Title: Shattered Glass (Mom over-ruled me on Fragmentary. Maybe next time.)
Author: DaenaBenjen42
Fandom: Robocop

A/N: This is one of those times where I was mostly kidding about writing anything... and then the plot bunnies came knocking and made me cry while attempting to file things and copy records to send out. So... more of a certain series with our favorite traumatic amnesiac cybernetic policeman and his world, it is, then. Okay. (I say it a lot here when I write Robocop, but I will repeat the warning... In this fandom, it usually goes without saying, but: ANGST WARNING. I can't not warn people.) (Everybody warned? Good.)

A/N (2): This is admittedly starting somewhere odd, with Robocop 2... but the plot bunnies demanded it.
(Continuity note here: Ellen Murphy was the movie version of Alex Murphy's wife. Nancy belongs to the TV series. Eventually, Ellen Murphy was apparently told about her husband's transformation. Nancy Murphy, on the other hand... was not.)

Shattered Glass - Week I - Prompts Presented by Mira_Jade

1. Adamant

He listened to the idiot in the suit from OCP. Listened, but did not want to abide by what he was being told. Everything and nothing was different... he was still an active member of law enforcement, he still had a family. A family he didn't completely recall in the best of times, that he could still feel deep down inside... something that was more than the job, that made the world mean something.

As the suits of OCP left and he watched her walk in, he stood, full well knowing his helmet was off, and approached her as she started pleading from the other side of a wire fence.

Eventually, he leaned in and looked her right in the eyes. "Touch me."

The expression on her face as she put a single finger to his lips made him want to punch a hole in a wall.

2. Abide

"It's cold."

"They made this... to honor him."

Standing there, eye to eye with the countenance of the man she'd loved staring back at her, Ellen could do nothing but look at him. Could do nothing but see the silent pleading behind the mask of blankness for her to take the next step and let it be. She didn't want to. Didn't want to just leave it be, to leave him here in this moment with the metal wire between them. This was all she had left of him, this... husk. He was in there... she could see him.

3. Afield

"Your husband is dead. I don't know you."

As he pivoted and turned away with metal servos whirring, Ellen wanted to reach through the wire and stop him, to make him take it back. She could feel the tears welling up, even as she heard herself start to protest, to try to yell, do anything but accept the reality of this. He was in there! What had they told him, to get him to lie and be so cruel?

Before she knew it, she was outside, staring up at the sky, unaware of how she'd gotten outside, with a blonde woman in a police uniform handing her a cup of coffee.

4. Aghast

She blinked down at the cup of coffee in her hands, at once wondering why something so familiar felt do foreign. Why did the world feel different, even though nothing had changed? "I..." Or had everything... again?

"Don't," her companion ordered softly, gently. "Don't make a scene. They're watching."

Ellen blinked again and raised her head, to look around. There was indeed a man in a suit staring at her from beside a parked car. "Oh."

5. Aforetime

Slowly, Officer Anne Lewis guided Ellen Murphy to her own vehicle in the parking lot of Metro West, doing her best not to glare at the man watching them and knowing full well that if she hadn't caught Ellen when she had, there would have been a massive PR problem on top of PR problems with the suits. They wanted her to go away, and she wanted her husband. Only, like always, it was more complicated than the relationships between men and women.

Ellen drained the cup of coffee, then handed it to her. "Thank you."

"For what?"

"Being here. Twice."

Anne nodded. It was the least she could have done, for the partner she'd failed that she had had for less than a day.