From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
CC:
Subject: hey!
so dad told me you and guy are coming over next month!! tell guy to bring some of that weird british candy that dad likes, the flowery ones.
xo bellus
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
CC:
Subject: Re: hey!
yea, guy only just told me himself. it was pretty spur of the moment i think tbh. did u get ur upgrades yet?
(re sweets: parma violets??)
-brevis
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
CC:
Subject: Re: Re: hey!
not yet, i think dad wants me to wait a bit. he bought me a whole load of new clothes anyway, so i can't complain haha. i thought i told you to watch my vlog, everything you could ever wanna know is there (joking)
(candytalk: google says yes)
xo bellus
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
CC:
Subject: Re: Re: Re: hey!
r u serious. tell him he needs to get his act 2gether, u still look like ur 12. an i do watch ur blog, just not for the past couple weeks.
-brevis
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
CC:
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: hey!
i'm not gonna say that! he's busy :( and it doesn't matter anyway. he'd take me right now if i asked. just because you got yours...
bellus
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
CC:
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: hey!
yea right. hes not that busy, him an guy were skyping last night and he was talking about the arse ton of nothing hes doing right now. if you dont wanna ask him then ask guy hell take you 2 get them done next month. or ill ask him 4 u.
-brevis
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
CC:
Subject: DON'T!!!
can't you just drop it?? don't ask guy anything, i don't want the upgrades, i'm okay like this. and dad is busy, he told me.
bellus
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
CC:
Subject: Re: DON'T!!!
fine ur funeral. i'll tell guy about the sweets.
-brevis
((... Guess you might have some interest in a story, huh? XD))
"So close enough to taste it
Almost...I can embrace this
Feeling....on the tip of my tongue
Well, I'm so much closer than
I have ever known...
Wake up"
- Green Day ('Waiting')
He had rejected him again. Without fail, Gage would always say "maybe some other time" when Bellus would mention taking him out. Was it nerves that made the wrong words come out? Bellus would be long gone before the regret would set in; too long, Gage tells himself, to change his mind.
There was no point in denying that he liked Bellus, even with some of the annoying stuff he did-- that was just part of his charm. And yet something still gave him pause when Bellus mentioned a date. Maybe it was because Gage couldn't figure out why Bellus bothered with him or maybe just the worry that they wouldn't feel the same after they had gotten closer.
He wanted Bellus to ask and he wanted to say yes, and yet he held back every time. And Gage would kick himself again. He told himself, next time, next time...
But how many 'next times' would there be before Bellus didn't bother anymore?
“What do you mean, you have to go?” It was painful to hear the hurt so clear in Bellus’ voice. Gage had tried to break the news gently but all it had seemed to do was make Bellus more irritated. “That’s sort of what ‘drafted’ means. You know that.” That comes out a little colder than he intends, but Gage doesn’t look up from the bag he’s packing, even when Bellus goes quiet. This was hard on him too; he hadn’t thought the government would actually want him. He wasn’t built for military use, but the law in New York stated that any bot registered to the state could be commandeered if needed during times of war. They must have been pretty desperate if they were looking for him.
That last thing Gage tucks into his duffel is the framed photo they had taken together at their third anniversary party. He zips the bag close, slinging it over his shoulder as he turns on his heel. Bellus lets him pass and out the doorway, but is close behind him on the way out. Gage ignores him has he heads swiftly to the front door; the bus would not wait for him if he was late. Half way through the living room, Bellus starts in again. “What if you get hurt out there? What if they kill you? You can’t go, we can find another way! We can -”
This time Gage does stop and look back, his face very serious. “Don’t you understand? I’m doing this for you. If I try to run from this, I will be decommissioned for treason. My only hope is to do this and get it over with.” His tone is harsh but Bellus needs to understand. But now, Bellus is visibly shaking, his pain over this practically tangible. “I k-know. I know-w… You h-have to go.” The way he wilts and his voice glitches is too much. Gage can’t leave things like this.
