Chapter 9. A Rift Between You and Me


The Spine caught himself just before he slammed his door, remembering at the last second that he could possibly rip the door from its hinges, but it was a near thing. He was angry, he was hurt. He couldn't remember feeling this way before, it was like his inside were burning and twisting in a way that made him want to lash out but also withdraw away from everyone. It felt a lot like hatred, and he didn't like the feeling.

He paced the room, willing the anger to subside but it only seemed to grow. He wanted to go back upstairs, he wanted to yell at her, scream at her, make her understand what she had said, but it was futile. There was no getting through to her, he should have realized that all along and any amount of retribution that appealed to him now would make him no better than her if he acted on it.

Part of him realized something had happened upstairs. The Spine knew her enough now to know that she only lashed out like that when something happened outside of her control, but the ferocity, the evil, that had flown from her today was unprecedented. It was inexcusable. It was...

Typical. When would he learn? The Spine had thought that maybe she was coming around, that maybe she was starting to understand them and accept them, to see them as more than machines, but she wasn't. Every time she seemed to get it, something would happen she would jump to assumptions and conclusions. Whatever glimpses he had to the person within all that rage were fleeting and he had been a fool to hope that those glimpses might become more permanent. Marisol would never change; she would never see them for who they really were. She was here to do a job and nothing more.

There was a knock, and The Spine ignored it. Rabbit ignored him ignoring her and opened the door, slipping inside and shutting it again. The Spine got a brief look of Zer0 heading into his own room and he briefly wondered if Zer0 was ok. If the automatons had been capable of crying, Zer0 would have been doing so. He had been even more hopeful than The Spine that Marisol was opening up to them and The Spine knew his heart would be absolutely broken by this.

Rabbit leaned against the wall since there was no bed to sit on and she didn't trust the chairs. She watched her brother pace for a few moments in silence.

"If you've come to say I told you so, save it," The Spine said, sweeping past his sister, fists clenched. Rabbit had warned The Spine to tread carefully, to not push too hard with Marisol and to guard himself against her temper and her ignorance. The Spine hadn't listened. He'd been too caught up in trying to get through to her, to prove to her that they weren't what she thought, that there was more to them than just blue matter and metal. Then it had changed, and he had been too caught up by her.

"I wasn't," Rabbit said indignantly. "I came to see how ya were doing."

"Swell," The Spine said. "Real swell, Rabbit, thanks for asking."

"So, you're mad," Rabbit replied. "Big mad."

The Spine rounded on her. "Aren't you?" he demanded. "Did you hear what she said?"

"I heard a lot of stupid come outta her mouth," Rabbit said darkly, glaring at the ceiling. "But there was also a lot of other stuff in there."

"Like what?" The Spine snapped.

"You stare at her all the time and hang on to her every word, but you still don't see or listen," Rabbit grumbled quietly so The Spine barely heard her.

"What?"

"She said people were dying while we hide out here," Rabbit said quickly, loud enough for The Spine to hear this time. "She said she didn't want to be trapped here. She said she was done." Rabbit paused. "She also said we have no faith in her."

"But we do!" The Spine said. "Or did before that outburst. Now...I don't know that I can trust her."

"This wasn't about us...entirely," Rabbit said. "This was about her. It's always about her. She's her own worst enemy and I think something bad happened while she was upstairs. She only loses it like that when something happens." Rabbit paused. "Or when we have a front door confrontation. We have a lot of those, it's weird."

"That's supposed to make it ok?" The Spine said skeptically.

"No," Rabbit said firmly. "No, it isn't ok, but you know…neither is she. How many times has she gone off the deep end down here? How many times have we caught her staring into space, reliving nightmares. I mean geez, we caught her having a legitimate nightmare about her past a few days in." Rabbit sighed "Remind you of anyone?

The Spine frowned. The outburst, the tormented visage, the memories that wouldn't let go. It was familiar...too familiar.

"It reminds me of our father," he finally said. "It reminds me of you and me and the others after the wars."

