A short, female figure darts around hurriedly; short hair flicks with the hurried motion; two long, slender, petite fingers pound incessantly on the keyboard; two eyes unblinking focused on the computer screen all the time…. A heart beating against her ribcage. Another heart beating along with hers.

The cold glass of water touches her lips. The screen blinks in red, bold letters. Loud, blaring sirens go off, the violin hidden in the corner of the room trembling with the high energy vibrations.

Seven brave hearts dash towards the exit, only one returning a few minutes later.

"Hey doc?"

She raises an annoyed eyebrow, before swiftly looking back at the computer screen, her mind ready to come up with a spiteful insult for whatever stupid words are about to leave his mouth.

Silence follows instead, and when she looks up, she faces only a warm, gentle, reassuring smile.

The fingers pause for a second in alarm, and a soul realizes that she is still living, that she is still not immune to pain and exhaustion and stress.

The thing is, he always dreamt of being a ranger, even though he never wanted to be one, and when he finally became one, he wanted to run away. Yet, he's the only one with that smile that makes her stomach churn, in a way that she hates to like. He's the only one who tries to sneak out of every fight- he is the only who is confident that they will win every time.

"Good versus evil… Us versus them… enemy I can see with my own eyes…" – she doesn't really understand human conviction so much. It's complicated, it cannot be expressed in simple sines, tangents and cosines, and no one taught her how to deal with it.

A smile? Her mind does know how to react to that.

Fingers pounding at the screen, instructions echoing through the intercoms, his panicked squeal makes her eyes roll, a disturbing feeling at the pit of her stomach that she realizes she likes.

He thinks that placing the white, chef's hat in her office and continuously ranting to her about his 'amazing culinary skills' is going to make her change her mind about learning to cook, and that too, from him- the master of damaging things and getting into trouble.

He is so wrong this time.

Her place is not in the kitchen.

Her place is in the lab, with machines and untested gadgets- cold, harsh metal and their hollow clicking sound her only companions.

A plate of bacon is placed on her table at 1 at midnight, and she wonders how a person so concave can have such deep thoughts.

She doesn't understand. Human feelings are too complicated. And that thing swelling in her heart, which makes her thank him for his consideration, scares her.

A person who grew up with machines, away from human touch, away from sunlight, the fresh air of monsoon, the first kiss of rain.

A person who grew up in an orphanage, amidst people who weren't his own, but who cared more than blood would.

Electrons attract protons. She understands that.

She doesn't understand the electric shock she feels when their hands brush. It's too complicated, and she'd rather deal with easy things, like deciphering the macro-molecular codes of an abandoned Venjix bot.

Copper coils, that red scary light, a dreadful mechanical voice, people running around everywhere, a giant bot hammering a tall building, a scared female screaming out the names of Gem and Gemma….

She whimpers in her sleep. She's a human being living with machines and dreams concerning machines.

There are patches of green strewn in her dreams, shark appearing out of nowhere, in a random uncontrolled tail spin, and her lips curl upwards in a weary smile.

"Even the most flawed human is better than the most perfect machine."

He talks with his mouth full, placing his feet on the table, socks still smelling like last month, and she doesn't want to analyze who she was talking about. She has tons and tons of toxic chemicals to analyze, after all.

She has never said goodbyes, never been taught how to do it, but she thinks she does pretty good.

His hands wrap around her arms, grins lighting up their faces, and she wonders when the thin line of hatred blurred.

She can spot a tiny change of a single character in her program. How could she miss something so big?

Fingers interlace, and she thinks she knows, gets it now.

Machines, gadgets, bots, numbers, codes…. There was always a heart within her. A soft, innocent, tender heart that dared to chase that butterfly...

(A/N: this is my first ZigK, so please tell me if you like this and if you will allow me to enter your fandom. Should I write more one-shots/drabbles?)