Evidence File #94 for Case 3419
January 18th
Stein's been reading all my old college textbooks. I knew there was a reason I kept them around, other than the fact that selling them back wouldn't get me anything. He's been curious about everything.
I can tell that no one really believes me about his emotions coming back. It's been months and Azusa still refuses to accept it. He's the same around everyone else, but I live with him.
His curiosity is the most. . .prominent thing.
Is curiosity an emotion?
Finally going on another run tomorrow. Leg's healed up enough so that I don't have to grit my teeth each time I butt against something. It's a little numb, honestly. Naigus was worried I'd have nerve-damage. Maybe it's a blessing in disguise.
I didn't want any of the skin grafts. No use, at this point.
Though, I guess Stein and I would match. Planning on watching Bride of Frankenstein soon. I hope he'll find some kind of amusement in it.
He was flipping through Emotive Theory and Technological Neuropathy for the fifteenth time that night. He counted. Because there was nothing else to do. For what must have been too many times, he flicked his gaze to the clock Marie kept hanging in the kitchen, and watched as the minute hand ticked, forcing the hour hand to shift, once more.
It had been six hours, fifteen minutes, and twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six seconds.
No word.
He inhaled through his nose, looking back at the same paragraph. She'd missed her show. The one she always watched when 8 pm rolled around. She missed the re-run that took place at midnight, too.
Or, she was missing it.
His fingers twitched against the pages of the massive tome he had found in one of Marie's several bookshelves. Save for the paperback novels with a half-naked male human on the cover, there wasn't much else to read save for those books. He wasn't feeling up to listening to an audio recording on the digital books.
The fact that she had physical books at all was surprising in of itself. She must have been attached to the old world.
He felt an overwhelming itch in his chest, one that made him want to expel breath, a heavy sigh through his nose as he focused back on the printed words on the page.
Paper was scarce, he'd read, in Environmental Advances and Ozone Depletion. The irony was overwhelming.
Prototypical cyborgs had the sensations of touch removed through severe nerve damage, often via burning or acidic flaying. Organic flesh was often replaced with ineffective rubberized skin-synthetic. The electric-based motor functions were impaired as a result, overheating taking place within-
He leaned back on the couch, his mouth twisting up. Marie had left angry notes on the side, in a bright pink pen. Her penmanship was sloppy, the word "Sick" underlined multiple times with an arrow leading to "acidic flaying".
He brought a hand to his face, feeling over where the seam on his face had originally been. He didn't ever really want to look at himself in a mirror, but he had spotted his reflection a few days after Marie had herded him into the apartment and found himself examining the sloppy stitches that held his flesh together.
When he pressed his fingers to the flesh just beneath his eye, where he knew the syntheskin was, it felt the same as the rest of him.
He must have been too preoccupied, staring at nothing as he pressed his fingertips to his face because the knock on the door was both unwelcome and surprising, and he lifted his head, setting the textbook to the side before he stood.
Something in him felt heavy as he walked to the peephole, spotting Spirit on the other side. He was fidgeting, his hands wringing around and around.
Stein looked at the clock once more.
Six hours, twenty-seven minutes, and fifty-four, fifty-five, fifty-six-
He opened the door and Spirit shot in, ducking beneath Stein's arm. The entire transaction was complete before a normal person could even blink.
"Sorry," Spirit started, looking around the apartment and kneeling down in front of one of the many small tables Marie kept, opening the drawers and pulling out bandages and various other supplies, shoving them into his bag. "We're running low on everything and Marie-"
Stein thinks his gastrointestinal tract must have bottomed out, because he felt like there was a stone in his torso, sinking down down down. Spirit stopped everything he was doing and turned his head, looking at Stein. The cyborg must have had the same blank expression on his face as he usually did when he went to visit Spirit, because the redhead only looked back down at the pile of supplies.
". . .she's really hurt. . ." Spirit finished, his mouth setting into a grim line.
Stein took note of the other man. He was in full police riot-gear, his hair pulled back into a tight ponytail at the nape of his neck with his high collar hiding most of it.
If he looked hard enough, some of his hair looked crispy, dried to a rust instead of a crimson. Beneath his nails, the same color had collected as a half-moon beneath the exposed fingernail, staining the white tips.
Spirit stood up, shutting the drawer and zipping up the bag, jostling the antiseptic without doubt before shouldering the pack, standing in a smooth motion.
The knees of his pants looked darkened.
Stein didn't realize that Spirit was observing him the same way Stein was observing Spirit, and when the cyborg finally looked up at the other man's face, Spirit had something peculiar in his eyes.
"Do you. . .when we fix her up. . .do you want to see her? She's. . .she won't be back for at least a few days. I'm having Naigus forge a doctor's note so she might get out of work to heal."
Stein only looked at him. He thinks he forgot how to breathe for the barest of moments and he knows his stare must have been unnerving.
Spirit chewed on his lip.
Stein didn't say yes.
He didn't say "no", either.
Evidence File #95 for Case 3419
Mira Naigus, CCRN
87465, Death City, Nevada
Phone: (702)-[scribbled out]
Date: January 20th
Patient: Marie Elizabeth Mjolnir
Under Care from: January 19th to January 24th
Return to Work On: January 25th
Follow-Up Appointment Scheduled: January 30th Time: 9:30 [+]AM [ ]PM
Reason: [+]Pain [+]Illness [ ]Injury
[+]Other: Septicemia
Practitioner Signature: [removed]
He got the details in snippets over the course of a few days.