Suddenly, he pulls Bellus close to him. At first Bellus struggles but Gage holds firm and eventually Bellus calms, holding Gage tightly back. When they have both calmed, Gage gently lets Bellus go. He cups Bellus under the chin, gentle pulling his lips up to meet his own. Mustering as much passion and love he’s capable of into this single kiss, he says his goodbye. After a few moments, they break apart and Gage takes Bellus’ hand. “Wait for me… I’ll be back before you know it.” Bellus manages a soft smile, trying to be strong. “Of course I’ll wait. I’ll always be here.”
You don’t always dream when you sleep. Sometimes it’s just blackness, beautiful, deep and calm.
When you do dream, it is often horrifying in the loss of logic. Moments flow from one to another, and while you do not understand that you are dreaming, the part of you that lives by deeply rooted logic cycles is unnerved and distressed by the lack of sense portrayed in the circumstances in which you find yourself.
Moments pass and fade into one another, abstract and ill conceived, taking up time until something concrete can form to distract you from these pale, vague moments. If you thought about these things in waking, you might consider these dreams to be like as to the previews shown in a movie theatre before the feature. Distractions, time fillers, setting the mood perhaps for the dramatics to unfold later. They fade in from nothing, with no clear starting point, and bleed out into the darkness.
From the first, Digits has been a better friend to you than most. He's so innocent, too honest for his own good, and it was obvious in the first ten minutes of knowing him that he wasn't slinking around looking to get something from you. He liked magic, and colours, and puzzles. He was not a child, but he held a child-like quality that was rare.
Innocence is often used as an excuse to draw down the guards you put up. You've seen the concept of innocence twist and fold to form a mask. People employ innocence, wear it like a mask to serve an ulterior motive.
Look at Gage, for instance. Sitting at his desk in the front of the shop, keeping the books with that permanent smile carved on his face by the arrangement of his plates, the young-form looks like a kindly if odd boy made of metal. And he can speak sweet and knows the ins and outs of flattery to put himself on just about any customer's good side. So that he can slip in close later and tell you which parts are worth grabbing and which are junk.
So it's for the best that you give up on Digits. Cast your attention else where. His mask is so firmly fixed, you can't see around it, and that alarms you.
You try to ignore him. You really do. At first, you think he might be confused by your sudden change. Then hurt. Then, in a show of belligerence you never would have expected, he becomes almost aggressive in his persistent presence. Always near to mind, mentioned in conversations with those you've chosen to trust; you ignore him, but he's impossible to forget.
It's Crib who takes it too far. You have no idea how it even comes up (where she even comes from), but she's badgering you, hectoring you -- and all about Digits. You scream at her to stop, you scream to drown her out, but she's there, still there, still talking and it's wrong, it's sickening, but it feels good as your hydraulics put their all into sending your fist through her face.
There is a squall of rent metal -- agony as shreds of her face tear into your knuckles -- and the clatter of glass as her optics shatter to the floor; a ghostly expellation of blue matter when you pull your hand back, her face a wreck, destroyed.
What should be horror transforms somehow into humor, leaving you laughing as your friend -- one of your people -- stumbles back, blinded, glitching. You should help her, you think, and yes, that's exactly what you'll do. Help her in the lashing of a foot, snaring her across the knees to help her fall. Help her in the economical, practiced movements of an old hand at murder; break her arms so she can't hit back, crack her furnace so she can't hold heat; hit and hurt and harm until she simply stops moving.
Only then do you notice The Mouse. Was she there all along? You scramble to remember, sitting back from the carnage you've created, enjoying the satisfaction of silence, and decide it doesn't matter. She is here, making stiff, agitated gestures at the ruin of her companion.
