Chapter Three
I.O.U for your love...
It was well into the night-cycle by the time Dot arrived home.
She stepped through into the living room and smiled as she saw AndrAIa curled up on the couch, quietly thumbing through a readme file. The game sprite looked up and smiled back,
"Hi, Dot," She greeted softly, shutting down her readme and standing up.
"Hi AndrAIa," Dot returned tiredly, "Thanks so much for looking after Enzo for me,"
"No problem," AndrAIa grinned, "He's sweet, and he reminds me of some good times in my life,"
Dot couldn't help the slight tightening of her expression then. The reminder, however innocent, of AndrAIa and Matrix's lost childhoods cut deeply. It just proved how much she had failed them, had failed them all.
AndrAIa narrow her eyes slightly, but didn't comment,
"It's late," AndrAIa said, "I should get home, and you look like you need to grab some downtime,"
Dot nodded distractedly, "Yeah, I'm gonna check on Enzo and then offline for awhile...give Matrix my love, wont you?"
"Of course I will," AndrAIa said as she turned to the door. It was a graceless and obvious dismissal on Dot's part, but the Game Sprite was clearly giving her slack, on account of her near-exhausted state, but Dot knew that she would be called to account later, it was very hard to slip anything past AndrAIa.
After AndrAIa left, Dot padded upstairs and peered into Enzo's room.
Her little brother was curled onto his side, deeply offline. She silently slipped into the room and sat next to him on the bed. Reaching out with one hand, she gently stroked his hair, but her little brother didn't stir. Dot sighed deeply, knowing that Enzo still spent much of his time deeply confused. To his perspective, everything had changed in the space of a nanosecond, everything that had been familiar and comforting was changed or snatched away.
By far the worst thing to him, though, was to see the distance and awkwardness that existed between his hero and his sister. Poor Enzo simply couldn't understand why the two most important people in his life were now so uncomfortable around each other.
"I'm sorry, Enzo," She whispered, leaning down to plant a gentle kiss on his head, "I love you," She said softly, rising to move and seek her own bed.
Enzo's eye half-opened, the expression in them a mixture of tiredness, sadness and worry, "I love you too, sis," He whispered back, knowing that Dot wouldn't have heard him.
Dot made her way through the silent corridor to her own room, quickly 'booted out of her clothes and set her icon down on the bedside table before turning over and snuggling deeply into the clean-smelling sheets. She curled up tightly, drawing her knees up to her chest and wrapping the sheets tightly around herself. When she had been a small sprite, she had often buried underneath her covers in the belief that her childhood blanket could protect her from unknown monsters that lay in the shadows of her room. Now she did the same, hoping that perhaps the soft sheets could protect her against her own dark, guilty thoughts in the same way. She felt so cold, chilled right down to the RAM in a way that no blanket could warm.
Allowing her imagination free reign, she closed her eyes, picturing Bob lying beside her, his silicon hair shining even in the dark room, his warm arms wrapped around her, banishing the icy chill that seemed to have settled right into her core-com. She could almost hear his gentle tenor voice in her ear, reassuring her, speaking words of love.
Then the voice in her ear abruptly changed from tenor to deep baritone, the tone went from loving to coldly mocking,
"There are none so easily tricked as those that want to be fooled," The icy voice purred, "Don't you agree Miss Matrix?" Cold, metallic blue hands came up to grasp her roughly by the waist and Dot cried out, squirming and kicking and trying to get away from the deep, mocking laughter that echoed through the room.
Until her foot struck the wall next to her bed, and she awoke with a pained start.
"A dream," She sighed when she had recovered her breath and most of her composure, "Another crashed dream," she growled, flopping back onto her pillows. It happened every time she tried to slip into what was once a favoured fantasy of herself and Bob lying in bed together, the image would twist and distort until she no longer saw or heard Bob, but Megabyte; reminding her of the hideous betrayal she had inflicted on the genuine article and the cruel game the virus had played with them all.
Fine. Dot was a logical sprite, believing that there was always a way out of any problem, no matter how complex - even emotional ones. So, if picturing Bob as he was now and had been when they first met was a problem, she would try something else.
Settling back into her pillows, she imagined Bob as he had been just after he returned from the web, when he had been what she had dubbed 'GlitchBob'.
She remembered how smooth and warm that chrome armour had been against her hands, how alive it had felt. Falling completely into the fantasy, she lifted her hands to touch his face, tracing the line of the shiny web scars as they trailed across his forehead and down his face. Dot lifted a hand to stroke his tarnished silver hair, letting her hands run through the long, unruly length of it, gazing up to stare into his huge, sad, brown eyes, wishing she could lift the burden of memory she could see in those troubled eyes even as he bent down to kiss her passionately.
The night passed with no further nightmares.