He got the details in "dislocated shoulder". He got the details in "lacerations". He got the details in "blood poisoning". He got the details in "potential necrosis".
He feels as though he knows these things, has always known these things. Hadn't known it would happen to Marie, but knows the words. Knows they aren't good. Knows he hates them.
In the same vein, he knows they need to pop her arm back into the socket. He knows stitches need to be administered, perhaps staples, perhaps glue. He doesn't know if she has septicemia or sepsis, but he knows she'll need ceftriaxone, or injectable norepinephine. He knows if the necrosis progresses, the dead flesh will have to be excised.
He doesn't want to know these things.
They must have taken his silence as a no, but he doesn't know what it would have been if he opened his mouth. The thought of it being "I want to see her, now" was a fire he didn't want to touch. The idea of it being the opposite, that he never wanted to see her so mangled was equally as dangerous.
He stays in the place where Marie lived. Lives. With him. Where they occupied the same space. He breezes through all her textbooks, memorizes all her notes, finds that he does not have the desire to eat if it is not at a table where she sits.
He wonders if it's possible to shut down his neural network. None of her books have an answer to that.
Stein wants to stop thinking.
When he looks at the clock, it ticks as though to mock him.
Three days, twenty-two hours, forty-seven minutes, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen seconds.
Evidence File #96 for Case 3419
January 26th
It feels like even breathing hurts. Giriko gave me a hard time over being missing, but no one is connecting it to the Vulture that was almost caught on the 19th. There have been rumors that they were killed. I'm not about to correct anyone.
Managed to get a few decent parts and enough scrap for the generators to run for a good few months.
Stein's been acting weird around me. Like looking at me hurt him. It isn't like before, though. Before, it was like I reminded him of someone. Now it's. . .something else.
He helped me with bandaging. Told me I was doing it wrong. He must have learned more through my textbooks than I did. He's smart. Really smart. It's like he retains everything he reads. He almost acted like a doctor except [scribbled out]
When he touched me, it was the gentlest thing I'd ever felt.
No one's ever touched me like that before. [last two sentences are crossed out]
I hope Azusa gets the generators running, soon. Something has to have changed in his coding.
None of the emotionless bots have ever acted like him. Not that I've seen.
I have a feeling he checked over the antibiotics Mira got me.
Months later, when the ice from winter had finally melted, he'd asked her.
He'd asked her after they'd watched all those movies together. She didn't think they'd make him want to, she didn't think they'd prompt such a request. But he wanted to know how it felt. She couldn't help but wonder if he'd ever done anything like that, before, being so close to another person. Perhaps before he'd been so hellishly abused, so violently traumatized, he'd been comfortable enough with someone else.
Marie took in a deep breath, gently running her palm over the skin of his torso, again. Whether he'd done so in the past or not, he couldn't remember, and he was putting so much faith in her just by asking that she had to make sure that she wasn't going to disappoint him. She wanted for him to feel safe, to know that he'd put his trust in someone who would never abuse it or him.
Her touch was so loving and gentle, a caress over his skin, and she felt him shiver. Or she thought he did, but his gaze on her remained the same: placid and willing. Curious.
What they were doing was illegal.
Humans and cyborgs weren't allowed to be so close. Hugs were frowned down upon, even, let alone what they were doing. But, despite the fact that he had asked her to, she knew she was risking so much for more than just his experiment.
Perhaps that was selfish of her, too, but she liked touching him. His skin was so warm, his body yielding to her with an ease that almost seemed practiced. She was familiar to him, she realized.
She was the only person he'd been around for longer than a few hours. They stayed in the same house, slept under the same roof, ate at the same table. It was almost like being married, or dating.
But it wasn't. It wasn't at all. It was illegal and she was doing something that not even Azusa or Spirit would be fully comfortable with. It was one thing, making sure a cyborg was safe, treating them with dignity, fighting for their rights.
It was another thing to kiss them.
She. . .she didn't know if what they were doing was for the right reasons. Wasn't it wrong, for her to be the only genuinely interested party? Even if he asked her to, wasn't it her responsibility to deny him?
But she wasn't the only interested party. She was the only invested party, the only one who was nervous, who felt fizzy and giddy and excited, yet so scared. Besides which, he was an adult. He knew what he wanted and she wouldn't treat him as though he was senseless or naïve. He knew what he was getting himself into. He'd been more expressive, recently, having started remembering snippets of things, able to describe different rooms, voices, blurry faces. Maybe it would jog his memory, of someone, something in the past he was trying to find out.
It was just an experiment, she assured herself: it meant nothing to him. He wasn't invested in it or in her, and it was only because he had a head for science, seemed strangely attached to it, that they were doing so in the first place. Even with the blinds down and the lights low, she felt so fretfully exposed, but he seemed relaxed. She was tightly wired, but she forced her shoulders down, squirming in his lap.
She had no indication that her touch was exciting him in any way, and it dealt a soft blow to her pride, but she took in a deep breath and leaned close.
Did it even count as intimacy if she was the only one who had any sexual attraction in the scenario? Being so close to him made her skin feel electric, like she was tuned too high.