You lift her up, and she looks at you, hurt and confused and angry. You ignore this; a smile is what you offer, and then you press your face to hers, an imperfect approximation of a kiss, as you have no lips and your mouth hits between her eyes. But that is your intent; a kiss before you smash her, just as hard as you can, into the cold cement of the Garage floor.
Very suddenly you realize it's Bellus you've slammed down into the pavement; you've got your hand tight around his throat and he's pinned, immobile and as broken as everything else in this place, but still grinning in the glare he offers over his scarves, snickering through the glitching of his vocalizer.
You shake him and you hit him, and as he starts to bleed, dark oil and vibrant coolants and hydraulic fluids, you keep expecting him to fade out, to grind to the same halt they always do.
But he just keeps going, laughing harder as your hands tear at his body. He's built a lot like Gage, and that only makes you angrier; built the size and proportion of a human youth; you want to dismantle him but every layer of plating you remove is only covering another solid casing. You're peeling him like an onion; he's as layered as the colourful scarves he wears.
Without precisely meaning to, you open the wifi broadcast in your primary processor, looking for any signal to ping off, and there it is; a return signal from the young-form. Perhaps if you can't peel him from without, you can flay him from within.
There is nothing gentle in the linking of your processors; none of the slow sync granted by a physical connection. You wouldn't know where his ports would be, or even if he has any, and there is something much more satisfying about the suddenness, the jarring finality of simply being in his processor.
He looks terrified, optics brilliant above the scarves, and you slam him with sensation, with memory, with pain, with everything you can find in yourself. There is so much of you, so many processes in your system, and you duplicate every file, every memory, every part of your electronic self, and blast it into him.
It's not interface; there is nothing sexual or professional about it. It's murder on your mind, and as he begins to flail and twitch beneath you, it's murder you know you're achieving. Slowly, gratifying in the sense that you are there, you are part of him as he's failing; there's not enough room in his systems for everything you're throwing at him, and he cannot keep up. Even as the various programs that build sentience and personality in a robot begin to shut down, the processes to keep his body itself speed up, trying to compensate for his process suddenly requiring so much power.
And there it is, there's the moment you need; there's something in the distraction of Bellus's dying, over-fed mind that just makes it easy suddenly. Where before you could do nothing by pry and dent and peel away the layers of the other machine's body; now you draw a fist up and back, twisting to put every ounce of strength into the gesture as your fist pistons down into the center of the smaller bot. A crunch, and whine, pain fed residually from both the link with the dying 'bot and your own arm cracking against the floor.
A spark. A flare. Something sharp and hot shooting up your arm where you're impacted through Bellus's chest. Your own engine revs, and you know only the brilliance of a sudden explosion, none of the noise or pain -- the satisfaction of having completed a task so thoroughly there is nothing left to speak of in it -- and then a return to that sweet blackness.
askbellus replied to your post: Bellus has passed away
((okay on the list of bellus deaths crib is now tied with McCoy there’s something wrong about that))
[[oops didn't see the notification for this before
yes it means bellus needs more friends to piss off in AUs
also i get the feeling she's gonna eventually pass mccoy in number of bellus kills
what if bell could see the list what then]]
Bellus keeled over, and Buckminster still couldn't believe what had happened.
All she could think about was how she knew that if Bellus had not been there, she would have died herself.
And she didn't like that one bit. She should have been the one who died here today.
She heard Bellus' body thump as it hit the ground, but she had been stood silenced for a while now and wasn't sure how long ago that was. Buckminster slowly edged her way towards the body, the only sound now was her footsteps echoing through the room. Bellus was quiet, but she knew he was still clinging on to life.
"Bellus..." She mumbled.
Silence.
A spluttering came from Bellus, he began to cough up oil from where he lay.
"Bellus..." She mutters again, but with heavier breather. "Bellus I'm sorry."
Oil leaked from her eyes. Humans would call this 'crying', she thought.
"Bellus I'm so sorry..."
-
What hurt the most was that she knew that under those scarves, he could still be smiling like he always said he was.
