He ran his hands over the synthetic sinew of her arms, fingers lightly exploring its texture. She was lost in thought at the moment as she realized the conformation of shape was different than if she still had skin there, and she began trying to compare the feeling. She was no longer sure she could accurately remember what her natural limbs had felt like, and this occasionally struck her with sudden dysphoria before rationality set the thought aside as moot at this point. This was who she was now. The mind was funny like that, making it difficult to think back to your past and see yourself as physically any different than you are now. Now became your entire identity and reality.
He came to her wrists and slowed considerably, admiring the delicacy and precision of movement in the joints as he took her hands and pressed them to his face. She moved her fingers slightly, carbon fiber structure with the palm-side covered in a slightly pliable self-healing and sensing polymer that could feel detail more finely than was possible for the most sensitive human flesh. This was her first time feeling someone so intimately since she had lost Megan. Her fingers twitched and made almost inaudible whirring sounds as she made only the slightest of movements, fearing to press too hard, but his face looked completely serene. He gazed unwaveringly into her eyes, seeing how her metallic irises reflected the soft evening light that came in through the apartment windows. Her thumb drifted down his face, grazing his lip with the gentlest touch she could manage, and she shivered at how it felt, and at how he opened his mouth in desire, eager to taste her.
Just hours ago she'd accused him of seeing her as an object to fix, something for his tech fascination, and said he'd never respected her. He'd never been interested in her before she became like this. He responded that he'd given her a hard time because he was stubborn and suspicious (they both were), but never doubted her, that his colleagues saw something in her and he trusted that, and grew to respect her enormously. She'd been dating someone before, and then mourning after that, but he still admired her as a colleague then, although he didn't show it well. He had a little bit of a chip on his shoulder about how he'd been treated in life as well, and it was hard for him to show affection until he felt like he might never have the chance to again.
Being a bit too honest after a few stiff drinks (she wasn't yet sure how being both an amputee and having a health maintenance system had affected her tolerance, and tended to misjudge), she admitted that she hadn't been sure if she even liked men, but they'd been through so much together, and there was something about him. His skill and expertise, and they both liked tinkering - although he seemed to be working on that damn motorcycle forever and he teased her about taking apart old mechanical things to see how they worked instead of building something relevant to the digital age. Then there was something alluring about his soft, white hands and his cool, graceful touch as he worked on her augments, and his reassuring voice in her ear when she was in the field. Competency and passion were what she had admired most in Megan, too, and the dignified way she carried herself, with her luxurious hair always tied up neatly above her high collar. She saw a similar admirable haughtiness in Frank, and wasn't sure what to make of the connection that her mind had formed.
Jensen had gone to see him in his office one night, retracting her shades and revealing her sad eyes as she asked, "What do we do now that it feels like it's all over?" She stood next to him, noting not for the first time that they were about the same height. "I know how you feel," he said quietly, returning her look. Being met with his smooth voice and compassionate eyes so close to her, she reached out swiftly and impulsively to touch his long hair. Rather than move away, he took her glossy carbon-black hand in his pale human one. She thought about how he was so comfortable with her tech, and if anyone she could trust would be unflinchingly okay with it, it'd be him. She pulled her hand back and slipped her leather coat off onto the table, revealing her armored body beneath, and waiting to see how he'd look at her. How many times had he seen what she'd seen and been right there guiding her through the maddest scenarios? And when she woke up stranded, beaten, and half-naked on that ship, it was his voice that she wanted to hear more than anything. Now, he looked from the coat to her stoic face, for once seeming unsure what to do.
Suddenly feeling like she'd been too forward, she quietly said maybe they should get together and talk at her place sometime, then hastily grabbed her coat and turned away. "Of course," was all he said. She gave him a glance over her shoulder. He was staring at her back, and seemed to lose his breath as he saw her in all her augmented glory right then. The dark stealth armor that was molded to her back and shaped around the metal access ports, how it blended into the pitch-black electroactive polymer musculature of her arm, which he could see twisting with her movement while its gold insets glinted. Her medium faux-hawk was a glossy, deep coffee color in the warm light of his office. She looked at him with one perfect eye, the pure white and metallic yellow-green of it framed by the black anodized titanium where her sapphire lense was sheathed inside her head. He caught the split-second rotation of her eye's aperture as it focused on him in the low light. In that moment, she was terrifying and inhumanly beautiful to him. Then she was gone and he was left standing there for a long time, thinking about what had happened.