When she leaned in, she sucked down some of his breath as they shared the air, and he tilted his head, meeting her in the middle like he'd seen in the movies.
The kiss was strangely dry, entirely closed. His lips were chapped, and there wasn't any real fire behind it. But she made sure she was gentle, careful to keep close to his boundaries. If she could, she'd ask him for every step, but she'd have to rely on non-verbal cues. It was almost uncomfortable, but she stroked over his shoulders and he yielded to her, muttering "Marie" so lowly, she felt her belly heat up. She pressed closer to him, wrapping an arm around his neck and he matched her movements, giving her the go ahead to open her mouth, just barely, and he did the same, allowing her to take his upper lip into her mouth.
He was just going through the motions. She shifted, grinding down slightly and tilting her head to deepen the kiss, her free hand coming to cup his cheek as the one settled on his neck began to play with his hair, her body leaning onto his. There was some residue of electricity in it, humming up her spine, but it was mostly nerves.
She didn't ease up, sucking lightly on his cupid's bow, and when his tongue came and brushed over her mouth, she made a soft, pleased noise that sounded strangely like his name. Something seemed to shift with them, then, and he breathed in harshly through his nose, one of his arms coming around her slim waist and pressing her close to his body as though possessively. She gasped when he called "Marie", and she was still grinding down on his lap as he arched to her and it felt so natural, like it was what they were meant to do, that she felt all her carefully concentrated focus fall away in favor for the instinctual, moaning low in contentment against his lips. When he licked at her mouth once more, brushing his tongue over her lower lip, sucking slightly before biting down, she groaned and grasped his hair between her fingers.
She didn't mean to tug. She didn't mean to pull, sharply, or otherwise, but his eyes popped open at the action, and he shoved her away so hard, so suddenly, she fell right off his lap, right from the bed and onto the floor. Marie cried out, in surprise rather than pain, before she struggled upright, staring at Stein who'd thrown his hands over his face, seemingly hyperventilating.
She gasped, aching for him, hands outstretched. "Frank-"
"Don't touch me," he said, so venomously she thinks the air left her lungs, shrinking and shriveling.
"Franken-"
"Shut up! Shut up, shut up!" he demanded, shaking his head, hysterical.
She didn't know what went wrong. It had been so. . .perfect. For a single moment, she felt ignited, like she was alive in his arms, like the entire world didn't matter. It had shifted, gotten hot and passionate so fast with them, their chemistry undeniable.
It was the hair pulling that must have triggered him, and she ached so deeply for whatever he had seen behind his eyelids that she had prompted. Marie wanted to grasp at his upper arms, but she knew it would only make it worse.
She comes to her knees, instead, crawling over. Her chest is still heaving as she tries to collect her breath, tries to get the heat she felt for him to simmer and she knows she can do nothing but be there for him. She watches how he rocked, harsh breathing and a breaking voice, and she feels something inside of her harden until it is brittle and sorry.
It reminds her of someone else. It reminds her of Crona when they first found them, how shuddering and terrified they were at even the touch of a palm on a shoulder. It reminds her of what pain must feel like.
"I'm here," she told him softly. "I'm here, I'll always be here, I'm sorry," she whispered, soothing, gentle. At first, she doesn't think it does anything at all, but after a while, minutes, a half hour, he seems to calm at her words. Marie hesitated before she steeled herself, unknowing if it was the right thing to do, but hoping it was.
"Can I-. . .can I hold your hand?" she asks, again, echoing the first time, echoing when she asked Crona all those years ago, and he seems so drained he only gives a single jerk of his head, as if to tell her that he doesn't care. But it isn't a jerk in the negative.
One would think she was diffusing a bomb with how delicate her touch was when she moved his hands off of his face. Yet, despite that, the instant he spotted her, for a single moment, his world froze and burned at the same time. Marie's amber eye went dull, cold, sharpening until it looked feline. Snake-like. Her golden hair, the shade of a wedding band, darkened until it was tawny, the curls haphazard. A braid flashed in his mind, a smirk, a scowl.
But then it was gone, and he was left looking into Marie's eye, something in his chest stuttering. She holds his hands in her own, thumb gliding over the knuckles so soothingly. And he stares at her, stares and tries to wipe away the anguish and the ruinous feeling inside of his ribcage.
He stares at her, and it is unnerving, but she meets it. Looking at him made her feel pressurized and compressed and like her spine would simply break and never come back together, the vertebrae scattered on the floor. Or inside of her like puzzle-pieces.
She cannot close her eye, so she only squeezes his hand.
"I'm sorry. . ." she says, again, so watery. Everything inside of her feels jumbled. She doesn't know what to do with the comparison she's found.
She thinks there is nothing to do. How deeply hurt he is, she cannot heal him, no matter how much she'd want to. No matter how badly, how desperately she wants to shutter his pain away in her ribcage so he would never have to feel it so agonizingly deep again.
He says nothing; he simply stares. The silence stretches around them like taffy, elastic and oppressive. The sort that, upon opening your mouth, dips down your throat and steals your thoughts. It takes her two times opening her mouth until she can actually speak, again. His green eyes had locked on her one amber, and she finds that he leaves her wordless.
Worldless.
Whirling.
