♫ Beck - "Everyone's gotta learn, sometimes..."
Now, the hour had grown even stranger, days had blended into eachother and outside of brief spats of assignment and problem solving she'd been almost entirely insular from the crew she was stuck with.
Flake lay in an improvised hammock, legs dangling - snoring in much the same way Sana did, making Aiesu question her purity as a construct. Breasts hanging out as if to gloat in the cold air. Boondoggle, she thought. Miles was mocking her - reminding her of what she wasn't. It happened with every breath; in and out -- a feat Aiesu struggled not to stare at.
Dim lights. Servers warm and humming but the room cold enough to be wrapped up in sheets and still see breath hazed.
Still alone, and left alone with those words.
Her feet made the deck grate thump softly, a quiet sound as she walked on the cold painted metal with teeth grit tightly and ice in her belly where opium should have been fire - instead, nails raking through her veins like strings on a puppet, winding her back into tightness and her body into a pain all too familiar.
She thanked herself for little things, briefly admiring her artificial toes and the numbness that came with selective sensory control.
Hissing sharply through her teeth - wrapped up in furred pajamas and a bedsheet poncho, she waded through the halls - sweat matting her browline, running down her chin as she stumbled quietly in the eerilee quiet vessel until she stood before Miles workshop. The exception was the faint thundering every few minutes as the hypercapacitors lining the deck would discharge through the conduits lining the floor beneath her - rumbling like muted thunder. The sound had been like shoring waves in her chambers but now the rumble was enough to put something in her -- not fear, not anxiety -- but something.
Eyeing a knuckle that was not her's on her hand that also wasn't her's. Asking what brought her here.
It was a good knuckle. A good hand. Good fingers. Amazing for all the years lost with simpler -- but they didn't come close. So much of her was machine now. Miles work but also his gift.
She felt the cavitation of cold inside herself, wondering how much more of her was left. What was left to give. How long any of it would last.
Anechoically, the last meaningful words of her replica - Flake - screamed between missing ears. Bee-stings against lips where she bit herself for mindfulness away from it, soreness to remind herself where she was to clear the fog in her thoughts.
Wrist to lip, red smear away with palm and quilting.
It was now or never.
Aiesu slowly wrapped it on the door and awaited a response - shivering quietly to herself up on the tips of her toes.
Afterall.
Everyone's gotta learn, some time.