Pairings: Akashi X Murasakibara
Characters: Akashi Seijuro, Murasakibara Atsushi
Ratings: PG
Warnings: None.
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Sci-fi, Vignettes

Disclaimer: I don't own the characters in this story, living (or passed) human beings or fictional characters. These events never happened, according to history or as the original author intended them. This is a work of fiction and is not intended to offend. For entertainment purposes only. Thanks.

Author's Note: This story was written (10?) years ago, when I first started to write fanfiction. The story was originally published on the site I used to write on, but has been erased for several years since the original site shut down and the fanbase for the pairing has lessened considerably. I didn't have the heart to discard the story, so I changed the characters to who I thought best suited the original characters and edited the names, but the majority of the writing I left as raw as when it was written (10?) years ago. Hope you enjoy!

I stared at the blank, black screen in front of me hoping for some meaning to come. Nothing did. There was no pictures. There was no meaning. There was no power.

I reached upwards and snagged the string that turned the side lamp on and off. I pulled it and felt the light wash over me. I pulled it again and felt it go out. Oddly, I felt warm with the light on and continued to pull the string; on , off, on, off, on, off. Until I grew tired of pulling. It decided to leave it on, at least one part of the house would be lit then.

It's four am. The only way I know this is the digital clock on the telemedia box below the TV. But the TV is hollow. Nothing inside but a glass screen and a motherboard. Same with the cabinet it sits in. Only a TV, with its glass screen and motherboard.

Well, in its entirety, so is the house. Just four walls, with glass windows and inhabitants, just like the motherboard. I could see us acting as the central processing units, making sure everything that needs to be done gets done. Reacting like the random accessible memory, to re-perform mundane, everyday tasks that need doing. And just like the power supply unit, when we aren't rested and run out of battery, we let the entire system die and become unusable.

Sick.

Sad.

Reality check.

We're become so plugged in with a second life, with getting up and telling an idiot box how our day was, and reacting to our friends' posts that we forget just how close in reality they actually are. I could reach out my arm and feel the person typing away on some device, but instead I press an icon on my phone screen to like their status instead. How did we let this happen to us? Not just as a race but as a team. What happened to make you sit at that computer for hours on end, typing up your life? And how are you typing up your life when you haven't even lived it yet? I see no logic in that. I see barely any logic in anything around me anymore.

I fall back to the things that I can see, smell, and taste. I fall back to the bottle because it's there. It's real. It's not some micro-optical, non-physical entity that I confounded my life to. The bottles of sake are more real to me than those digital realms. And yet, somehow you use me and leave me just as empty as one of those tall, generic bottles. Generic. What used to make us special, so different from the rest of the world, has been erased in order to make way for the generically manufactured magic-box, which in turn made us that very thing ourselves: generic. Ironically we all purchased into the technological boom with the intention to become closer than we had ever been, but while you're spending your time with that box-with-no-brain, you ignore me. Instead, I become the box, with two glass screens for eyes and a motherboard, in which it makes me sit here at four am and pull a lamp cord as I watch a screen just as blank as I am.

So what is it? The box is hollow. And if I am the box? Then I am hollow.

Yes, that's what you've made me. I am a hollow box.

I pulled the cord in my grasp. Not with my arm to pull it down, but with my fingers to dig the nails into my sweaty, calloused palm. I realize I am glaring at the TV, my screens glowing up from thin slits. I can see my reflection in the glass, looking pained and sickly. But I can also see you, typing away, as if a torrent of people on the other end of the line will be in a crisis if you don't blog.

I can't see how we got here? How did it end up that you blog every night, every morning to be exact? We used to explore the city together. We used to practice our skills together. We used to have conversations and think. We weren't hollow before. But now we are. Now I am.

You sigh heavily and I pull the cord. The light goes off. I pull the cord. It clicks back on.

"Aka-chin?"

You turn in your chair and I feel a shift. The word you've spoken means something to me but it seems too distant a thing for me to understand.

"Aka-chin."

You wipe your fingers over your eyes, pressing the tips slightly into them and rubbing down your cheeks. I turn my head numbly to face you, my twin screens' shutters close and reopen. I can almost hear the whirling of a lens focusing in my head.

"Aka-chin, can you not play with the lamp chord? It's making it hard for me to concentrate."

I click the lamp on in response, letting the cord snap back upwards and out of my palm. The warm metal leaves a deep imprint in my hand but I let no emotion show on my face. My mouth remains straight, my eyes, no, screens remain narrow.

"Akashi, why don't you head to bed? I'll be there in a minute." You shuffle, wanting to return your attention to that precious box, with its precious brain and enamoring conversation.

I feel my body like lead as I attempt to stand. First, I uncross my legs. Then I rise to my feet, without moving my arms. Without calculating what or why I was doing, my hand reached out and tipped the lamp over. My shadow grew up against the wall, my body cast in darkness. You turn back from the screen glaring at my foolishness. I hold no emotion.

"Aka-chin, what are you-"

You pause.

You see the emotion, or lack of, in my face. You see the damage you've caused. For the first time in a very long time, you have a reaction to me. I wonder if it's because my eyes are square and glass or perhaps because my hard-drive is streaming from my ears like melted film. Perhaps it's simply because you're shocked to see I'm not square and gray, like all your other friends.

Robotically, I place on foot in front of the other, careful not to bend at the knees when I'm moving. I have no joints, remember? I move at a calculated five miles an hour, which should be equivalent to about one foot for every one beat in a standard four/four beat of time. If I had a microphone plugged in, perhaps I could hear the soft thuds of my mass hitting against the floor as I moved? But I didn't even have speakers, so it's not like you could hear me.

"A-ka-shi?" You ask, watching me move towards the bedroom. It's the first time you say my full name in years. I stop at the entrance to the hallway and make a 'beep' noise as I pivot a casual ninety-degrees. I then continue my stride down the hallway, my lenses refocusing the pixels so that the image remained clear of my destination.

I hear the keys clicking in the front room. The sing-song sound of your beloved box saying good night as you realize all is not well offline. But our box Atsushi, our box, has already ran out of battery. And now, my PSU is dead.