"I don't know how to help," she finally said, frustrated and sad, tempted to throw her arms about and chuck something out the window and give herself the space for theatrics, but she was not that woman. She was the woman who wept openly in her bathroom after turning on the shower, the woman who could carry men home from the gutter, the woman who went through the radioactive trash so she could get a part for a cyborg who wouldn't know how to thank her, or why, or even if they should.
He didn't flinch in front of her. He did not rush to lower his large hands, warm and calloused and so able to cradle and caress, to cup her cheek. He did not bow his head so he could look more deeply into her in her singular, star-colored eye as he leaned in. He did not answer her.
This was not romance.
It couldn't be romance. Romance was not what he needed and though that wasn't an outcome that made her happy, an outcome that she wanted, she knew he needed her to be there for him. And why would she want it, anyway? He was nothing she was looking for in a man. In a partner. In a husband she had constructed in her head like a perfect fantasy.
Yet there she was. Pining. Again. Feeling ruined.
She knew why.
His breathing evened out until it was back to her normal, and every expression on his face fizzled, dying. He was shutting himself down until he closed to her, almost immediately.
Marie didn't know what to do in the light of that. She didn't have it in her to simply accept it, to realize that she'd fallen in love, again, with a man who could never, would never ask to hold her hand because it would make her happy. Joe she could blame. Joe she could call a coward: "I can't trust you" her ass. Who else if not her? But Stein?
How could she blame a man who couldn't possibly know? He owed her nothing. She wasn't dating him, and he only agreed to be kissed for science, not for love. She did everything she did out of her own volition.
And he was a man who had his heart ripped from his chest, wires looping, a man who had it beat in front of him until nails dug into the sides and tore him to tatters. She should have known better, she should have told him "no", she shouldn't have jumped at the opportunity to feel what his lips were like, what his kiss was like.
Even if it left her sparking and giddy, even if she felt like she never wanted to stop kissing him in that moment when he'd pulled her to him, calling her name as though she were the only thing in his entire world, the only thing that mattered. For a man who had been so uninterested, he sure got passionate so quickly.
That was the thing with him. It was either all the emotions at once, or none at all.
She couldn't blame him. She couldn't and that drained her of every degree of heat.
How stupid of her, to think that something like a kiss would end positively. It wasn't one of the movies she played back when she was a girl, where the hero comes along and swoops in and they have a happily ever after once a kiss is delivered, all wrapped in a bow. Who did she think she was?
How could she ever allow herself to think that in a world of scrap metal and destitution, a world where she breathed in paint chips and lost her eye to the necrosis of her undercover profession, a world where she had to watch person after person come in to a lab, treated worse than animals: how could a world like that ever consist of happy endings?
She could still breathe. She could still think and find it in her to be sad but she couldn't hold onto it all or she would shatter onto her carpet and no one would be there to scoop those pieces as though she were a sculpture that would be missed. She had to buck up.
She still had a job. A job that went beyond him and beyond her and beyond whatever girlhood dream she had for a frothy white dress and an aisle and a ring that gleamed the color of her irises.
"I want to help you," she told him. And there was nothing else to say. He was trying to help himself. He was fixing his own coding. She wasn't naïve or silly enough to believe that she didn't have a hand, perhaps even two, she though wryly, in that fact, but he was trying.
"I want to help you," she repeated.
And finally, finally, he looks down at her, and nudges his leg. He'd had enough of touch, and it dislodges her enough.
"I hadn't asked for your help," he says, cold, robotic.
The brittle pieces inside of her collapse, crack, and she wonders, if she listened hard enough, if she'd hear the splintering.
She can't take that from him. That she cannot do. Disgust, fury, annoyance, passion: all those things she could take from him. From anyone. From Crona and Tsubaki, from all the cyborgs she'd helped in the past. All of them.
But not indifference. She refused indifference. She dealt with indifference every day at work, when Giriko laughed as he cut the emotionless cyborgs who had pain receptors but no sorrow, no pity, no sense of fear. She dealt with indifference every day when Arachne stepped in, looking at the broken people she'd sent into the lab and only sighed, shaking her head and batting around that ridiculous, lacy handfan, and simply asked if there was any progress. She dealt with indifference when she had to sit at her computer, and say "No, ma'am" and had to forget the face of the woman who was in prior, the woman who they fried the circuits of because Giriko thought if she got close enough to death, she'd experience some sort of emotion. They wanted to utilize fear, the bastards.
Indifference she wanted to chew up and spit out. He was above that. She thought he was beyond that. And she refused to let him sell himself short. She wouldn't let him sit by and succumb to cowardice, unable to face his demons. When she stood, she towered over his sitting form.
She had hellfire in her eye.
Evidence File #105 for Case 3419
[date has been scribbled out]
None of the safehouses have opened up. Azusa is trying to horde all the energy in the generators for as long as she can. I think she thinks Stein is a lost cause.
Spirit doesn't. I can kind of tell. They seem to have some kind of friendship going on. Every time I've brought Stein for general maintenance, he seems comfortable enough around him.
I just want to see him happy.
I don't know if he can be.
I don't know if I can be any help in that. [last sentence is scribbled out]
But he's trying. I think he is. He is. He's trying so hard. Why can't anyone else see how hard he tries?
He found that if he just kept his head down enough, people generally avoided him. Especially as he made his way to the somewhat shadier part of town where Spirit Albarn's house was. Of course, the hood he had over his bolt helped, as did the fact that the exposed seam on his face had long since meshed together and healed.
