EVE's Perspective

I was frozen on the spot, knowing that anything I did against that robot would jeopardize everything I'd been fighting for in the first place. My realization of life and what was truly important started with him. When he extended his hand in friendship, when I fell in love like an idiot.

The normal robots surrounding the catastrophic events of the last four minutes were staring at me. I looked down the barrel of my gun and realized it was shaking. I sheathed it quickly, pulling my hands to my chest, like I wanted to hide them.

Eve! M-O jumped through the crowd, What the heck is going on!?

I looked away in shame. There was nothing I could do.

"Bring me the plant." AUTO said through the damaged robot.

"Eve! Don't do it!" I realized with a sickening shock that WALL-E's eye had been taken out in the fight, "Free everyone else! He can't catch you guys without his drones!"

"I can't!" I cried out, forcing back robotic tears.

"One?" Five had a cracked display, "Are you okay?"

"No! I'm not!" I stared down at the stupid steering wheel.

"This robot will die." AUTO sent a stinging field around WALL-E, who flinched and squeezed his eye shut with a shutter, "If you do not give me that plant."

"One." Three whispered, "We have to get the plant in that detector. We can't risk everyone else's lives at the expense of one."

I knew she was right.

But...

WALL-E's life isn't worth more than the millions of lives that could be saved.

But...

WALL-E was much older anyway, how long would he live after this?

But...

If I did this, if I put the plant in the holo-detector regardless of WALL-E, we could begin to rebuild. AUTO made it clear that lives don't matter as long as his ultimate goal is achieved. What was that goal? I couldn't guess. We could help people like this. We could bring the humans home. Maybe...

But...

I opened my stasis chamber and took the plant in my hands, "I'm sorry..."

I flew right past the holo-detector and placed the plant in front of AUTO.

"One! What are you doing!?" Three yelled.

"I just, I can't." I replied, glaring at the one-eyed freak that was AUTO as a laser shot from the robot and the plant vaporized on the spot, "Okay. I gave you what you want, now let him go."

"Eve, no." WALL-E reached out in his red bubble.

AUTO instead pulled WALL-E further out of reach, "If he did this once, he can do it again."

Do what...?

Oh.

Oh no.

"Wait DON'T DO THAT!"

WALL-E screamed as a sharp crack rang out in the air, surrounding him in electricity.

"STOP! LEAVE HIM ALONE!" I tried to grab him through the field, but I was thrown back by the sheer force of it. I blurted without thinking, "I LOVE HIM!" before attempting to shoot the damaged robot. Apparently, I should add electromagnetic radiation of controlled energy to my list of things I didn't realize AUTO could do through his lackeys.

"Ow!" I sheathed my weapon, watching as WALL-E was finally deposited and fell into a broken heap of blackened metal and blistering wires. Thick, yellow liquid began to seep from his chest, a sure sign that his battery had been punctured, and the glass in his one working optical lens was shattered. He couldn't even blink.

"I was careless." AUTO admitted, "And I will never let it happen again."

I hid my face as I cried, not being able to look at WALL-E anymore, "You're a monster..."

AUTO's face flickered out and the broken bot exploded, apparently having reached its electrical limit and short-circuited.

"One...?" Four was finally able to drag herself to us, "What happened? Why-!"

"SHUT UP! DON'T CALL ME THAT!" I grabbed everything I could of the mangled mess of WALL-E and bolted off, not wanting to wait for more reinforcements to arrive so they could erase my memory.

I plugged him into the machine. I couldn't find any computer that knew his hardware, so I grabbed an emergency toolbox and fixed him manually. I'm sure I did a poor job considering I knew nothing of his internal hardware either, but that didn't mean I wasn't determined.

He had to be alive.

I checked everything three times over, then four. I wasn't taking any chances.

He had to be alive.

I poured over everything inside him, scrubbing the inner casing clean and mopping up the battery acid that had gotten on his frayed wires.

He had to be alive.

Nothing was working. His frame hadn't collapsed, luckily, so I didn't have to worry about gluing it back together, but no matter how many times I rearranged everything, he still wasn't waking up!

Please wake up... I thought, Wherever you are, please...

"You have to be alive..." I flipped another switch on the machine before I realized how stupid I was. Rolling my eyes but feeling internally relieved, I pressed a button and new acid began to pour into his battery.

"E-Eve...?"

"Oh..." I sighed, "You're alive...you're okay..."

I closed my eyes, leaning back against the nearby wall. WALL-E stared down at the few wires holding him to the room which were feeding us diagnostics of his current condition.

"Y-yeah..." WALL-E turned slightly, "Ow. Everything h-hurts."

"I'm sorry..." I held both his hands, "I'm just glad you're okay."

"Alive, yeah." he muttered under his breath, but I didn't comment.

After a few minutes of heavy silence, WALL-E gruffly cleared his throat, "Is it true?"

I blinked, "Is what true?"

He rubbed his thumb over mine, "That you love me...?"

I smiled sadly, wishing the melancholy would clear from the fog in my head, "Yes. I love you."

He chuckled, "I love you too...Evah..."

I let my head touch his with a soft clink!, "We can't stay here. Reinforcements will come. They'll take you away, and they'll erase my memory."

WALL-E sucked in his breath, "Eve..."

"We could go." I said quickly, "Out, into the world. We could explore! We could find new things! We could travel!" I twirled away from him, excited about my new idea, "We could visit all those cool places humans have visited! We could have so many adventures!"

"Eve."

"We could see the world, Wall-E! Just you and me!"

"Eve!"

"We wouldn't even have to worry! Everyone here would be safe, and we'd-!"

"Eve!"

I spun on him.

"Is that really what you want?" he asked, genuine curiosity in his broken eye, "Do you really want to just run away and leave everyone behind? With nothing but that thing as their authority?"