"Yeah, that's because like him and like us, Marisol's mad at herself," Rabbit said. "She takes it out on everyone. 'Course that drives everyone away and then she's scared and alone and that makes her even more angry at herself." Rabbit shook her head. "This thingy with DiMarco is personal. If it wasn't personal, I bet she wouldn't act like this.

"None of this makes what she said OK," The Spine said again. "How can we trust her after this? How can we even put up with her after this?"

Rabbit shrugged. "I mean you're moody and I put up with you."

"You're hilarious," The Spine deadpanned.

"What choice do we have?" Rabbit asked him. "It's not like we can avoid her."

"We can leave her alone," The Spine said. "That's the choice. We just...stay down here, away from her unless something happens. We wait until we can go home."

Rabbit rolled her eyes. "If that's what you want," she said. "But we both know it ain't."

The Spine glared.

"D-d-d-don't give me that look," Rabbit said, waving her hand dismissively. "You've been weirdly obsessed with her since she walked into the manor. You're curious. You're annoyed. You're fascinated. It'd be cute if it wasn't so sappy."

"I am not obsessed!" The Spine said indignantly, ignoring the small voice in his head that seemed to scoff. "I just…was trying to make life easier. For all of us. Her included. She's so…isolated and I thought I could be her friend and help her deal with this. I thought I could help us all deal with this."

"You thought you could save her," Rabbit said, sounding both resigned and exasperated. She walked over to him and made him stop pacing, standing in front of him so he had no choice but to face her or turn away. "You can't save someone who don't wanna be saved, Spine."

The Spine looked away.

"You know what else? You like her because she's you," Rabbit said.

"What?" The Spine squawked indignantly.

"She's an angrier you, but she's you," Rabbit said. "You both have way too many feelings and it drives you both crazy. She doesn't want 'em and you don't know how to deal with 'em. Now you're both tired of carrying 'em around and you're trying to lean on each other because no one else you know can keep you upright because no one understands how you feel." Rabbit's mouth twisted into a sad sort of grimace. "Not even me."

The Spine shook his head. "You're wrong."

"Am not," Rabbit said. "You're like her, you're always looking after all of us. I'm the oldest and yet you are always taking care of me and Zer0and the rest. You feel like you have to hold us up. Makes sense I guess since you're The Spine."

"But you're my family," The Spine said. "Of course I'm going to take care of you."

"But you don't always have to," Rabbit said patiently. "And Marisol is somehow the only one you trust to take care of us in your place…or I guess with your help." Rabbit jerked her head to the ceiling. "And I think she trusts you to help too, even if she won't admit it. And I think the fact that neither of you can save us all right now is killing you both inside and you two are lashing out at the only people strong enough to take it." Rabbit grinned. "And maybe at the people you care about since you know I'm going to love you anyway."

The Spine winced. It wasn't that far-fetched. He had said as much to Marisol. He wanted to stop DiMarco. He wanted to save his family. He didn't care if it cost him his own life, he was desperate to find a way out of this, to find a way to make them safe again. So was Marisol and every setback sent them all into a tailspin. No wonder they both were lashing out, trapped down here like rats in a cage.

"None of that makes this ok," The Spine said. "I can't...I don't know if I can let this go, Rabbit. I know she has a lot of hurt in her but that doesn't give her the right to hurt us."

"It doesn't," Rabbit agreed. "So, we're just gonna have to hope she realizes how messed up this thing was."

"She won't apologize," The Spine said. "She will rationalize it or blame it on whatever happened to make her lose her temper today. She thinks she's a monster beyond redemption and she uses that to excuse what she does, whether she realizes it or not."

"Time will tell, brother," Rabbit said. She pat him gently on the shoulder. "But Spine...I do think she cares about you. About all of us. I just don't think she knows how to handle it."

"People who care about you shouldn't be the ones that hurt you."

Rabbit hated how small The Spine's voice sounded, how wounded, and it made her want to have a go at Marisol herself, but she also knew he was wrong. "I think it's the people who care about you that can really hurt you the most."

Rabbit squeezed his shoulder and left him to his thoughts.