When he left Marie's apartment, he didn't really know what he was doing. Marie had taken great pains to make sure he was safe, but after their. . .
Their what? Their moment? Their spat? When they swapped spit and he shoved her off of him and then shut down? What was he supposed to call that?
Whatever it was, her reaction had been near horrifying, the fury in her eye, the disappointment on her face, and after she whirled out of the apartment, all but stomping, he had found that he just wanted to get out of the house where everything he touched or looked at reminded him of her.
He didn't have many places to go, if any, but he'd been to Spirit's house multiple times in the past, and the man was friendly enough. Besides which, he was close enough, too, which meant that Stein could slide out of the house without being detected.
He knew the danger he was stepping into. Which was why he felt something like a weight lifting off of his shoulders when he knocked on the man's door, not knowing if he should use the fingerprint identification, or if Spirit was even home, and the redhead had opened with his eyebrows scrunched, something confused on his face as he stepped to the side, accepting him in.
The question of "Where's Marie," wasn't exactly pleasant though, but Spirit got the hint pretty quickly, raising his red brows and blinking at Stein before he shook his head and ushered him to the sofa.
Stein didn't really know the etiquette for such a scenario. He doubted he'd ever have to be in one like that ever before.
It didn't take long for Spirit to come back from where he had disappeared to, holding a cup and setting it in front of Stein without even asking.
"So," he started, as though opening the conversation after a few moment of silence.
Stein grunted.
They stared at each other, the cyborg not making any motion to even grasp at his cup. Spirit blinked at him, shifting from foot to foot.
"Any reason you're in my house at-" Spirit cut himself off to look over at the clock on his mantle, "6 pm?"
Stein looked away, closing his eyes, sighing through his nose.
"Without Marie, might I add," Spirit tacked on. Stein's eyes snapped open at that, and he looked over at the other man with his unnerving, unwavering stare, though it didn't seem to disturb the policeman.
"You're just lucky Maka's out at Liz's house," Spirit commented, taking a deep slug of his coffee, making a face. He turned around to go back to what Stein assumed was his kitchen to rummage for something involving his drink.
Stein noted how the man was swaying, slightly. No doubt sleep deprived. Spirit's voice called, loud and clear from the room he had walked into. "Do you want any sugar?"
Stein didn't answer, only waiting until Spirit stepped back into the room and plopped down on his table, something akin to amusement on his face. "I guess that's a 'no'".
Damn, he was chatty. Marie at least knew how to give him some space. He wanted to escape, not to walk into what must have been a radio talkshow. Spirit took another sip of his drink, seemingly content with it this time, before he looked at Stein from over his mug.
"Okay, what did you do?" he asked, and Stein was almost taken aback from the man's flippancy.
"Hm?" Stein asked, not allowing any irritation to seep into his face.
"Oh, c'mon. I'm me. You wouldn't be here if Marie was home, and since there aren't any meetings scheduled, that means you must have done something to make her leave the apartment. And if you're here, that means both of you must want to be out of the apartment. You aren't stupid enough to forget how dangerous it is to be outside. So you took the risk to come here."
Stein only blinked, somewhat impressed by how fast the man had pieced things together. "And?" he prompted, not showing any signs of letting up. Spirit rolled his eyes before he made a bemused face at him.
"And," he began, "you must have really fucked up if Marie of all people is mad at you."
Stein didn't flinch, though something must have come onto his face that made Spirit quirk his eyebrow up.
"Look, I don't mean to pry but. . .it's Marie, y'know? Hell, the woman could probably look her murderer in the face and tell 'em she forgave 'em."
Stein sighed, though he knew he had no need to. The exasperation was foreign, but present, regardless. Another stem off from fury, he supposed. He didn't understand emotions, honestly. How could he know how to pick one from the other?
There was a different feeling, too. One he couldn't place, for how could he identify a face he had never seen, save in glimpses his previous owner dangled in front of him, played in snippets while he danced to how she coded him? He shivered.
Revulsion he understood. That one was common.
Spirit's gaze on the other man's face didn't let up, and he seemed to be observing every twitch and movement the man made, taking note of the shiver.
That was new. Marie had insisted that he was showing some sort of emotion, but Spirit had genuinely never seen any sign of that in any of their meetings. They just had to go off of what Marie had said.
It seemed that she was something of a sore spot for the cyborg. Spirit couldn't really blame him for that, either. Marie had a habit of worming her way into someone's heart and making it so that they had no choice but to adore her. She just had the kind of personality that prompted warmth and compassion.
"You know, there's a reason Baba Yaga put her on the Empathy Project," Spirit started, looking to see if there was anything Stein would do in response, but the man only closed his eyes and leaned back, cutting off any direct emotion that could have been reflected in his irises.
"Hm?" Stein replied, not necessarily curious, but more interested in filling up the space. Spirit took another sip of his drink, stretching the moment out as far as he possibly could, waiting until Stein's eyebrow twitched, almost imperceptibly.
"They wanted her to suffer," Spirit informed, easily, taking another drink and all but smiling at the fact that Stein's eyes opened, with something Spirit would call surprise in the action. "She was twenty-two when she got her Master's. Arachne vetted her, looked at her file. She used to volunteer at trauma centers, you know? Marie, not Arachne. They knew she had a soft heart. It kills her to be around the emotionless. . .she wouldn't be working so hard if it didn't."
