"You're going to drive yourself mad. I hope you know that."
Elizabeth flinched a bit, having not expected to hear Miles' raspy, distorted voice from somewhere behind her. She didn't know how she hadn't heard him pop in. Miles was a constant source of noise. Whether it was his rasping attempts at breathing or his rusted joints squeaking and rattling, his arrival was typically not something that went unnoticed. Especially within the quiet space they lived in.
Elizabeth tried to respond, but no words ended up leaving her mouth.
A few days prior, Father had returned from the surface and announced that he had finally located his real daughter. Or at least, he was fairly certain that he had. So many years of searching… and he had finally done it. Finally, he could reach out to her and reconnect.
Elizabeth wanted to be happy for him, but she found it incredibly difficult. Still, she put on a smile and told him how great that was while scolding herself internally for having to force it. Honestly, she wasn't sure if Father actually heard her or not as he was busy rummaging through one of the many boxes in the room they were standing in.
"Elizabeth, I want you to head to the address tomorrow," he pulled an old camera out and forced it into her hands, "and take some pictures of her. I want to make sure that it's truly her before I bother going over there myself."
"Understood, Father."
Without another word, Father left the room and closed the door behind him.
In the morning, Elizabeth did exactly what he requested. It took around forty minutes to reach her destination. It probably would have taken less if hadn't needed to avoid people, didn't let her nerves eat away at her speed, and if her eyes didn't feel the need to drink in her surroundings like they were severely dehydrated. As underwhelming as they were, they were still different from what she was used to. It was nice.
The address belonged to a sad-looking establishment with a faded red paint job, a slightly crooked sign with a font that appeared to have last been popular twenty years ago, and a parking lot full of cracks with weeds poking through. Despite how uninviting it appeared to be, there were still a decent amount of cars parked in the lot.
Elizabeth walked around to the side of the building and crouched down in front of one of the large windows, scanning over the people inside.
All of the workers were wearing masks, but it wasn't too hard to find who Elizabeth was looking for. The woman in the clown mask shared the same height and build as her, so it was safe to assume that that was her counterpart. Though, admittedly, her auburn hair sort of threw her off because Elizabeth certainly didn't have that. Her hair was strawberry blonde.
The mask did not come off even once while the establishment was open, so the animatronic ended up sitting outside for hours, watching the redhead from behind the glass with slight intrigue.
Most of the other Elizabeth's movements were very stilted and her posture was so rigid that Elizabeth could have found herself wondering if she was truly human. It seemed almost plausible that she could have been a machine too with the strange way that she carried herself.
When the building finally closed for the day, her counterpart changed into more casual clothing and left with a blue-haired woman in tow.
Elizabeth followed after them. The area had a lot of greenery, so she did her best to conceal herself within it. The other Elizabeth had the paranoid habit of looking over her shoulder every now and again. Still, Elizabeth managed to get what she came for while remaining undetected.
When she returned to Father and presented them to him, he held one up next to her face and forced her to look straight at him before muttering, "Close, but far from being exactly the same… Definitely the right address, though. This has to be her..."
And now Elizabeth was sitting on an overturned milk crate, looking between the photos that he hadn't taken with him and her reflection in the puddle by her feet, which would occasionally be disturbed by more water dripping down from the leaky pipe above it.
"You shouldn't be surprised that the two of you look different. Father used a computer program and old photographs of her to construct your face because he had no way of truly knowing what she currently looks like. Of course it wasn't going to end up being an exact match."
"I know," she finally responded. "I'm not surprised. But I'm still… it feels like he was pointing... it out. Again."
Honestly, ignoring the dyed hair and what were presumably colored contacts, the differences between Elizabeth and her counterpart weren't too extreme.
But to her, they were. They were glaring. They made her want to rip her faceplates off.
Nose too narrow. Eyebrows not thick enough. Cheekbones too high. Lips not thin enough. It was all wrong.
Elizabeth was all wrong.
"It was unintentional, I'm sure."
"It doesn't matter." She gripped the photographs in her hands with a bit too much force, causing several white creases to appear like cracks in glass. "He may doubt me now, but I know that I can be good enough... I will make him proud. No matter what it takes."