Frank awoke to momentary disorientation and his eyes searched for something to focus on, as the first light of dawn was just beginning to become a faint glow that he could see through the open blinds. He felt something warm and solid like plastic or metal that weighed on his chest, and sleepily reached up to try to remember what it was.

He startled himself more awake when he realized it was a hand, and he set up on his elbows, his blood rushing to his head with a surge of adrenaline. He instantly remembered that it was Ada, but still something about the situation had scared him. Aside from the disorientation, his immediate thought was fear of startling her. He knew a lot about her, including that her blades had a safety that was automatically engaged when she fell asleep or lost consciousness and that took a moment to disengage upon waking, but he still worried. There had never been a problem with the select few people that had this technology, but when you were dealing with equipment that was one-hundred percent neurologically controlled, it brought into question just how well they could understand and engage that control. How good was anyone at telling when someone was fully conscious, or whether they were having a waking dream? How about sobriety? This is why there was a momentary delay before disengaging safety, despite debates over how efficacious this was for people in combat situations. As a corporation, they had to err on the side of caution for themselves, above all else.

His second thought was that he didn't want to wake her because she used to complain about how difficult it was to sleep without sedatives (which in her case, mostly consisted of heavy liquor). In the dim artificial light of her apartment, he saw the creamy skin of her uncovered back and how it blended with the soft white of the bed sheets, the silver and pink lines of her scars, and the contrast of the metallic holes in the skin above her shoulder-blades, her espresso-colored hair, and the mixture of matte and glossy black on the arm that was draped over him. Her face was turned away from him, buried in the single pillow that she had, perhaps as a testament to her determination to be alone. He'd fallen asleep on the wadded-up red duvet.

He wanted to touch the smooth skin of her back again to remind himself of how good it was to feel it for the first time last night, like listening to a snippet of a favorite song and getting back that feeling of how it felt the first time you heard it. He was so used to seeing her fully-dressed, her augments and armor hidden under her overcoat. It was amazing, jarring, and somehow like a wonderful dream to see her body underneath, and to feel how human she still was at the core. Last night, her hard hands had gripped his shoulders, pulling him onto the bed, on top of her. Her breath was soft and controlled and smelled like warm whisky. He ran his hands over her abs, down her hairless body, and felt how hot and soft and wet she was inside. So different from the hard and rubbery synthetic muscles and robotic joints of her legs that were pulling him against her, and the hands that slid smoothly over his thin chest and waist.

Later, he stared up at her dark beauty as she held him down, gripping his bony wrists as tightly as he could bear, and he saw the aggressiveness of her eyes as she stared down at him. He imagined what she'd be like if that look turned murderous and she suddenly unsheathed her blades on him with her lightning-quick reflexes, plunging the nanoceramic swords into his chest before he could even flinch. He shivered and felt his arousal growing. He caught this thought and chastised himself for it. She had actually killed people, and here he was, fetishizing it. He felt dazed and overwhelmed as she bore down on him with the inhuman strength of her limbs in her moment of intoxicated ecstasy, but her softer torso looked fragile and porcelain white in the faint artificial light of her room.

In the dim morning light, he gently took her hand as he slid out from under it, and slid off the platform bed, getting the feeling back in his legs as he stood. He wandered to her kitchen and flipped on the warm LED lights so he could check out the stock. Milk and beer and jars of protein supplements in the fridge. Boxes of protein bars and cereal scattered around the shelves. That was it. He sighed. He knew she had to eat a high-protein diet because it was literally converted directly into energy for her batteries, but this was silly. He took a moment to fix his hair while he considered what to do.

"There's some instant coffee in the freezer," she suddenly said from a few feet away from him, giving him a start for the second time that morning. He quickly turned to face her, and found her standing just outside the kitchen, wearing only her black boy shorts. She raised her eyebrows at him after a moment of his staring. "What? You're shirtless, too, and it's my apartment."