Stein stared at him. He wasn't certain what Spirit was attempting, though he could tell the redhead might have been needling him. It was clear from what interactions he'd observed between the two that Spirit had a certain love for Marie: familial, almost. As though she could be Maka's aunt, though not by blood.
"So?" Stein responded, blinking. There was that feeling again, too. That buzzing in what most referred to as a stomach but Stein knew to be his intestines. A "gut", he supposed. Spirit's face dropped.
"So, if she can still work in Baba Yaga Enterprises despite that but had to leave her apartment, you had to have done something terrible to drive her to that."
Stein shrugged. But something gnawed at him, threatening to open its' maw and swallow him, like an angler fish, consuming him from the middle outward. He almost shifted around in his seat, though he felt too drained to do so, and he only continued to stare at Spirit, watching as the man took a breath in through his nose.
Spirit had interrogated before. Hell, it was his job. But he'd never had to question an emotionless, or rather, partially emotionless cyborg. It wasn't much, Stein's reactions, but it was enough. It was obvious that Marie had to be right, that Stein's coding had to have been coming back, snapping into him like an elastic band over skin.
And, if Spirit's observations were anything to go by, Stein didn't look too pleased about the developments. That was to be expected. From what little he knew of developmental psychology, the less pleasant emotions usually came first. Irritation, confusion, surprise: he had seen all those things in Stein's face.
Guilt.
How could he not notice the guilt? That was emotion Spirit had ample experience in. He had it all too much experience with it when he came home to Kami, lying about having had been at work.
Sex was work, if you really thought about it. No matter who it was with.
Marriage was work, too. If Baba Yaga hadn't gotten to Kami, he was sure their marriage would dissolve, anyway. He clearly didn't have the skills for married life, but he did possess the feelings.
Stein took a look at the cup in front of him, the one Spirit placed down when he first came in. He hadn't made a single move to reach for it, or look at it, before. The silence stretched out in the room, Spirit's gaze settling at the wall to the side.
It almost felt like they were sharing something, a moment of some kind, though Stein wasn't really privy to what it was. Instead, he only focused on the cup, not yet determining what it was until something in his mind connected and he realized it must have been coffee.
In the past, he thinks he might have liked coffee. It was strange to think of that, remember the phantoms of joy chilling across his skin, and he took a deep breath in, focusing intently on the beverage.
Spirit took note of the intense focus Stein had, but he knew, whether sympathetically, or empathetically, or simply from some strange connection he had with the cyborg, one born from disappointing women who were amazing in too many ways, that he shouldn't pick up the cup or move it. The cyborg was contemplating, and Spirit didn't know what he was thinking of, but he knew it must have been important.
The shivers of past-pleasure passed through his body, and Stein continued staring at the cup, finally settling into the less intense skin he was used to, the emotional skin of dulled and blunted feeling.
Yet, when he peered into the overly crème lightened caffeine, he could almost envision her eye.
He didn't want to acknowledge why he felt so damn bad.
Evidence File #110 for Case 3419
March 7th
Stein doesn't seem comfortable with being hooked up to machines. Other than general maintenance, he doesn't seem comfortable with much of anything.
I wish I knew what happened to him.
The Empathy Project is completely falling through, but I don't think that means emotions are unable to manifest in a cyborg. Stein is proof of that.
I've been trying to collect enough evidence to convince Azusa, but at this point, I don't know how to go about it.
Numbers are so impersonal when it comes to emotions. Science just can't cut it.
How do you describe love through a chemical reaction? Through a sequence of coding?
You can't.
I don't think you can.
I don't think I want to.
When he finally came back to Marie's apartment, the white jacket's hood covering most of his face, he fished the key she made him out of the pocket and used it to open the door, fast, so he could rush inside. Spirit was a ridiculous man, he decided. He was too many emotions in a sleep-deprived, overprotective man. When he went over, initially, intending to get some time to himself in a safe space, he didn't expect that he'd end up babysitting the elder.
Stein rolled his eyes. Annoyance he was also familiar with. He could probably pick that one out of an ocean of other unfamiliarity.
He made his way past the six flights of stairs, barely winded due to the more mechanical bits of him, and he only got eight strange looks from Marie's apartment-mates while he snuck in as though he were some sort of criminal.
And, of course he would. Marie had been so careful that he wouldn't be seen. But he thought he could pass as a regular human being with his hair covered. His face was trustworthy enough.
When he finally got to her floor, it was deserted, something he was thankful for, especially due to the fact that he had to crouch down and fish her spare key out from under her door-mat.
It was something so primitive, frankly: the fact that she still had a door-mat, let alone that she kept a key beneath it. Regardless, he wouldn't be able to get inside, so he wasn't going to question her. She hadn't really struck him as the type to make poor decisions in all the time he'd lived with her.
Lived with her. Like he lived with someone else, in the past.
It was so frustrating, to know things in snippets, in phantoms, in a hazy memory that was too fuzzy to really make out. For a brief moment, as he stepped in and closed the door behind him, he wondered why he was trying so hard to get something that, thus far, was entirely unsatisfactory. He unzipped his jacket to set on the multiple hooks Marie had right near her door, and he took note of the dark black jacket he knew she'd wear if she was to go on a run to a landfill.
