"Where is Mummy?"
Lily flashes a meaningful look at Will. This is the question they've been dreading. After all, how can you explain to a young robot girl, just brought to life, that yet another person who had briefly played the mother role in her increasingly convoluted young world had been ripped away? KT smiles unwaveringly up at them, patiently waiting for an answer.
Luckily, Eve takes the hint and bends down in front of her new sister, meeting her serious eyes with her own cornflower blue ones. "I'm not your mother any more, remember? I'm your sister! And I'm right here."
To their surprise, KT giggles. "I don't mean you, silly. I know you're my sister now. I mean Mummy."
They had been scared of this. Nick had reprogrammed KT as best as he could, but they weren't sure how deep Mary's influence had travelled into KT's young mind.
"We reprogrammed you, KT," Will insists, bending down next to Eve. "Mary never was your mother. That was just a cruel trick that she was playing on you, to get you to believe you were her daughter."
"No!" KT interrupts again, that sunny smile still on her face. "I don't mean her. I know Mary's not my mummy. She's too evil to be anyone's Mummy."
Eve looks faraway for a moment at KT's words, though she can't really argue over Mary's mothering abilities, since she doesn't really have any to speak of.
"Then who -?" Lily wonders aloud. That question is mirrored on all of their faces as KT smiles brightly up at them, still expectantly waiting for a reply to her question.
"We don't know who you mean," admits Eve eventually. "Who are you referring to as Mummy?"
"Mummy!" KT insists, not incredibly helpfully. "You know - Mummy!"
"I'm sorry, KT, we don't know who you want," Lily apologised after another moment of trying to furiously think of people that KT might have claimed as a maternal figure.
"You don't mean my mum, do you?" Will asks the girl hopefully. After all, Rebecca had been around a lot lately, and they didn't know how damaged the young robot girl had been by the effects of the EMP. Some of her identification functions might have been impaired.
At this, KT just laughs somewhat disdainfully. "How can your mummy be my mummy too? She's my grandmummy, silly."
"Yeah, of course. Stupid of me," Will says, rolling his eyes at the 'grandmummy' comment and the fact he had just been bested by a six year old.
"Katherine," Eve suddenly says quietly, her eyes widening in sudden realisation. Looks like her intuition had been working for the last few moments, trying to figure out the mystery. Will and Lily look at her, obviously not having been present for that particular conversation earlier in what had turned out to be a very long day. "KT wanted to know what we had been doing while she had been a prisoner at Mary's secret base," the older robot girl explained. "So I showed her my Recall Mode for this morning - including the conversation Abe and I had with Katherine!"
"What conversation?" Will asked in confusion.
Abe, who was sitting listening on the sofa, piped up. "Katherine asked - or pleaded, more like - for Eve's help to find KT, and we - well, Eve - realised that she actually cared about KT."
"Like a daughter," both Will and Lily echoed softly.
KT smiled even more brightly, if that was possible. "She created me, and cared about me when I was lost. My first real mummy! Eve says I'm named after her, due to the common abbreviation of Katie that Mummy apparently accidentally used when she was worrying about me. Is Mummy called Katherine, then?"
Will suddenly looked over in the direction of the kitchen, where they could just make out the seated form of Nick, staring at the floor with a stony expression. He had left as soon as he knew that Will was safe, saying he had to get to Calimov. He had returned just an hour previously, an unreadable look on his face. Of course, KT hadn't understood, but the three friends had known immediately what must have happened. "Is she -" Will had started hesitantly. Nick had just nodded, wordlessly. What was there to say?
And now Katherine was gone.
"KT..." Lily decides to start slowly, as Eve doesn't look like she knows what to say, for once.
"Yes Auntie Lily?" KT replies happily, transferring her gaze to her.
"Katheri - your mummy isn't exactly here any more," Lily tries to explain.
"Did she go on holiday, then, Auntie Lily?" the girl asks with that same bright smile. "Eve was telling me all about holidays before. I now know the 162 highest rated holiday destinations in this country. Has Mummy gone to one of them?"
