#ludwigplaytime

[innovationhasnomercy]

Elliot’s been observing Harley for some time, watching him walk to and fro, attending to his work.

Harley never says anything, and yet…

“You’re faltering in your movements,” Elliot comments, mildly. “I think you’re due some maintenance, my boy. I could be of some help, I think.”

@ludwigplaytime

Harley's movements only pauses for a micro second before he immediately resumes what ever he was tinkering with. He's bristled up with Elliot's words as unintentional and harmless they've seemed to be. "I just did routine maintenance. I'm fine and I don't need your tinkering." Did he? He remembers doing it but he can't recall when. It feels recent enough so it surely must be.

"Especially if you don't know what you're doing." He adds, gesturing his hand his direction before placing it back on the table in front of him.

[yourheartbeatsforeverinmymind]

“Maybe if you’d given Harley the recognition he wanted and deserved, he wouldn’t have needed to always strive for more until nothing was good enough for him!” Not even me. “I didn’t force ‘your son’ to do anything he didn’t want to do!”

@ludwigplaytime

[innovationhasnomercy]

“HARLEY!!” Elliot bursts through the door in a frenzy, panting, struggling for breath.

Doubled over, panting, he jabs a finger towards the robot.

“You… you aren’t pregnant.”

He sounds a little less sure about that statement than he should.

- @ludwigplaytime

Being interrupted from his spiral by... this... was not what he'd been expecting. Snapping back to attention from whatever mindless task he'd been doing to face Elliot.

".... What?" He seems out of it, really. Voice slightly distorting and screen static filled. And the lack of confidence in Elliot's worries him as well. "No— What?"

[innovationhasnomercy]

He has no idea what’s happening, much less how— but that doesn’t matter right now. Elliot hurries to squat down beside him.

“Harley… breathe— you need to breathe, son. In through the nose, out through the mouth.”

~ @ludwigplaytime

Poor poor Harley is folded in on himself, arms tight around his chest as he struggles with the meer, monument task of breathing. He makes a frustrated sound, trying to convey the fact that if it were so easy as Elliot made it out to be, he would be doing just that. Everything is just too much. He can't handle it. Harley feels as if he's suffocating.

[Human Again: 3/15]

[innovationhasnomercy]

Harley?

…What’s happened to you?

- @ludwigplaytime

"Elliot Ludwig. My my, I havent seen your face in quite some time. Not often when the dead come to visit now is it? But you wouldn't know much about that would you?" The Doctor laughs then and it's a sound that's cold and biting.

"As for what happened to me, it's a very long story. How much time are you willing to spare me, old friend?"

[yourheartbeatsforeverinmymind]

Elliot would clock Leith just seconds before the other notices him.

Surprise turns to rage in the blink of an eye—

“You.”

~ @ludwigplaytime

Leith jumps and dodges right before the blow connects. “Ell- Mr. Ludwig! What a surprise! Why… why are you looking at me like that?” His gaze darts from Elliot’s face to his fist. He’s already been punched once today, and he doesn’t expect Ludwig to balm the wound quite the same way his previous attacker had…

It should be more of a shock to see him; the Elliot Ludwig he knows is long dead, but that doesn’t seem to mean anything anymore at this point.