Where she found him. Where she risked her life so that he could find his way out.
Something in his chest stuttered and he swallowed hard.
Emotions seemed. . .messy. They were disgusting, and overpowering. They, as evidence from Spirit when he tried to get Stein to open up more, unsuccessfully, could lead a grown man to sniffle with snot running down their upper lip while they lamented their wife.
Why would Stein ever want that? Why did he want that?
He didn't know. He didn't think he did. Yet something in him was calling for them, like an ache, a craving, a yearning.
He wanted to understand.
Those feelings were severed from him, cut from his very being, and he wanted them back regardless of how complicated they would be. But it was like learning something after having unlearned it, like wading through a sea of caramel, sticky, and unpleasant, and slowslowslow.
It was like learning the guitar after years of not playing it.
He paused at that thought, eyebrows coming together and looking down at his palm.
There it was, again. That blip of an idea that felt so familiar yet so not. He'd been having them more and more recently, the more time he spent around others. But that didn't make sense from what he had read from Marie's books. Cyborgs weren't supposed to have thoughts like that.
He was feeling less and less connected to the descriptions in Marie's textbooks, now that he thought about it.
Sometimes, when he closed his eyes, he felt lost in himself. Behind his lids was the darkness of a million starless nights. No coding, no wires, just a void of. . .something.
He didn't want to be left alone to that. Recently, there was always someone or something around to bring him from that. It was why he refused to shut down for a night, to fake the sleep that a real human being would need. To be in that abyss was. . .horrifying.
He didn't understand what horror truly was, but he knew he felt it. And that was more than confusing. What was something that could not be explained? What was fear? What was sorrow? What was that yawning ache in him that was barely ever smothered out?
He wanted to know. Maybe that was why he was doing what he was doing, though the closer he pressed his hands to the flame of what he felt, the more it seemed he should pull away. Put on gloves, at least. Find something for safety. He flinched from the fear that what he would discover would disappoint him.
But discovery. He thirsted for it. His curiosity was deeper than he could ever dig alone.
And speaking of discoveries, Marie wasn't in the living room. Upon glancing at the cheerful, yellow clock she kept hanging in the kitchen (somehow, not her own, anymore), he realized that it was the time slot to watch what must have been her favorite show.
She must really have been upset. He knew she'd cried because of him, before. She wasn't covert even when she tried. It didn't bring him any joy to make her cry, but up until then, he hadn't really felt much of anything in regards to her negative emotions.
But the last time she was so upset had been over a month ago. She had seemed so much more open and happy. He didn't understand those things, either, but he could observe them. Sometimes, she looked like the women in the films she enjoyed so much.
Not now, though. There was no warm blonde on the couch, so different from the one he had at first thought of. The one who was both fading from his bones yet sharpening in his memories. As though becoming impotent, an image without power.
He didn't care. He knew he didn't.
He thought he didn't.
When he went over to the loveseat, and really, what a tacky thing to call it, that was usually occupied by two during that particular time-slot, he couldn't help but feel an all-too-familiar emptiness.
Something was missing from him.
He didn't want to close his eyes.
Evidence File #113 for Case 3419
[no date was written]
I don't think I need to check his coding to know he's changed. There's not an emotionless cyborg in existence like him.
There's not a regular cyborg in existence like him.
No serial number, no batch number, no model number.
Where did he come from? What happened to him? What was his original name? Who had hurt him?
I wish there was a way to help him.
I feel so useless.
When Marie got back to her apartment, she felt heavy. Azusa had been disgustingly logical, as per usual, but what else had she expected? The younger woman offered solutions, she wasn't one for sitting around and talking about feelings. Not now-a-days, anyway, with things having been just so flat out confusing. Everyone needed answers and Azusa could provide them without hesitation.
Or she could try. She wasn't the kind for comfort or girl talk, and neither was Naigus. Both of them cared about her, she knew that, but they weren't Kami.
Lord, how she missed Kami. It was times like then, when she most needed a sympathetic shoulder, that she felt the gape the woman had left when she was taken away. Kami just had a way with people, pulling them close to her and refusing to let them feel abandoned.
Maka seemed to have adopted that, as well. She just wouldn't leave her friends alone until they were okay, again, and it had inspired the girl to a massive group of rag-tag friends, the kinds of which Marie hadn't ever seen since, well, since her own. Marie's mouth pinched, her eye stinging as she closed her door behind her, pulling her jacket off before her eye immediately noticed the white jacket on the hook.
Her eyebrows met in confusion. That wasn't where it had been, before.
Still, it meant he was home, at least.
She hoped it did. She closed her eye.
She felt bad. She couldn't ignore that. She felt shitty. He'd had a goddamn panic attack and she practically pounced on him: what had she been thinking? She wanted to cringe. He was right when he'd accused her of being selfish. No one who was a good person would have done something like that.
She couldn't tell Azusa the entire story, how could she have?, but she did mention he had something akin to a breakdown.
Azusa didn't really believe her, wanting some kind of proof, but Marie was over having to prove that he could have emotions. She knew he did. She couldn't make up a damn panic attack.
She had to apologize. It was all her fault. She never should have kissed him. She never should have touched him with or without his permission.
