This one like, broke my heart to write, cause i knew it couldn't have been pretty and there must have been all sorts of mixed messages. :sigh: Changed slightly from original cause Motoko is more the thinking type (though not very many saw the original).
He stood on the other side of the room, stunned. "You're…alive?"
Unashamed, she nodded. "I stayed in the net for awhile, did some diving around until I found my old prosthetic body." She didn't mention who had set it up; he could figure that out for himself later.
Still in shock, he stared unabashed. He knew, without a moment's doubt, that it was her and not some puppet. She exuded an aura, a power that was tangible. "Why…"
"No one could know," she said abruptly, cutting off his question, "besides, if I had contacted you, they would have tracked me and then killed you." She didn't mention how hard it had been for the first month, watching him die, little by little, because she wasn't there.
"I've been out of there for three weeks!" he said angrily, "and their flimsy version of monitoring stopped two weeks ago. Even so, it's not like I haven't acted before!" He paused, taking a breath. "You didn't even warn me that it might have happened."
She shook her head. "I didn't know."
"You didn't even try to duck."
"If they were going to let us off, they had to think I was dead."
"There are other ways to fake a death."
"Like getting out of the country?"
He stopped, hands clenching into fists as he finally understood. So she had always been planning on something like this. It was easier to fake one's death out of the country then in it. He hadn't thought of it that way, and now that he had, he wished he hadn't. "Yeah… Yeah." Suddenly, he couldn't stand to be in the room with her, something in him aching like an old, festering wound. Without a word, he turned and got out, lips pressed into a hard line.
Motoko watched him go, knowing that he was fully unaware of the twin ache that she bore, and also knowing that she couldn't tell him how close she had been to bugging out with him and never looking back. She looked down at her wrist, the watch that he had nearly died to get back to her glittering. I told you I was alive, she thought, why didn't you listen?
We all knew she was alive because of the watch. Obviously, Batou missed the message, and Motoko didn't correct him.