This is my first attempt at a GitS story, so please be gentle. This may become a collection of drabbles. Or not. Hope you enjoy it, and please review!
Movement
There had been a time when she had felt trapped inside this heavy artificial body. She had hated the lumbering, the thick fumbling with forks and shoe strings that other children performed with nimble fingers. The falls and scraped shins of a healthy childhood to her became marks of a failure to pilot this alien ship she found herself locked into.
And so she pursued perfection. Not in the way natural human women had done since time began with the primping of hair and skin and the slavish dedication to the scale. No, none of those things were within her control any longer or even important. Instead she sought with intense focus to learn every nuance of movement and action. She single-mindedly absorbed every scrap of information, memorized every muscle reaction and practiced each movement until the result was unquestionably correct. Until her prosthetic body became not just a shell but a work of art in motion; an extraordinary machine. Until she was judged to be one of the best in the world at doing what she did.
And how, she asked herself, was this any different than a professional athlete? They too knew their bodies better than most. They too could do extraordinary things with the muscles and bones under their control. The difference, she decided as she sat on the edge of her bed and studied her extended hand, was the feeling of ownership. Such was the difference between hearing a master pianist and seeing a ballerina dance. It is art without question, but the pianist plays upon his instrument. The dancer is the art.
She nodded softly and flexed each finger individually, watching carefully as she did. Yes, there would always be something missing from every motion she made, whether it was discernable to others or not. She no longer remembered what it felt like to flex her fingers to relieve the pressure of the joints or merely to stretch her sinews, the organic quality of the need for movement. No. Her fingers flexed because she told them to. And she watched. And felt nothing.