But what was she supposed to do? Treat him like a leper? Act as though he was diseased? She didn't know how to be around people so different, so fragile yet brittle, strong with so many fault lines.
She sheepishly stepped into her living room, and there he was, on her couch, the spot that was designated as his since that first night she had brought the blue pillows in.
The space next to him was empty as though waiting for her.
It was like he had been waiting for her.
When he looked up, there was something she couldn't place on his face, but it was gone immediately, wiped clean. It almost looked like. . .relief.
That couldn't be right.
Could it?
Marie walked forward, hesitating only briefly before she came to stand in front of him. "Stein, I," she cut herself off, her voice sounding scratchy, but he only looked at her as though willing her to continue. ". . .can I. . .sit here?" she asked, a familiar ritual. However, unlike usual, when he'd only nod, once, or decline non-verbally, his olive eyes were trained on her.
"If you'd like," he said, and her eyebrows went up at that.
It was almost like he was opening conversation between them, coaxing her.
When she sat down next to him, she was careful not to touch him in anyway. If he didn't invite it, she would take every pain to avoid their arms brushing, knees knocking, skin warm on skin. She didn't have that right. Marie stared forward, thinking of what to say. He wasn't easy to read. No one really was, but he was even less so.
She didn't know if another apology would only make him mad at her. She wasn't good at words, and she felt that most now. She opened her mouth, intent on filling up the quiet, but he beat her to it.
"Marie," he said, and she turned to look at him, her lower lip dropped slightly, to take in what expression he had.
His face was smooth and impassive, but something. . .something she couldn't place was glinting in his eyes. She was so focused on his visage, she didn't even notice the movement his arm made until he flicked his eyes downward and she followed the motion.
His hand had flipped over, palm up, and he had placed it between them, letting it rest on the cushions. Her mouth felt dry all of a sudden, and she tried to find a word, multiple words, to say, to ask. It felt so foreign.
Her stomach was fizzing, bubbly.
". . .um. . ." she started, eloquently, and if she looked up, she'd see the barest ghost of amusement flit across his face.
He didn't do or say anything, letting her come to her own conclusions. It could mean nothing.
Or, it couldn't.
She didn't know what to make of it for a moment, but she glanced up at him, watching him watch her, curiosity evident in his features, before realization smashed into her and her lower lip dropped, slightly. There was a question on her face, and her lungs felt like they had filled up, all of her just air and laughter, feeling almost. . .giddy.
She gulped, understanding what he was trying to prompt. ". . .can I. . .hold your hand?" Marie asked, scared of feeling foolish for a single, gaping moment, before he reacted to her question and she spotted the same bare-bones nod she was used to.
She almost felt like a schoolgirl, again.
When she set her palm into his, fingers interlacing, he didn't even twitch. There was no negative reaction from him.
She squeezed.
And she thinks his grasp tightened.
Evidence File #117 for Case 3419
We have to check all Missing Persons Databases in the past twelve years
[tear marks are evident all over the page] [smudged ink] [barely legible]
She doesn't know how long they stayed like that, simply being next to one another. She doesn't really care. He is warm and solid and nothing like he was when she first met him.
Marie doesn't know who opens their mouth first. All she knows is the "I really am sorry" is tumbling out of her like a gush she can't control, and this time, instead of a shrug or a grunt, he actually turns to look at her.
"You didn't know."
She blinks up at him, her singular eye focused on his face, looking for insincerity. Finding none.
She chews the inside of her cheek. ". . .did you?"
The air felt thick. His fingers seemed to tighten around her own, as though for comfort, before he shakes his head and his gray locks fall into his eyes.
"No."
She looks away. The room is silent for a moment, for a long moment, before he sucks in a breath.
"You reminded me of her."
And at that, she whips her gaze right back to his face, her eye widening.
"Her?"
But he isn't looking at her. He is looking over her head, and his eyes look far away, as though gazing into nothing.
She wants to know what he sees behind his eyelids, because he doesn't seem to want to blink. The very act of saying "her" seemed to hurt him.
This time, it is her fingers that tighten around his, and her thumb is stroking the back of his hand.
"But you're nothing like her," he muses, still not looking at her.
"Like who?"
He says nothing, chewing his lip.
"Stein?"
"Your hair isn't even similar. I thought it was, when I first saw you. She was blonde, too."
"Stein, who was blonde?" Marie urges, something pressurized and heavy in her chest. She feels like her skin isn't her own, all of a sudden, like she wants to squirm out of it.
Because she knows. She doesn't want to know. She hates the thought of knowing. She hates the comparison. She hated it the first time Crona made it. She hated it when Crona had flinched from her when she tried to touch them.
She hates in now, when she knows what will come out of his mouth. She hates it when he looks at her and she wants to cup his face in her hands and tell him she wishes with everything inside of her he didn't have to endure what he did. She hates it.
She hates that it took her that long to finally understand, to connect the dots. Stein and Crona. Crona and Stein. The way they reacted: their fear, their panic, their resilience, their strength, their fragility.
When Stein speaks, it's almost like it comes from a haze, like he is recalling a name in a dream.
In a nightmare.
Like Crona did.
She doesn't want to hear it. She doesn't want to know it. She doesn't want to choke on her breath and feel her insides splinter.
"Medusa."
Marie feels her world shatter.
Evidence File #120 for Case 3419
I hate her. I hate her. I hate her.