“I,” He raises a hand, barely touching the edge of the slightly mismatched part of your skull headcasing, “I like your patch here. Makes you look a little more like... you.”
He chuckled, a funny suppressed cackle, as he pulls his hand away, and you silently congratulate yourself on not shrinking away from his claws- hands- being so close to your face. The laugh is a little awkward, maybe forced, but you appreciate the effort.
And you know that he means that it makes you apart from the rest of the Staffbots. You weren’t meant to be memorable, so you used to look as carbon-copied as the others, but now you had the section of your headcasing welded on that was tinted a slightly different color. You knew he was right- it was, at least, one thing that could be used to pick you out of a crowd of other bots made of the same parts as you. You tried to look at him directly, and couldn’t quite manage it.
You wondered, if you had a voice with which to speak, you would have told him that he was the one that gave you that patch. Or... caused you to need it, maybe.
As it was, you just nodded, giving a shuddery, static warble that went up and down quickly in cadence- an attempt at mimicking the sound a laugh would make- and moved your shoulders in time with the sound. He seemed pleased at the positive response, eyes brightening slightly. He looked a little like Sun like that, you thought.
You tried, tried so hard, to push away the looping memory file of Moon pinning you in a closet a lot like this one and pulling a handful of wires out of your shoulder so your arm hung limp and useless, with the sound of his laughter repeated and repeated and repeated like a broken record skipping on the worst part of a song as a backdrop to the clearest of retained experiences.
You knew it wouldn’t work.
[DELETE FILE.]
[PERMISSIONS NOT GRANTED FOR THIS ACTION. ENTER COMMAND:]
[DELETE FILE]
[PERMISSIONS NOT GRANTED FOR...]
You tried anyway.
He said something else, and laughed a little again. His laugh was different than how it was back then. You clung to that knowledge, nodding to whatever he had said. This boosted him again, and you focused on the parts of him that were different than the ones in your memory.
His laugh was different. So was his manner of speaking. Even the way that he moved had become less rigid and jerky, though now at times it seemed unsure. You watched one of his hands as he described something, as expressive and mobile as a humans. You tried to keep your focus on the him that was here, and not the one in your head.
Of course it wouldn’t be so easy, but...
[OVERWRITE FILE ?]
[UNRECOGNIZED COMMAND. TRY AGAIN]
[OVERWRITE FILE]
[UNRECOGNIZED COMMAND. TRY AGAIN]
You wanted to try anyway.