"No, you just…" he decided not to say scared me as she turned and walked away, knowing that it might be taken the wrong way. "Um, do you want some coffee, Jensen?" he called her that out of habit, and wished he could take it back. "Or how about we go out, find a diner?"

"I don't like to go out," she called back. Oh, right, he recalled. She seemed to sometimes have symptoms of - agoraphobia? He wasn't sure. But she avoided unnecessary time out in public. Fear of attack, aggravation with how she stood out and there wasn't much she could do about it (how could she hide her augmented hands and face without the disguise looking equally out of place?), social anxiety over how people approached her with comments or questions that were none of their business, or anti-augmentation freaks who just plain singled her out for a challenge. Also, he had to remind himself, some parts of the city looked practically post-apocalyptic at the moment, and he couldn't really blame anyone for wanting to avoid that. There was no questioning that she'd always been brave, even before she had the equipment to back it up. It's how she ended up like she is - because of the kind of stupidity that made her stand up against three mercenary cyborgs who had a few million dollars of work on her, rather than try to run the other direction like any more reasonable natural would've done. Sometimes, though, things just got to her and she spent long swathes of time wanting to be alone.

He stepped out of the kitchen in time to see her about to disappear into the bathroom. "I understand; I'm feeling a little sore, too!" he hastily joked. She stopped and gave him a cold stare, then pointedly turned and went on. He instantly felt mortified. Oh, god, that probably was a touchy subject, too, he realized as he remembered how she had a hard time relaxing into trusting herself to touch him, yesterday. This is going to be difficult. The realization was finally fully hitting him. He took a deep breath and drew up the courage to follow her.

So he hadn't just tiredly imagined it the night before. There was a total absence of mirrors in her apartment, including the bathroom, which instead included an angry note for the apartment maintenance crew explaining the "accidental" destruction of the vanity, and asking that they hurry up and replace it. He stood silently mulling over this fact as she stepped into the shower, then glanced out at him. "Well? Did you want to join?"

He found himself under the hot water a moment later, with her smooth and soapy hands gently exploring him once again. He watched how the water flowed over her body, his excitement building. Her fingers drifted over his thin hips, and then tenuously on to his erection. He closed his eyes and inhaled sharply as he felt her grip him lightly, testing. "Is that okay?" she whispered in his ear, over the sound of the falling water. He nodded, feeling like he couldn't contain himself enough to respond verbally. This felt dangerous and unbelievably good at the same time, and he throbbed at the thought of those hands on him. Again, his mind drifted to thinking of how she could break every bone in his body with just her hands, and they felt like nothing else he'd known before, and he imagined her hands on his neck and he came hard at the thought of it all. Why was he suddenly thinking things like this?

Shaky and breathing hard and feeling weakened, he soaped her up and kneaded her flesh afterwards. He wasn't sure how much stimulation she liked - or could feel - on her synthetic arms and legs, but he experimented with it anyway, alternating between rough and soft touch on the various textures. She closed her eyes, kept her face under the water to conceal that this degree of attention was making her a little emotional, and in response to his questioning, only told him that it all felt good. And it did, after what seemed like months and months of only receiving gentle touching from physical therapists, it at all, on her skin that was normally kept under armor. He brushed his lips over her neck, including the metal rods that were part of the support structure linking her new arms to her spine. She finished showering and stepped out, soon followed by him. She hurriedly toweled off her hair and abdomen; water didn't seem to stick to her augments. He liked how sleek she looked with her hair darkened and slicked back with water, and realized he was staring again when her shining yellow-green eyes met his.

