Chapter One
She had her chainsaw out and running, but never lunged, she only stood up into a threatening stance, breathing her anger in and out as she fed oxygen to her power cell.
"V?" N placed a hand on her other arm.
V looked back at him, and although it took a second, looking at N's face instead of Uzi's made her retract her weapon. Not like she wasn't going to anyway. She went from gritting her teeth and showing narrowed eyes on her display visor, to worried open-circle eyes for the briefest instant, the back to narrowed eyes now accompanied by simulated blush lines as she looked away.
"Uh, that–"
"Leave me alone!" V didn't even allow N to ask whatever he might have, jerking her arm away from his hand and storming out of the room.
Both N and Uzi's stares lingered on the door afterward, both with some mix of guilt and concern, and N visibly displayed much more of each.
They turned to each other soon enough, N raising one hand with a lifted finger and motion toward the door with the thumb of his other. "I uh, I should probably go see . . ."
Uzi gave him a weak smile and thumbs up in response. She couldn't really find enough angst or edge to speak, so she displayed Sorry :( on her visor instead.
N raised and wiggled a hand with a reassuring smile, switching his display to a Don't Worry for a second, before switching back to a more uncertain smile and heading out.
Uzi spun her chair around to face her computer desk, and proceeded to let her face drop onto it. Aaand then she had to pick her head right back up when her dad intruded for the third time that night. "Ugggghhhh, what is it now, dad?"
"Hey, Uzi, sorry for poking my head in again but it looks like your sleepover pals just left, so I wanted to let you know your friend Doll came a little while ago and, uh, said you all needed to talk, about something important."
Plenty of drones still winced or were briefly frightened by N's presence, but they were all mostly willing to talk to him now, and thus he was able to find out were V had gone. Of course, he was pointed towards the colony bunker doors, as she had expectably gone outside. They both had been spending decent amounts of time outside already, V of course usually doing so alone, as prolonged hours in the perpetual extreme cold was the only way to keep themselves cool without needing more cooling oil. He'd been so giddy and proud of her when he learned she'd been doing so willingly since the camp. Of course V had insisted she was just going outside more to get away from everyone, but N refused to believe her and had been happy anyway.
He found the usual count of WDF workers playing cards at the table just inside door one, along with Lizzy unexpectedly leaning against a wall nearby.
"Fight with your girlfriend?" Ron, the very same drone who'd hung N's drawing on the bunker door asked.
N's expression display flipped from confusion, to blush lines, and then to blush lines alongside a pair of regretful eyes.
Lizzy pointed him outside without ever looking up from her phone. "V went like, outside to pout or whatever."
"I gotcha buddy." Ron hit the remote to open the door.
N partly raised a finger as if to speak as he passed by, but only managed to call back after actually stepping outside the threshold. "Oh, ah, she's . . . V's not really my girlfriend. I kind of used to want her to be, but she pretended she didn't like me, and also kind of acted like she never even remembered who I was but I was always sorta fine with it cause, ya know, I am pretty forgettable." His two pointer fingers twiddled around each other throughout his words, but one did semi-lift itself up a second later. "Oh! But we did kinda both like each other in the haunted mansion we worked in before our memories got wiped!" The briefly excited, self-cheering up smile couldn't last, however, and he ended up looking down and away while he put a hand to his arm. "So I guess you could say it was just coworkers after that," and then the realization that he was rambling off backstory information to robots who hadn't asked triggered his occasional habit of sped-up word delivery, "but ah anywaythanksforthehelpyouguys bye!"
He left behind a few confused and indeterminate faces as the bunker door closed after he flew off, whether everyone was left that way from the amount of personal life details he'd randomly shared with them unprompted, the actual specifics of the information itself, or both.
"V?" He found her after just a moment in the air.
She hadn't actually gone far, still in sight of the entrance and even facing in its direction, at least until N came in land beside her. Then, she turned to face away.
His eye display turned . . . sadder than it already was, but his cautious care-and-comfort smile held. "Hey, V, you . . ." He reached out a hand toward her shoulder, stopping short of actually placing it, having enough recent experience of everyone physically pushing him away.
She looked at him though, with the same expression of poorly-suppressed fear she'd shown at the campsite. Her expression display flickered briefly a few times, trying to switch to angrier eyes, with her turning her head away again when she failed to maintain them. But, for once she didn't try to force N's hand away when he actually placed it down.
"You're . . . not doing okay." He recalled V's own words from that prom night weeks ago.
She glanced his way just enough for him to see her expression display for a moment showing more sad eyes than worried ones.
"Sooo, that was the scary stuff you didn't want to talk about?" He went with the broader question first.
She didn't answer, just letting the snow and sleet storm continue.
"We went to a murder gala and got dissected alive by an eldritch robo-tentacle monster in a creepy basement while getting our brains scrambled?" He put forward his summarized version of what happened, creeped-out nervousness included in his voice.