He went to see her that Friday, and they drank and talked and let all of their feelings and worries out. They were mostly her worries about how she was seen now, and she couldn't believe he willingly chose to get cognitive enhancements for his job because as a security person she never trusted them, and she dismissed all the people telling her she wasn't prepared for her job unless she had them. Even she and Megan had fought over it, and it turned out that Megan had been right and now here she was, alone and with most of her body that she had taken so much pride in training, gone.
Strangers told her how good she looked now and questioned her about her enhancements and fetishized them. She still felt like she had just woken up from a long nightmare of paralysis and waking surgeries where they asked her questions as they tweaked her body, and the terror that suddenly struck her when she realized she couldn't see and she couldn't feel her arms or legs because they were gone. In the following weeks, she experienced a weird mixture of phantom limb sensations and searing pain as she adjusted to the loss of limbs and the introduction of new ones that worked differently at the same time. There was the feeling of dissociation as she found she had new things she could move with her mind, and she experienced strange mental sensations as she learned to release blades from her arms like twitching a new muscle. Then one day it was scarily like it had been there all along. This was all the stuff she wanted to tell the people who complimented her on how cool she looked while she stared at them through the shades that were now part of her face, and just felt empty. She wanted them to know that having the majority of your body replaced with experimental tactical equipment wasn't the same as going under to get a little cog implant.
Yet at the same time, no matter how bewildering it could be to not remember how your own body used to feel, she liked the power and precision. She could pop a ceramic blade from her forearm and give someone a close shave with it before they could blink, and never spill a drop of blood. She could sense more than most people wanted to know about those around her, and crack rudimentary computer security with her mind. Yes, she had needed this to do what she did. Now it seemed that she was her job, though. What was left of the rest of her? She didn't unwind at the gym after work or spend an evening reading anymore, because there was now no point. She didn't go out drinking with her friends on weekends. She'd been afraid to have sex or even try going on a date. Part of it was the grief, part of it was the shit she'd seen and was afraid she'd see again one day too soon. Part of it was fear of herself.
These were memories and feelings she had only revealed to Frank, because she worried when he confessed attraction that he was one of the fantasizers and didn't know what it was really like. But she knew that he was smarter than that, and she felt sure of his intentions and honesty as he told her about the professional admiration and growing affection as they had worked closely together, as well as being struck with that moment of terrible beauty. The last thought brought on those same mixed feelings as her walk between the freedom of unbridled power and the confusion of alienation from her human identity. She didn't know what could develop from this talk with Frank - or even what she was capable of developing - but touching another person and being looked at this way was what she needed right now. To be appreciated for who she is; not wanted for what she is.
He finally spoke, bringing her slowly back from the spiral of her thoughts. "May I touch your face?"
"Yes." The casual huskiness of her voice thrilled him, and he reached toward her, touching his long white fingers to the scar that bisects her eyebrow, then running them to the titanium inset on the side, and up into her thick hair.
She shuddered as a forgotten sensation ran down her spine. She relaxed her hands to his sides, not wanting to grab him roughly if these feelings become overwhelming, and trying to trust herself that nothing bad will happen. He moved one hand and then the other to trace the rods in her neck down to the t-shirt that covered her clavicle, and he felt a familiar awe at how well she blended tech and flesh. He so rarely saw this much of her, and thinks this may be the first time he's seen her without armor since her transformation. Experimentally, she tightened her hands on his thin hips and pulled him closer, wrapping her arms around him. It didn't seem too tight, as he pressed his face against the side of hers, seeming to revel in her warm mechanical embrace. She closed her eyes in relief and allowed her own enjoyment of their closeness to surface.
"Thank you for being there," she said after a moment, trying to keep the emotion out of her voice.
He pulled back to look at her. "Ada, you were there. For all of us. I never really knew how to thank you for that, if it were possible." Now it was his turn to hold her, trying to communicate to her how precious she was to him through the tightening of his arms. She rested her head on his soft neck, listening to the rapid beating of his human heart.