She threw on her underwear and went to sit hunched on the edge of the bed, staring up at the loft windows. He dressed and went to her, silently sitting on the floor at her feet. He looked at the lines of her legs, how the light-absorbing black cords of her synthetic thigh muscles attached just below her pale hips and ran down into her robotic knee joints, and below that were the perfect curves of her carbon-fiber shins and the high arches of her feet. He'd never seen her original legs, but he imagined that the shape must have been similar, because augments like this were as tailored to the individual as they could make them. He knew that she'd never wear anything but pants and boots in public, but he also imagined how amazing she'd look in shorts with a strip of flesh showing, choosing to keep her legs and feet bare like many women and men with augmented legs did. American society had accepted that it was okay to show more skin in public, only when some people had less of it show. How strange that being pantsless wasn't considered provocative (just showy) when you had a cybernetic lower-half.

Finally, she lowered her eyes to look at him. "I still dream about Megan all the time," her voice was soft, strained. "She comes back, but I miss her and she leaves for some silly reason. Like, her house is gone and she can't get into work because of picket lines, and she doesn't know where I live, and she can't find anywhere to stay. I see her getting on the train and try to stop her, and she doesn't recognize me, thinks I'm some random aug trying to attack her, because she thinks, Ada would never look like that. Ada, who said she'd rather die than come back like that." She takes a moment to swallow, and shakes her head. "Dreams are stupid like that," she turns her eyes upward and pauses for a moment.

"I do blame myself for losing her both times, though. I was so unreasonably angry with her, when we found her. I don't know what I expected. Of course she was alive for a reason, and they were using her talent. Of course she wasn't constantly trying to escape and angry at the people holding her, after being there for over six months. But she thought I was one of them, and she sounded friendly, and then she was shocked when she realized it was me. Her voice turned all pitying, like, Oh Ada, I'm so sorry this happened to you. When the only thing that helped me through recovery was knowing that I'd find the people who took her, because I thought she was dead, all over some corporate fight. It was like she didn't expect me, like she didn't want me there, or maybe she knew what was about to happen to everyone like me. And she lied to me about her research on me. My fuse is so much shorter than it used to be, and I think, if only I didn't get so angry, maybe she wouldn't have disappeared again. I know that's completely irrational, that they got to her after she came back, and threatened her somehow, or made her a deal she couldn't refuse. And they stole my tissue samples. I know all that happened, and there's probably nothing I could've ever done, but I still think, I should've stayed with her when we found her. I should've forgotten everything and everyone else, and just taken her home. To what, I don't know, but I could keep her safe if we were together, right? Or at least I'd have some idea of where she went. That's what my feelings tell me. That's what I think, when you tell me how grateful you are that I made the other choice, and tried to save augmented lives instead, people that were dying because she didn't just kill herself or something when they took her, and she helped them instead. And maybe I did that because I was so angry at her, and not because it was the greater good. I can't even tell you for sure what was going through my mind. I just acted, doing what seemed right in that moment."

Everything spilled out of her, all the things she couldn't tell any therapist, in the light of dawn in her apartment. Frank stared at her silently, and took her hand after a moment. "I'll still always be grateful," is all he said. Above all else, I'm grateful that you're still here, is what he thought. After a long moment, she pulled away and dressed, putting on the same things she always wore to work now. He sat looking out the window until she was finished, then he stepped up to her, gently touching her coat sleeve. "Come to my place tonight."

She turned her head to look at him, a hint of a grin on her face as she tried to lighten her mood. "What? You have a place outside your office? Then why don't you keep all your old junk there?" She started toward the door, stopping to grab some protein bars to put in her pockets. Eating seemed like such a chore to her, anymore.

"Because I want my place to be nice!" he retorted. "And it is. I'd like to show you a good time." She raised an eyebrow at him, above the frames set around her eyes, giving him a look like, What, are you insulting my masterpiece of bachelorette living here? He returned the stare, challenging her to say what she wanted about how she thought he didn't have a life outside of work, either.

"A good time, huh?" She rolled her eyes better than any natural could, and opened the door, silently accompanying him outside her building. He said a warm goodbye and she nodded to him, before putting up her lenses and starting the trek to work. It was going to be a long day for security, as protests and lay-offs continued.