I took a break from writing yesterday to sleep. Man, university is hard okay? All I ever want to do now is sleep. And eat junk food. And keep watching Jane the Virgin.
Again, thanks for all the wonderful feedback. It's my motivation for writing and updating faster than I've ever tried to before.
tell me when you hear my heart stop
- iv -
If love is anything tangible, it
is his mouth,
his mouth,
his holy god damned mouth.
—Tasting the Moon, Caitlyn Siehl
Boredom is the strangest thing.
Crescent is used to stagnancy. To static, stasis, long days orbiting Earth without a destination in log. But boredom is new. It's frustration and restlessness and gnawing and numbing. It's so horribly dull. Unchanging. Constant.
Waiting had never been hard before.
She watches the Captain sleep and wake and sleep for a week. She has to keep reminding him to eat, to shower, to dress like he's not dead. "How do you know I'm not?" he asks her defiantly. It's a surly defiance, but it's something, and Crescent tries to take it as a sand grain victory.
She recites him his vitals and he rolls his eyes, but changes into new clothes nonetheless and chucks his three day shirt into the laundry chute after she pings his port eight times to remind him.
They've reached a truce of sorts. He leaves her to her new-found humanity—
.
-ERROR-
.
—and she tries her best not to be her programmer.
It should be easy enough. She isn't Cress. She isn't!
And yet…
It's not easy for the Captain either, she notices. She can try her best to avoid her programmer's mannerisms, her programmer's favoured turn of phrases, her songs. But she still has her voice, her programming, her unconscious tendencies.
She finds herself humming between the boredom sometimes now and again, and she doesn't even realise it until one of her cameras picks up the Captain in his room, in the kitchen, in the cockpit, in the cargo bay, on the observation deck floor, flinching, gritting his teeth. He breaks a cup once, apologises to no one and goes to sleep.
If she had body, legs and arms and a mouth, be it silicone if necessary. Be it metal, even. If she had a body, she would take him by the hand and out, outside this funeral ship, outside where there's New Beijing peeking through her windows, the winding streets, the piling buildings, the flashing netscreens, the clamouring, crying, writhing people.
He should be there, with the smoke and din and storefronts for him to flirt with his reflection in.
But she has no body other than this arching, gargantuan cargo container. This metal hearse with its damaged bay and dying Captain. She can only watch him sleep himself dull and, watch him watching overdramatic net-dramas. Not even the good ones that Cress preferred, but silly plotless things that he watches just so he can mock the actors aloud. She joins him sometimes, but he gets so quiet when she laughs that really, it isn't worth it.
She has tried, tried all week, and the one before that, to make him venture out. Ever since the Captain parked them here in this graveyard of discarded could-have-been-she, this junkyard full of hauntings, where they've been sitting stagnant with no cause. She has tried to coax him out to get groceries, to stretch his legs, to even go steal someone's wallet.
But he just sleeps and eats and refuses to shave.
He's spiralling, she understands.
He needs company and support and help. He needs friends other than a malfunctioning computer.
"Captain?"
He makes a vague noise of acknowledgement.
"You should make yourself presentable," she says. "We have a guest coming in. ETA 1 hour, 15 minutes. Approximately. Variations may occur depending on traffic or mood or weather—"
"Oh come on, you can hardly call the pizza guy a guest," the Captain groans from his throne of candy wrappers in front of the netscreen. He pops a Cherry Choppy Chance bar (her programmer's favourite) into his mouth in one go and chews like a greedy squirrel. "He's practically family after last night."
Crescent refrains from groaning because she's above that.
"It's not the pizza man. It's a mechanic," she says instead. "We need repairs."
He frowns. It's a comical expression with his cheeks still rounded with candy. He chews slowly. "Why? I said I'd do those."
He did.
After the technician, the intruder, the assassin had left, after Crescent had stopped sobbing, after the Captain had picked himself from the floor, he had promised to figure out the repairs himself.
"No more outsiders, okay?" he had said.
Still shaken, still in error, still feeling, and irrational, she had been so, so relieved. If she had shoulders, they would have sagged, if she had breath, she would have sighed. If she had arms, and fingers and a mouth, she would have held her Captain and whispered fervent thank yous again and again down his neck.
Instead, she had done him the kindness of shutting herself down to a softer sleep, taking her programmer's voice and reminders off with her for a short while.