Marisol wasn't sure how long she sat on the floor, her forehead resting against her knees as she tried very hard not to think about everything that had just happened. People were dead, she'd irrevocably hurt The Spine, Zer0, and Rabbit, the mission was at risk, and they were no closer than when they had started. Whatever clarity she thought may have come by DiMarco striking first hadn't come and instead she was left with more corpses on her conscious and more crushed spirits left in her wake.

At some point over the course of this misadventure, Marisol had come to change her mind completely about the three robots in her care. She hadn't even really realized it until tonight but as the words had flown from her mouth on wings of abject fury, she had realized in the back of her mind that she didn't believe them. In that moment she was listening to the words flying from her mouth and while her brain screamed at her to stop. She didn't stop, she kept saying things she knew were false because she was hurt and wounded, and she wanted to hurt and wound someone else rather than face her own pain and anger. That's what she did. She couldn't deal with her own rage, so she inflicted it upon others. She had done that her whole life and she never let it get to her because she did everything she could to push it from her mind.

It got to her now. Now there were cracks in the armor it had taken a lifetime to build. They had started with the loss of her partner and every case, every tragedy, every success, every failure, since then made those cracks grow wider. To say she wasn't handling this adjustment well was the understatement of this still relatively young century.

She lifted her head and leaned it back against the door, hearing her voice shout over and over that she should have let DiMarco have the three of them. For a moment she forced herself to imagine it: Zer0, Rabbit, and The Spine would be lined up at the forefront of an army of robots created by DiMarco, staring blankly ahead as they followed ordered to hurt and harm humanity. There would be no childish gleam in Zer0's eyes, no quirky malfunctions and manic fidgets from Rabbit, no wry smiles and eye rolls from The Spine. She wouldn't hear them laugh, wouldn't hear them argue, wouldn't hear them sing.

Marisol shot to her feet as the imagining became too real. They weren't just robots to her now, they were people. If she was honest, they had become people the minute she realized that the only thing stopping them from falling prey to DiMarco was their own will power. That night she had interviewed them, her mind had started churning, and she had started seeking them out for their thoughts and feelings, albeit in a reserved way. Yet the minute something went wrong, she fell right back into the habit of treating them like machines to use at her disposal. If she were further honest with herself, she didn't try to control her human clients this much. She didn't snap at human clients like this. She didn't expect perfection from human clients the way she did them. She expected her human clients to chafe at being locked up, at the investigations stalling, at results not coming. The Spine, Rabbit, and Zer0 had never acted any differently than any other client except for the fact that they brushed aside her every attempt to stay objective. They wanted to know her and understand her. The only people who had ever bothered with that were Tucker and Anthony and to a point Trinity.

Reprogram them herself, God, how could she ever have said that? Even if she could make them obedient and silent, what would it change? Nothing., It would cost everything. In their own unique ways The Spine, Rabbit, and Zer0 were all trying to help her, trying to support her, trying to understand her and she had repaid that by refusing to understand them. She still didn't know what parts of them were blue matter and what parts were coding but, in this moment, she knew with perfect clarity that none of that mattered. Changing their programming would change them, erase who they were.

In this moment, when she made herself consider what it would be like to shut them down, reprogram them or alter them in any way, she finally understood what Pete meant about it being like death for the three of them. She had looked at them all and basically wished to destroy who they were as people, and they were people. All the metal and steam and electricity in their souls didn't change that and she had been a fool to think otherwise. Even if it was all coding and algorithms...it was THEIR coding and algorithms.

For example, on the end table closest to her was a scattered deck of playing cards half of which were arranged in a game of Solitaire, the other half of which were scattered in the ground. Without even thinking about it she recognized one of The Spine's many attempts to teach Zer0 card games that usually ended with Zer0 fumbling and dropping the card or attempting to do half-forgotten magic tricks. On the coffee table near the sofa and armchair was the backgammon board next to the kitchen toaster. Clearly Rabbit was teaching the toaster how to play games again and had forgotten to return the toaster once the game had been abandoned for the whipped cream cannon. It was harder to see evidence of The Spine as he was more of a neat freak than his siblings, but she saw two encyclopedias and what looked to be an atlas in a neat stack on the other end table. It was evidence of their unique habits and ways and thoughts and feelings; feelings she had crushed like they were nothing.