Will suddenly hears a almost inaudible strangled sound from the direction of the kitchen.
"She hasn't quite gone on holiday," Lily says slowly. Then she quickly changes tactics, realising it might make a little more sense to the young girl. "In fact, KT, she's gone on a long holiday. A very long holiday. And she won't be back for a while."
"Is that because Lord Hoffman said she was looking tired?" KT wonders aloud. Eve casts a look at Will, who shrugs. KT seems to know far too much about everything that goes on, even when she wasn't actually there at the time. "But holidays only traditionally last up to four weeks at the maximum. Will she be back then?"
Lily throws her own somewhat accusing look at Eve, who shrugs apologetically. It's her fault for teaching KT quite so much about holidays, and now apparently ruining her argument.
Will takes over in their halted shared explanation. "You see, KT, this is a slightly different type of holiday..."
Suddenly, he's aware of Nick standing, leaning against the doorway with an unreadable expression in his eyes as he listens. Will is in no doubt that he's heard it all. He casts a helpless glance at his dad, and Nick evidently reads the same searching look in all three of their faces.
"Did Eve show you all of her Recall Mode?" Nick inquires quietly to KT, mercifully taking over their stilted explanation. "Including the part where we were trying to save Will?"
"Yes," replies KT, pulling a face. "I had to cover my eyes at that bit. It scared me."
"Do you know what would have happened to Daddy if Rebecca hadn't been able to save him?" Nick continues.
KT's forehead creases slightly in a frown. "The blue spark would have gone off inside him. He would have died," she replies unexpectedly.
Nick nods, crouching down in front of KT. "And do you know what happens when you die, KT?"
The girl nods, but she looks unsure. "I - haven't got the words," she says slowly.
"That's okay, KT. Most humans don't have the words for it either," assures Nick, who's turning out to be surprisingly good at reassuring robots today. "But that's what happened to your mummy as well."
"She lost the blue spark?" KT asks calmly.
"Something like that," Nick agrees.
"What happened?" is the immediate question. Any normal child would probably be confused or crying at this point, but KT just looks curious and slightly sad as she tilts her head in a frown.
Nick swallows. It's the first sign he's shown that he's trying to hold back emotion, and only Will sees it in his face.
"She died, because Mr Gwenlan's men took her in while she was trying to save you," Nick explained softly. "Lord Hoffman wanted to bring her down with the rest of us. There was a bomb, you see." Before KT can open her mouth to ask, Nick continues. "You don't need to know exactly what that is. It blew up her office. And - she was inside."
"She's lost the blue spark?" KT repeats, an artificial sadness covering her face in the only way she knows how.
"Yes," replies Nick simply. "But if it wasn't for her, we would have never found Mary's secret base in time. She was a good person in the end." And with that the scientist's eyes drop and he gets up from his crouched position, turning away into the hallway and vanishing from sight.
"So I'm never going to meet my mummy properly?" KT asks sadly, after a moment while she processes this new information. "I've never just talked to her alone. But still she's tried to save me. That means she cares about me."
"I don't think Katherine was ever a 'just talking' kind of person," Lily says. "But yes, she did care about you."
"I could see it in her eyes," offers Eve. "When she was talking about you. She was lonely, and she was beginning to think of you as her daughter that she never had. I could see it."
Will's fairly sure he can make out another strangled sound from somewhere in the hallway.
"But I still have you?" questions KT hopefully. "I still have you, Daddy, and Eve, my new sister, and Auntie Lily, and Grandma and Grandad? I still have a family?"
Eve hugs her tightly. "We're your family now, KT. And we'll never leave you."
KT's bright smile returns, although there's still a hint of sadness in her expression. "Then Mummy lost the blue spark for us."
"For us," echoes Eve. "Our family. And your future."
AN) The 'KT as Katherine's metaphorical child' comment in the finale was just too sweet not to follow it up ;)