"N . . ." She wasn't able to respond on the first attempt, but she managed to force it from herself, after she looked at the N face of genuine concern and caring that she was trying to avoid seeing. "What you saw wasn't everything. You're the only one who had parts of your memory reset."
N's hand had been cast off her shoulder when she spun to answer him. It withdrew towards him, fingers curling as he placed no effort into holding them straight.
"There is no company." V revealed more. "Humans didn't send us here. J was getting our orders from that . . ."
"Solver of the absolute fabric? Existential Void?" N knew he shouldn't have tried to be humorous, as he always knew instantly when he'd made a mistake, but thankfully it didn't come out how he would have normally tried to make it. Instead, in both face and voice it came across like his response to That Thing itself when it had proclaimed its identity to him in the memories they'd just been run through.
"We do our jobs and–"
"–and it leaves us alone." He finished the sentence. "I remember." He said that assuringly at least, but his voice returned to the caring uncertainty he felt. "V . . . what does that mean?"
"We do our jobs!" She repeated the line with intensity, and heavy robo-breaths followed after it until she displayed shut eyes for an instant, letting them open when she finally allowed the last of the truth to break through. ". . . I do my job. I do my job, and I tell you nothing, and . . . and it keeps you alive, and lets me keep my memories so I don't have to forget you."
. . .
N's eyes filled in, and his digital eyebrows moved the upper limit of his visor. His mouth opened a small circle as both eyebrows descended again, curving downwards in sympathetic recognition as they came to meet the tops of his eyes. And, eventually a single finger uncurled to point towards himself.
"She wanted to delete us from ourselves and make us automatons just like she did to the others." V's expression added irritation lines to her fearfully-serious eyes, only reverting after she turned away again. "It's too late now."
. . .
"You really always remembered?" What his eyes expressed now was just . . . something in between.
"N," V took a step further away, only one, and then she turned around to face him completely again. "I'm sorry. I was just, so–"
"–V," N started to extend his hand her way, "it's ok."
There were no words from V, only some amount of vulnerability departing from her expression setting as she started forcing it back to the default resoluteness she'd begun wearing in place of the former fake crazy.
"Well, I kinda know now, sooo," N pulled from recent memory, and utilized similar words to Uzi's own, "now you're not gonna have to deal with everything alone anymore."
Guilt. That's what N saw in response. And after that, however an optical display could outwardly show uncertainty, want and consideration all together, that's what V wore. Close in some way to the faces N has seen for the first time at the campsite.
"I got you." N motioned his hand forward an inch more . . . with the same words that were the final thing his prior self had said.
That . . . made him smile, because even though V's eyes flicked down to look away, she still finally accepted the hand N was offering.
And, N being N, wanted to at least try to cheer her up somehow, now that, and the best thing he knew was what he was he was best at: embarrassing himself. "You know," a display of N's typical self-embarrassment found itself on his visor then, as his free hand went behind his head "I, uh, even after my memories got mushed, I still kiiiiiind of ended up having a crush on you again anyways. I tried to keep it a secret though."
. . . it worked. The V he was more used to returned in some form, filled-in eyes on her visor with flat lines cutting off their upper 1/4th. "You shot heart bubbles from your gun when you pointed it at me, N"
A nervously-embarassed N laugh preceded his words. "Yeah, that was a thing that happened."
V's display hybridized, finding a fit somewhere in between the pure annoyance she would have shown and the re-emergent version of herself, however much she was still and probably always would instinctively try to suppress the latter.
Eventually, she did have to say something.
"I'm not her, N." V . . . didn't know. She honestly, truly didn't know. She didn't know whether she was talking about her prior self . . . or about Uzi. Maybe both. Her free hand retracted and re-emerged in its claw-blade finger form. ". . . I don't know what parts of me are real now."
That saddened N's face again, but like always, he kept his smile from breaking. When she looked away from her hand and back to him again, N held up his own free hand, and did the exact same switch and retraction she had done. "Hey, we can figure it out together."
V had to allow her eyes to dart away again. It was something, enough to justify her positive response. ". . . yeah . . ."
"Oh, and uh," N went through his being assertive motions; a breath in, solid serious mouthline, "just, from now on, I get to decide what's best for me."
And he hugged her. Tightly as he would anyone, maybe more. V didn't know.
Her hands slammed against his shoulders to push him away . . . but she stopped, never completing the motion. She just allowed it, and, involuntarily, simple lines replaced her eyes for a few seconds as she closed her visual feedback.
The unimpressed voice of a familiar Russian drone teen reached their audio receptors, subtitling on their screens.
In Russian "Cute. But we don't have time to watch."
N released V and they both turned to see Doll standing not too far off, with Uzi as well, and neither actively showing any animosity towards the other.