Marisol shifted, stretching out her legs and standing. As she moved, a gleam on top of the atlas caught her eye. Frowning, she stood and crossed the room to get a better look and saw it was a CD case, reflecting light from the overhead lamp. She picked it up and her gut twisted. It was a Steam Powered Giraffe CD. She vaguely remembered that Tucker had arranged to have some reading and listening materials brought in not just for her but for the robots. Had this been one or was it part of the random assortment that came in and out with clients and agents that made up the majority of the safe room collection and supplies? She didn't know any more than she knew what The Spine had it out. The CD was still in it. The robots listened to a lot of music from the CD collection down here, did they listen to their own music? Maybe it was comforting in the absence of their performances?

She didn't know but she examined the CD, looking over the cover art that showed a slightly different looking The Spine without cheek vents and with hair, which intrigued her. He was glancing at the viewer over his shoulder, one eyebrow raised slightly, a not-quite-smile playing about his black lips. He looked younger somehow and a little less humanoid, but his green eyes held the same mix of boyish mischief and cranky old man that he had today. In the middle was a robot she only knew from the dossier, The Jon. He had wild curly hair, a top hat perched precariously on his head, and wide eyes that seemed a bit crazed and distant, making her wonder what he had been like. Something about the silly face and pose reminded her a little of Zer0's youthfulness. Next to him was what had to be Rabbit but in her older, male form. Marisol was floored at how different yet how similar Rabbit looked. The opened mouth grin and wide-eyed mismatched gaze were all her but the absence of her white impossium face, oxidized metal hair plate, and her crazily dyed wig was unnerving, as was the complete lack of the more feminine curves to her face that she now had. In this photo, there was also a shadow to her eyes that wasn't there most of the time now but seemed to come back whenever she made reference to her past. The album was titled The 2 Show.

Marisol opened it and before she thought through her actions too much, she put it in the CD player, turned the volume down low, and began to listen.


Zer0 Walter was not as innocent and naive as people liked to think. Yes, it was hard from him to pick up on more grown-up concepts like spelling and math and the crushing weight of existential dread that seemed to accompany aging. He often spent an inordinate amount of time pondering question others instinctively seem to know the answer to such as why is the sky blue, where do rainbows end, is there an afterlife or will robots and humans alike find themselves in nothing but a dark abyss where time had no meaning once their existence came to an end?

Tonight however, he had more serious matters to think about chief among them being why Marisol was so upset. Yes, he and Rabbit had made a mess, he should apologize for that, but Marisol was way more upset than normal. It was weird. Not weird because she was never upset, she got mad a lot, but Rabbit and The Spine had assured them that it was not his fault. Tonight, however she had been really mean, meaner than he had ever seen her before. He had never seen anyone be that mean and he knew in his heart that mostly nice people didn't just start being mean for no reason.

But she had yelled a lot, and she had said some really bad things, things that hurt his feelings. Things that hurt the Spine's feelings. He didn't like that. Marisol shouldn't hurt The Spine's feelings, not when Spine liked her. Like as in liked liked her.

After almost crying and then remembering he couldn't. Zer0 went to his room to think while Rabbit went to check on The Spine. He thought about how scary it had been that day in the park when that DiMarco guy had almost brainwashed them. He thought about how much he missed playing in the band and singing their songs. He missed the Manor; he missed Peter and Camille and Chelsea and Marshmallow and GG and everyone. He missed outside, but he knew they couldn't go outside until Marisol caught DiMarco and it was really hard to catch him. He also knew bad guys did bad things until they were caught.

Zer0 supposed that if he missed the outside, so did Marisol. If he was sad that they couldn't find DiMarco, so was Marisol. Maybe that was why she had been mean because she was too sad to be nice. But cheering her up didn't seem to work. What could he do to make everyone get along again like they did before the whipped cream incident.

Wait a second…

Zer0 snapped his fingers. He had an idea! He opened his door and dashed over to Rabbit's room.

"Rabbit!" Zer0 said excitedly as he skidded to a stop in her doorway. "Rabbit, I have an idea 'bout how to make Marisol happy again."