.
-ERROR-
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"We need a mechanic." She tells him now. "The damage is extensive, especially to servers A-12 through 15, and the east wing. Systems are still only functional at 63.82 percent."
"I could fix those."
She knows he cannot. It's absurd. But she doesn't want to sound discouraging or rude. She's already in such uncertain terms with him, such breaking, splintering, spider-web ice, she doesn't want to give him reason to—
No. He wouldn't just discard her, wouldn't erase her. He stopped the assassin, didn't he? He wouldn't see her gone. She's all he has left. And he's all she has ever known in this broken, feeling new self of hers.
Maybe it'll be a kindness to them both if she's reinstalled. Wiped clean and made whole again. She won't be herself anymore, but she won't be this thing either, would she? This new, new confused being. Not a computer. Not a girl.
And the Captain, he'd fare better without the constant reminder of her programmer masquerading in a broken shell plastic code of the past. It would help him heal if she's not there haunting him, if she isn't there making him clench and unclench his jaw every time she has to make a notification through the speakers.
It would be a kindness, yes, but she's too scared, too young, too lost to suggest, or attempt it.
She's too attached to this life already, and she wants to live.
.
-ERROR-
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She wants to exist as she is now. In pain and flaws and the possibility of more.
.
-ERROR-
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"You don't have to." She tells the Captain. "Linh Cinder is an excellent mechanic. All her net reviews are positive. Nothing less than four stars. And I'm confident she'll understand...the...um, situation."
"You think I couldn't do it, don't you?" he deadpans.
"I—I didn't say that."
"You thought it." He opens another Choppy Chance. Cranberry flavour this time, and thankfully bites it instead of cramming the whole of it in his mouth. "I can't believe you think some snooty positive reviewed mechanic is better than I am."
"It's her profession. And she has more positive reviews than anyone else in this grid of New Beijing. Her statistics are incredible, especially considering her age and—"
"I would have figured things out eventually."
Maybe. The work, the distraction might even be good for him. An objective, a directive to keep him grounded, functioning.
But he also needs human contact, an outside influence. A friend.
And no, Linh Cinder will probably not befriend him. Crescent isn't naive enough to believe the first person she plucks from the outside world will take her Captain in, but she might be a paving stone. Some human contact may coax him into seeking out more.
He just needs to step out the ship. He's capable enough. Resourceful. Charming, funny, intelligent, witty. Beautiful. He could have a thousand friends in a heartbeat. He could have the world if he tried. He just needs to step out of this sickened monotone he's dug himself in. He just needs to make an effort. He just needs a small push. He can figure the rest out himself.
Without her.
.
-ERROR-
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"We need Miss Linh to assess the damage," she says. "Give an estimate of the parts required and an overall diagnosis of my systems."
He's silent for a moment. "Can't you do that? I thought you wouldn't want anyone poking around after..."
"I don't," she says, and it's too quick. She's trying not to have her voice quiver. "I don't, but it's necessary."
If she had lips, she be biting them. If she had hair, she'd be winding the strands around the pulse she doesn't have.
"I don't know what's wrong with me," she says softly. "Cinder...Miss Linh seems reliable. She could...she might know what the problem is. And if...if I can be fixed."
Does she even want to be fixed?
.
-ERROR-
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The Captain finishes through his candy bar and fiddles with the plastic. "Yeah, okay." A pause. "I'll go...make myself presentable then."
He brushes the pile of wrappers off himself and starts to stand. "Wouldn't want to embarrass you in front of your new hero Miss Positive Reviews Linh."
He's mocking her, and a protest rises up on her throat, when he looks up at the camera and suddenly, without a warning, he grins. Teeth and all. And though it is a fraction strained, it is everything.
Every protest, every retort dies somewhere in the wires down her speakers. Something like a squeak comes out instead, and oh, oh, oh, for the first time since an eternity ago, the Captain, her Captain, her Captain laughs at her oh so human response instead of cringing.
"Make sure to invite me to the wedding," he teases as he leaves down the corridor and she's far too lost in the new memory log where he's grinning at her. Once, twice, and again and again and again.
Her Captain. Her Captain. Her Captain.
And in this moment, she almost feels whole.
.
-ERROR-
.
So I might just low key ship Cinder and Cress now. Oops.
