Reunite (verb)
(past tense: reunited, present tense: reuniting)
To come together again after a period of separation or disunity
He's known about the Ruins of Kordana for years. He knows where pretty much every remnant of the world before the reset is, he made an effort to track down as much as he could, every scrap of information about things which survived unchanged.
He's heard the stories about the Ruins as well, heard of the dangers and traps and strange metal monsters, the voice of a woman that those brave enough to venture in could sometimes hear.
("A ghost," they whisper to each other when they speak of the place, "a spectral guardian of a place you are not to tread, a place left by long gone people."
They do not know just how right and yet how wrong they are)
He's never visited though. Never once in all the years he has known of the Ruins has he been able to make himself go. The place is called the Ruins of Kordana for a reason, after all, and he couldn't bring himself to go just in case the ruins were also a grave, hadn't been able to face the possibility of going and finding Kordana gone or not herself. Schrodinger's Cat, in a way - or perhaps Schrodinger's AI would be more appropriate.
It is one matter to see a friend after the Reset who does not remember him. It is another entirely to face the loss of one, let alone the loss of another survivor.
(True, he had never known Kordana well. Their acquaintanceship had been brief; nothing but scattered snatches of conversation over commlinks on battlefields in truth. But he had still known her, and she had known him, and it would be a painful loss if it occurred. Better to avoid it)
But now he knows that she is alive. She is alive and remembers and he is not alone.
So here he stands, in the humid air of Sho'nuff Island, outside what is now mostly an overgrown, rusting hunk of metal but was once a mighty war machine.
There is a wide, gaping hole torn in the hull and he can't help but to wonder what caused it.
(An enemy attack before the Reset? The Reset itself, trying to 'fix' the mecha? Perhaps it was the crash, or perhaps it was an animal on this island.
Does it even really matter?)
He brushes a hand against shorn and twisted metal as he approaches the entrance and smiles when he sees the working gears and mechanisms on the inside. It has been a long time since he has seen anything of that nature. He stands like that for a moment, one hand against the edge of the torn open entrance and eyes focused on the motion of the mecha's inner workings. He'd forgotten how calming the rotation of gears and levers could be.
(There may be the smallest flutter of pride at the sight too – Lorithian engineering, still functioning after the complete rewrite of the universe and five thousand years of total neglect. They had flourished as much as they had before the Shadowscythe for many reasons and not least among them was that they had some of the greatest engineering minds in the system)
Eventually, he sighs, and crosses the threshold. Somehow, despite the vast opening into the jungle outside, the air inside the mecha feels cooler and less humid. He glances to the working mechanisms again, and then to a vent in the ceiling, and smiles.
There are broken, scattered remains of robots all over, security drones and repair bots alike. For a moment, he almost feels like he has been transported back in time, to a heavy battlemech overrun by Shadowscythe – and then the marks in the metal casing are not the scorched slashes of energy blades or the jagged gashes of claws. They are the clean cut marks of a blade, a blade that he knows, and the moment passes.
A security camera flickers on as he approaches the hard light bridge, the whirring of the internal mechanisms amplified both by the relative silence of the surrounding and the disuse – were it maintained, those sounds would be silent - and a voice echoes out just as he steps off it.
"Hello, Commander,"
(Kordana's voice is somewhat ethereal in the emptiness of this place. The voices of mecha AI were always carefully designed – just firm enough to grab the pilots attention in the heat of battle but soft enough not to be aggravating, each with the slightest differences between them to differentiate between AI but to maintain trained-in responses to the voice regardless of the AI present. Age is taking its toll on Kordana and it shows in her voice. There are edges of static to it, the slightest jump between the syllables of her words)
Her hologram is waiting for him when he steps into the command centre, blue and just faintly flickering, exactly how he remembers her.
"It's been a long time," she says, holographic eyes flickering up and down over him, as though she is taking in his appearance despite the fact that they both know she has already catalogued it through the surveillance system.
"Indeed it has," he answers, a soft smile on his face and a warmth in his chest "Long enough that I happen to not be a commander anymore,"
Her eyes twinkle – literally twinkle, an adjustment to her projection to imitate the result of an emotion in a way she can express it – as her eyes flicker up and down his body again, before she meets his gaze with a raised holographic eyebrow (or as close as can be managed with his hair blocking it).
That is the moment that he realises he has shifted his posture unconsciously, had perhaps done so the moment he entered the room.
His spine has straightened, his shoulders rolled back. His legs are shoulder width apart and his hands are clasped behind his back.
"Are you sure?" Kordana asks him, lips quirking up into a smirk.
He laughs a little, forcing his shoulders to relax and letting one arm swing forward to hang at his side while the other comes up to run through his hair.
"I guess some habits are hard to break," he says.
"Indeed, they are," she replies, smirk morphing into a grin.
She steps forward and holds out a hand, arm extended, palm upwards, as though for him to take. For a split second, he almost reaches out to grab it before remembering that he would pass straight through her holographic form. The delighted look on her face tells him that she didn't miss the hastily aborted movement. He has a feeling that she had hoped he would do that.
"Come, Commander," she says, stressing the title with almost a challenge for him to deny it again, "We've got a lot of catching up to do, I think,"
Yeah, he thinks, following her as she puts on the appearance of walking through the hallways of the mecha, occasionally disappearing and reappearing briefly as she jumps from projector to projector, probably leading him to some still – at least partly - intact break room or quarters.
Yeah, we have.
And that's the end of this one! One of the few non-oneshots that I've done. I'm quite proud of it. You're quite lucky to be getting both of these parts on the same day - the people reading over on tumblr had to wait three months for me to get around to finishing it! (Sorry guys!)