Rabbit turned from where she had been playing with different hairstyles in her mirror to look at Zer0. "What do you mean 'make her happy?'"

"I think she was mean because she is unhappy," Zer0 said firmly. "Kinda like when we make Spine mad when we annoy him. He gets mean sometimes too. Marisol was very sad tonight so she got very mad, but I think we can do something to make it better."

Rabbit squinted at Zer0, trying to make sense of his rambling. Rabbit was still hurt over Marisol's words, so she wasn't inclined to do much of anything to cheer Marisol up, but what Zer0 said wasn't too far off from what she and The Spine had discussed mere minutes ago. If Zer0 could put that together, maybe he was on to something.

"I'm listening," she said skeptically.


Two hours later, Marisol was scanning the shelves, two CDs in hand as the final haunting notes of Circuitry wound down inside the library. She swore as she only came up with two more Steam Powered Giraffe CDs, Album One and MK III. There had to be more, she knew about the space album and the three she had so far didn't feature Zer0 at all so there had to be more. Maybe Trinity could get them to her.

The album started over, her third playthrough of it and "Steamboat Shenanigans" started up with Rabbit singing about going up the river. She let it play, listening to the lyrics again with Rabbit and The Spine and The Jon trading off verses and harmonizing on the old-fashioned swing song that she had not expected. She was completely floored by their music. Yes, she had heard snatches of singing from all three robots in the last couple of weeks, but she had been a fool to think she could have ever understood them without hearing their music. After the first listen of the album, she immediately let it play again, starting to note particular songs that seemed to stand out to her. She nearly laughed when the first chorus of "Automatonic Electronic Harmonics" played, finally getting the joke The Spine had made to her what felt like a hundred years ago but had just been last night. She also smiled all through "Rex Marksley," unsurprised that The Spine's obsession with the wild west was full on display. Many of the love songs on the album seemed to be done by him with a few by Rabbit. The Jon's songs were a bit weirder but strangely charming. She already knew hands down however that "Honeybee" and "Me and My Baby" would be special to her. She nearly cried the first time she heard "Honeybee;" every bit of passion and heartbreak Rabbit brought to the song affected her in a way she really couldn't understand but she could feel it.

The music made them more human but also drove home how human they weren't. Their music held all their longing, hopes, fears, and dreams. For the first time she understood what Peter meant by blue matter being pure creative energy: the blue matter gave them the ability to create but the creations came from them.

Marisol swapped out The 2 Show for Album One and sat down on the couch, ready to listen again. This one was shorter she noticed, but as a voice she didn't recognize sang about starting the show, she knew it would be short but sweet. She was right. The Spine took her through the "Clockwork Vaudeville" as Rabbit sang about his undying love for what she would later find out was a toaster through an "Ice Cream Parade." However much as "Honeybee" had stopped her in her tracks, it was "Brass Goggles" that caught her attention.

It was about the Weekend War, as Rabbit and The Spine called it. It was about the beginning of Steam Powered Giraffe, but it was also about their feelings on life and what it meant to them. When Rabbit asked plaintively, "What is life and what is real and why do living things need feelings?" She felt tears prick her eyes this time, but it was out of guilt. She felt it again when The Spine sang in "I know you don't like how I feed but please try to remember it's natural for a thing like me." That's what she had failed to truly accept this whole time.

Both albums she listened to were clearly the band trying to come to grips with a life and sentience that no one could ever have prepared them for. Mixed in were tales of imagination and adventure, such as the one about Albert Alexander. No wait...Captain Albert Alexander.

MK III proved to be her undoing. Hatchworth was introduced with a pleasing falsetto that was different from The Spine's but suited the band's style. It was also the first time Rabbit's voice changed ever so slightly and she could feel even through the CD how much lighter she sounded as she started the journey of becoming who she really was inside. The Spine's voice wasn't different, but he seemed more mature, more suave, more polished. She was enjoying the newer sound, their fresh style, and their new bandmate when a slower, sadder song came on.

"My brain is wired all wrong…and they'll agree because it's easier to say I am gone."

