Cut Me Deep, There Runs No Blood
by Lacrimula Falsa
Disclaimer: All praise the Great Bird of the Galaxy. I do not own any part of the StarTrek franchise/universe. I make no profit with this. But my writing profits from constructive criticism.
Summary: Lore hates being repaired. They tell him androids feel no pain. But no one ever asked him if he does. One-shot.
A/N: I never could quite grasp what 'Angst' as a genre was supposed to be but I guess this is it? Maybe?
Warning: Mention of self-harm. Proceed with caution if this is a sensitive or triggering subject for you. Might also be triggering for depression.
Lore hates being repaired. He doesn't get wounded too often but he isn't indestructible.
When his mother cuts herself chopping vegetables - "Only lazy people replicate all their food." - his father is gentle.
"Does that hurt, love?"
"It's just a scratch, Noonien, stop prodding and hand me the dermal regenerator."
With him, it's just questions.
"Is it the servo, or the accelerator?"
With him, his father's voice is clinical, occasionally distracted and, if he thinks the injury is unnecessary, cold.
"You skinned nearly all of your arm again, Lore. Can't you pay attention? I have better things to do than to fix you all the time, damn it."
He never has something better to do when Juliana is hurt. With her, his voice is warm.
Maybe it is because Juliana bleeds.
Lore thinks he is bleeding, because there is fluid running down his arm after he cuts it. That is 'bleeding', isn't it?
His father tells him that is just coolant fluid.
"Not blood, Lore." Exasperated. Exasperated because his son is so slow.
That night, Lore cries. Or at least he thinks he is crying. Maybe it's just lubricant.
Maybe it is because her blood is red. Because she has muscles and sinew and bone.
He has servos and wiring and internal lining and sometimes he hates it. Hates his body that so strong and so fast but so not-human.
He reads that sometimes, humans hurt themselves. The book doesn't say why, just that it's unhealthy.
But he's no human, so he tries it anyway. He takes a scalpel and, with all the force he can muster, drives it trough his arm.
It hurts.
And that's what he hates the most, because it always hurts. Because he doesn't bleed and he probably doesn't cry but he still hurts.
When his father or mother rummage around his insides, trying to find a faulty component, it hurts.
When his father peels of a swath of skin-graft, it hurts.
He doesn't cry or make sounds when he is hurt like the humans do but something inside of him screams at him to get away and stopstopstopstopstop.
But his body doesn't move. His traitorous body that's so cleverly designed and so resilient doesn't even make a sound. His parents may shut off his body parts but it still hurts.
"Stop fidgeting, Lore."
"Oh Lore, don't make a fuss. It will be over sooner if you sit still."
He repairs the wound from the scalpel himself.
His father would be mad at him, his mother would be disappointed.
He can just picture their faces and it makes him feel like something heavy hit his stomach and stayed there.
They tell him androids feel no pain. No one ever asked him if he does.
(But then, they'd have to know, wouldn't they? They made him, after all.)
Maybe he is just broken, or wrong.
It's that thought that keeps him from telling anyone, not that anyone would ask.
Sometimes he wonders what would happen if his mother -because his father would never- would ask him if he's hurt and he said yes.
He's afraid she wouldn't care. Therefore, he's grateful, in a way, that she never asks.
He reads another book that day, a gift from the neighbour's daughter.
"Cut me deep," the main character says "there runs no blood."
The main character is a vampire.
Lore thinks that he has more in common with that vampire than with a human.
I'm a vampire.
And that thought's so odd and he starts laughing.
And he laughs and laughs and laughs and he can't stop. (Or maybe his voice synthesiser is broken.)
(They say that sometimes you can't see when someone takes a step towards madness because the step is so small.)
Later, he will find out that being without a body hurts the most, when his father takes off his head.
The End
A/N: So I was feeling kind of depressed and, well... (The first fanfic I started and finished on the same day and without interruption, I'm so proud. ;)) Also the way I write them the Soongs suck at parenting. Hm...