On second thought, he did have a point.

"But what are we supposed to do!?" I slammed my fists against the wall in exasperation, "We're doomed anyway. I just want to be with you."

"No, you don't."

I relaxed my hands on the wall. The city didn't have any kind of buzz anymore, it was more quiet and deserted than it had been in more than two decades.

WALL-E sighed, rubbing a sore spot under his head, "Listen. I get it. Running away is very appealing to me too, but you speak so fondly of your sisters, I doubt you're really okay with leaving them here."

I bonked my forehead on the wall. Ow, "So what do you suggest? I don't have the plant anymore, it's not like we could save everyone anyway."

"Well we can't just leave them here either."

I glared at nothing in particular before turning the accusing glare to him, "So what do you want me to do?"

"I don't know." WALL-E let his arms fall down a little, "Is there no other way to bring the humans back?"

"Another way...?" I laughed without a shred of humor behind it, "No, don't be ridiculous. Their ship - the Axiom - it was only meant to come back when a plant got in that blasted holo-detector. There's no coding anywhere that lets us find it without that process. That plant was our only chance, and I blew it..." I hiccuped. Was I crying again? "I blew it and there's nothing we can do..."

"Oh, Eve..." WALL-E tried to move to comfort me, but was held back by the wires still holding him to the machine.

I sniffed, "One second..." I pressed a few more buttons before it let him go and I pulled the cords out, picking him up, "We'd better go. We wouldn't want to be found."

WALL-E's Perspective

I watched the rain pour from the dirty bus stop we'd taken shelter under. Of course, no bus would come. We were just two idiots out in the rain. I couldn't remember where EVE had taken us, but in order to avoid the storm on the old side of the wall, we kept going in a different, random direction. Where we would end up in the end? Well, I couldn't say for sure.

Our plan for now was to lay low until AUTO assumed we weren't coming back, then try and sneak in and find another way to contact the humans. It wasn't ideal to be sure, but it was all we had at this point.

I had been trying to console EVE for awhile, but it clearly wasn't working, so instead I resorted to rubbing circles into her back until the hiccuping stopped. She wasn't crying anymore, but she was still visibly upset, her once big, round eyes now reduced to sad little crescent-moon shapes. Occasionally she would hiccup again and start breathing more rapidly, so I would retaliate by shushing her softly until it stopped.

EVE leaned on me, sagging in defeat, "I don't know what to do..."

I wrapped an arm around her, placing my hand on her shoulder, "I don't know either..."

All we could hear around us was the gentle pattering of the rain on the roof of the alcove above the bus stop. Everything around us was grey, perfect to match the mood we were in. I had no idea how long we'd have to be away, but it didn't feel like we were waiting to put a plan in action, it felt like we had already failed.

And considering the circumstances, I guess we had.

EVE grabbed the bench behind us with her free hand, careful to not put her whole weight on me, "I've always wanted to see humans again..."

I tried not to start. She was talking again, that was progress, "Yeah?"

"Yeah." she ran her fingers over the side of my head, "I once gained access to an old database full of old human things. Oh my God, Wall-E...it was gorgeous!" she giggled, a sound I had begun to miss, "Everyone seemed so happy...there were so many colors and so many sounds...everyone dressed up for holidays...human culture is so vastly different everywhere! And all of them are so cool!"

I pulled her closer to me, "How many languages were there?"

"So many! There was a time when every culture spoke something different...long before they ever had robots...Spanish, French, Chinese, Arabic, there were even variations of the same language, like British verses American English, and Cantonese verses Mandarin Chinese."

So that explained why she cared so much about bringing the humans back, even before she met me, "Did you ever tell your sisters?"

She relaxed again, "No. Breaking into secret databases is considered a crime. I just let them believe I was obsessed with fulfilling my directive, because that was easier to explain. They must have thought I was so cold..."

EVE devolved back into relaxed melancholy.

"I don't think they did." I reassured her, shifting on the bench a little, "I think they were just worried that you were stuck in your directive and forgot how to do things just for yourself. It does seem like you were stuck somewhere, but you were stuck in the past, among places that don't exist anymore."

EVE scoffed, brushing the leaking rainwater off her face, "Maybe, but they kept trying to reach out to me. They wanted me to feel, just a little bit, but it wasn't helpful because I was actually feeling too much and just needed to ground myself somehow..." She inhaled very shakily, "D-dammit..."

"Eve, it's okay." I adjusted my hold on her so her arm wasn't jabbing into my side, "There's nothing wrong with that. I just wish you could have been more honest with them."

"And risk caring about them enough to put everyone else in danger? Hahaha..." EVE locked her fingers in front of my chest, "Don't make me laugh..."

"That's not what I meant." and she knew that.

She didn't reply. I could tell she was tired, but I just wanted to keep her talking a little longer, "It doesn't matter now. That was all in the past. It's too late to go back and change it."

Like she didn't already know that! But it's all I could think to say.

The rain finally let up slightly and the sun peeked out from behind the clouds. It made beautiful streaks of light across the mostly cloudy sky. I never saw that at home because of all the dust in the air that managed to block the sun and make it appear dusty even when there were no clouds. EVE must not see that often either, because she relaxed even more upon seeing it.

"Wall-E...?" she yawned, "Are you okay...?"

I turned my head to try and look at her face, but her eyes were already closing. By the time I'd fully registered what she'd meant by asking that question, she had already fallen fast asleep.

I carefully pried her away from me, letting her lay on the bench with her arms by her sides. Her blue eyes were completely gone now, and I could just see my reflection in the sheer glass above her display. I looked terrible, more so than I had anticipated even.

I lay back on the wooden bench, feeling the warmth from the sun as I watched my beloved sleep.

"Yes, I'm just fine."