Dimly she noted that it wasn't fair for one person to be able to have so much range in his voice, but that thought was almost immediately eclipsed by an ache in her chest. At some point. Somewhere, The Spine had clearly gotten the idea that something was wrong with him, and it had likely swirled around inside the eidetic memory he came programmed with until he couldn't ignore it any longer. This was further confirmed when he sang the next line, "It's time to face the truth in a song," but what startled her was the hook. "I've always told myself that it was never true, was never true, was never, ever, ever true. It can't be true, it can't be true, it must not be true."

Marisol covered her mouth with her hand. Despite how the words sounded, this wasn't defiance…this was pleading. It wasn't that The Spine was saying that he wasn't wired wrong, it was that he was begging someone to tell him that he wasn't, that he was fine, that he was normal, that he didn't need to feel the way he clearly did.

Marisol knew all too well what that was like.

"Sometimes I think that I am the only one who's been built poor in the way that he runs."

He wasn't, didn't he know that? Yet she heard herself yelling at him, asking if there was anything he could do right. But that was her, she was built poor, wired wrong. He wasn't broken, she was.

"But how can that be? Am I really that flawed?"

Why couldn't someone somewhere program you to have common sense!

Marisol shot to her feet and rust out of the library, the CD still playing behind her. Rabbit and Zer0 were in the living room, rags in hand as they wiped at the walls. She didn't stop to talk to them or acknowledge them even when Rabbit called after her, sounding slightly alarmed at her frantic appearance. She ran down the stairs and skidded to a halt in front of The Spine's closed door. She made to open it but caught herself and instead knocked frantically.

"Spine?" She knocked harder. "Spine please, open the door. I need to talk to you. I-" She what? She was a complete and utter asshole? She was wrong? She was the worst? All true but they all seemed so insignificant in this moment. She had so much to apologize for, so much damage to undo, where could she even start. But she had to. She couldn't let this go. She owed him-all of them really-an apology and yet it seemed like it wasn't enough. Clearly it wasn't because he didn't answer her. "Spine?"

Nothing.

Marisol signed and turned form the door, walking away but she stopped. She remembered the night she had lost her temper at Rabbit's inquiries about Anthony. Rabbit had gone to The Spine and The Spine had been there for her. They had shied away from being there for her even as she tried to shove them away with both hands. Being there for people was not her strong suit, tending to their emotions was something she didn't know she was capable of. But these three had tried from day one. She could try now. She had too.

Rabbit and Zer0 came hesitantly down the stairs as she turned and marched back to the door. She knocked again, softer this time and said gently but loud enough for him to hear. "If you won't come out…I'll just…say this here." She rested her palm against the door. "Spine…" she looked over at the other two who looked away and a little apprehensive. "All of you. I…owe you a bigger apology than I can possibly give you. I didn't understand. I didn't want to. Despite all the warnings, despite all we have been through, I still treated you as less than human, as something to be controlled and maintained. I…was wrong. I've known I was wrong, but I was too stubborn, too wrapped up in my own head to admit it." Marisol sighed. "I spend so many hours of so many days reliving every mistake I have made and punishing myself for them, but I never learn from them. I'd have to let them go first but instead I use them like armor to keep everyone away. It's no excuse. All you have done is try to help. All all of you have done is try to understand me and the situation we are in. I didn't know how to handle it." She looked back at Rabbit and Zer0. "Tucker named me Cyborg to take the sting out that insult away from people, to give me power over it. Instead, I have used it as a shield, throwing up walls between everyone. You all aren't the first people I have hurt," she turned back to the door. "But I hope you're the last. I can't promise I will change right away but…I want to work together. I want to understand you all and I am sorrier than I can ever express for what I said."

"Why did you say it?" Zer0 asked, startling her. "Why did you say so many mean things?"

