reluctant to pull away, but sitting like this in the silence and his own echoes, Vox’s quiet voice…
He couldn’t stay this way.
The faded one found himself drawing back and into himself, his voice a quiet sigh in the dim lab. “You are here. I’ve been trying for so long, I…” Was afraid he’d never see him again. Without Vox? How could he manage anything without Vox…? “I… It’s good to hear your voice again.” To see those emerald eyes he adored.
Noize attempted to smile, he did, but it felt wrong on his face, wavering and nervous, like he hadn’t shown happiness since the blue one had gone. He hadn’t, how could he when there was no one else to smile for? Which wasn’t true, his Sister, Jack, and Poppy… Exhaustion seemed to fall more instead, his head dropping back to his love’s shoulder, his voice muffled.
Unable to do anything but hold his partner close, to whisper sweet nothings and comforts, Vox found his mind wandering. Stillness in the all too familiar repair lab, broken only by the sobs wracking Ziel’s body. By the gentle caressing of the taller machine’s back. How long had it been like this? How long has his savior been...
Your cruelty knows no bounds.
“Noize’s” neurosis had compelled him long before be the ambush that battered Vox’s body. A sort of obsessive need to please his own General and keep him within arm’s reach. A fragility balanced and slowly toughened by trust, by the blue one’s willingness to make the world look less dangerous.
Could a few days have shattered that? A few weeks? Another error mounted in the back of his head as he tried to focus, his internal chronometer still out of sync. The haze that hung over their embrace lifted as... Ziel... pulled away.
His core felt heavy at that statement, at the realization of how much he’d missed. How close his most precious person had been to-- he could hear the creak of fear in the Red one’s voice. Leftover weariness from his fits of despair, from events Vox could only hear the faint echos of.
An exhale. “...good to hear yours... too...” His voice reverberated weakly in his throat, in contrast to his arms wrapped tightly around his partner . “...let’s... get out of here...” He stood slowly, leaning to help the exhausted man who shared this lab with him, a soft nuzzle offered a stained cheek. They must have painted quiet the picture, disheveled forms clinging to each other as they rose morosely to their feet, and stumbled for the doorway.
“...I... I’m so sorry... love...“