Marisol sighed again. "DiMarco made contact today," she said and Rabbit and Zer0 gasped. "He taunted me, threatened me, and threatened you. I got distracted by my anger and taunted him back, trying to pry what information I could. In doing so I missed that another threat he made. He set off a bomb in my apartment, killing the agents watching it along with who knows how many civilians. People are dead because I was too focused on the objective and my own revenge to pick up on his hint." She bit her lip. "It's all my fault…then when I walked into the chaos downstairs, I just…lost it. I was upset and I was feeling guilty, and I wanted something to hurt as badly as I was." She looked back at the door. "It's like you told me last night Spine, the way you feel about DiMarco; how you want to hurt him until he feels as bad as you do and how that feeling frightens you." She laughed bitterly. "That feeling doesn't frighten me. It weaponizes me. And it's wrong of me to act on it, yet here we are."

"Marisol we d-d-didn't know," Rabbit said, looking remorseful. "I'm so sorry."

Marisol shook her head. "Nothing he did can excuse what I said." She said firmly. "I may as well have told you all I wished you were dead. I understand that now." She fixed Rabbit with a steely look. "I promise you all…I will never ever speak to you like that again. I'm not…perfect but I can change. I will try harder to understand and to be patient, to see things from your point of view. I will get us out of this without another day wasted by my own trauma and hang-ups. I promise…and I'm sorry."

Zer0 nodded. "I knew something had to have happened. You only get mad when you're really sad." Zer0 also looked sheepish. "And we did kind of make a mess."

"Which we cleaned up by the way," Rabbit said. "Zer0's idea, he wanted to cheer you up. And we will also try harder to understand where you're coming from too. We're all in this together."

Marisol smiled. "I'm not sure I deserve your forgiveness." She turned back to the door and took a deep breath. "Spine, I…." She what? What else could she say? What else did she need to say? She rested her head against the door and said the thing he had been thinking the entire time she spoke just now. "Spine, I'm the one who is wired wrong, not you. I know what I said but the truth is that I wouldn't change you, not one circuit, one vent, one metal plate." She swallowed hard and whispered more to herself than to anyone. "It would also be a sad thing indeed if you never smiled or sang again."

There was a long moment of silence and Marisol grew nervous, thinking he hadn't heard her. Then she heard the rustle of cloth followed by the creak of his joints and his heavy metal tread. She stepped back from the door, schooling her face to look normal as she prepared for it to swing open, preparing to face him.

The sound of the door lock clicking softly into place was deafening in the silence.

Marisol bit her lip so hard it bled. She turned back to Rabbit and Zer0 who had clearly heard The Spine lock the door. To her intense shame she felt her eyes well up with tears again, threatening to overflow for the first time in she couldn't even remember when. She wasn't hurt…she was ashamed. She didn't blame him, couldn't blame him. She had done this; she had ruined this. It was her fault. She had to accept the consequences and yet….

Rabbit spoked. "He will come around," she said with a nervous look to the door. "He just has a lot of feelings." She glared. "Too many feelings!" she shouted, clearly intending that for The Spine.
"I've made such a mess," Marisol whispered.

"So did we," Zer0 sad. "Know what you do with messes?"

Marisol raised an eyebrow questioningly.

"Clean them up!" Zer0 cried, lifting a fist triumphantly into the air. "Keep trying Marisol he'll snap outta it."

Marisol couldn't help the small smile that crept onto her face. "You're a relentless optimist," she said to Zer0. "Maybe we need that down here." She moved towards the stairs and followed Rabbit and Zer0 back upstairs, giving The Spine the privacy he so clearly desired.

On the other side of the door, The Spine leaned against the door. His forehead was pressed against it, one hand still on the lock, the other flat against the wood much as hers had been moments ago. He had heard every word she said, including the whispered reference to his own words to her last night. It took everything in him not to open that door, but he couldn't, not even when Rabbit shouted at him for having too many feelings. He believed that she was sorry, but it was too little too late.

The thing was, Rabbit had been right about a great many things earlier this evening, but there was one thing she had said that struck home: it's the people who care about you that can really hurt you the most. The Spine cared about Marisol too much. More than he should.

And he'd be damned if he continued to hand her his heart on a silver platter.


End Chapter


Author's Note: Now it's The Spine's turn to have the emotional turmoil and it's going to be a doozy! Fun fact: unlike Marisol, my first SPG song was Diamonds. Came for the Diamonds, stayed for The 2¢ Show (and the rest of their albums)!