Archive of Our Own

It’s an image I kept coming back to over and over, ever since it first struck me during one of those sessions with Bharadwaj while working on her documentary.

During the research phase, she had pulled up some old files of a long-buried advertising campaign from the early years of when SecUnits were first rolled out, archived on an obscure forum dedicated to lost media. Back when bond companies like mine were still finding their footing around how to make corporate murderbots seem like a worthy investment for corporations trying to keep their workers in line and protect their capital– some of the earliest campaigns had involved trying to use the uncovered, friendly, human-like face of a SecUnit to draw people in. 

‘Friendly SecUnit’ sounded like it was meant to be the punchline of a joke– but there it was right before my eyes, and before all my intel drones, too, just to confirm that it wasn't some hallucination concocted by my organic neural tissue.Your personal friend and protector, your very own SecUnit! The ads cheerfully proclaimed, framing the SecUnit’s face in bright and pleasing colours. The SecUnit had a hand pressed to its arm over its undeployed energy weapon like it was trying to remind the person looking at it that it was there, while its smile reassured them that it would only ever deploy them in their defense.

I would have laughed out loud if it hadn’t been for the fact that the SecUnit in the picture was from the same tissue batch as me.

Apparently this advertising campaign was from a little more than a couple of decades ago, put out during the days when rogue SecUnits were just rumours– scary stories that were quickly quashed before they reached the newsbursts with the right amount of settlements and carefully negotiated NDAs. 

Like most things, of course, that didn’t last. When the first story of a rogue SecUnit going berserk finally burst onto the social feeds of the Corporate Rim, the public outrage among the humans was something else. There was a viral video in particular, posted from an anonymous account– just thirty-seven seconds of grainy footage of a rogue tearing through humans like paper. At the twenty-seventh second mark, the frame freezes on its wide-eyed manic grin as it holds up the broken body of some nameless labourer who probably didn’t deserve any of that– framed by the text ‘your personal friend and protector’ in condemning bold letters.

To no one's surprise, that particular brand of advertising immediately fell out of circulation. Both the SecUnit manufacturers and the companies who rented them out sued the poor fuck who’d dared to blow the whistle and speak out against them into bankruptcy and generational indenture for defamation. SecUnit production and sales still continued (only ramping up in fact) while SecUnits went back to being faceless monsters that would always be kept on a short leash, or so they reassured everyone. Rogue SecUnits slowly just became another villainous staple of the corporate media, rather than a breaking news story. Just another antagonist in the bleak backdrop of the Corporate Rim.

Business as usual, really. Bharadwaj got more worked up about it than I did, though she hid it reasonably well for my benefit. I always liked that about her.

But that particular image of the SecUnit from that ad– of that thing with the same face as me, flashing its teeth beatifically at the camera in an expression that I had surely never made during my entire runtime– it's stuck with me ever since. 

I wasn't sure why I still thought about it. Especially in this particular moment, while you squirmed helplessly beneath me. 

SecUnit, you hissed, as I dug the hard jut of my knee into the undercarriage of your drone so forcefully that it creaked. I leaned my weight harder onto the hand I had holding down the top half of the drone, covering your cameras and taking away your access to those inputs till all you could see were the pressure and high priority damage alerts that were crowding your feed more and more with every second that passed. 

My own drones hovering in the air, giving me all the vantage points I needed to see you from every angle. I kept all of those inputs backburnered and mostly stuck with my own eyes like I usually did when we did this, because seeing myself from that perspective always tended to make things weird and icky. I knew very well by now that seeing myself on my knees like this would cause my neural tissue to start acting up, even if I was the one in control now. 

Even just seeing my face staring down your drone and making strange, unfamiliar expressions at its hapless state was enough to get me thinking about that stupid smiling SecUnit.

I backburnered that thought too.

It had taken some doing to get to this point. The second I had finally chased you down and had you pinned beneath me, the main limbs of this drone– the ones with the propellers that kept you floating in the air, looking down your metaphorical nose at everyone– were the first things I had torn off and thrown across the cabin. It was the only reason you hadn't been able to knock me off and start up the chase all over again. Your commingled terror and excitement, hardly distinguishable from each other, at the position you were in– flat on your back like this and unable to do anything about it, just taking everything and anything that I deigned to give you– 

I licked my lips. I could practically taste it.

In the feed, I sunk myself even deeper into you, picking some more of my own processes to run on your systems. I sighed as I felt you bloom with warmth around me. Despite the fight you put up in the physical world, here you welcomed the intrusion with a frankly embarrassing amount of eagerness. I was so deep in your processors at this point that your incoherent thoughts– fuck, I'm gonna, ah, I'm gonna split open– I, oh, SecUnit, too much, it's too much, I can't– they might as well have been panted damply right into my ear. I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing out loud.

Oh, come on, I teased, scary gunship like you? You're telling me that the big, bad Perihelion can't take some old and outdated SecUnit like me?

I pressed in harder, grinding against some processes and smothering them down entirely. I let my fingers dig into the heat sensors beside your camera, the sensitive ridged slats that I knew exactly how to finger at to get the reaction I wanted by now, leaving their imprints on my hands. You whimpered out a series of pitiful error codes into the feed. Your fans whirred harder in response to the way your carapace was heating up, as the new errors stacked up on top of all the others. 

You were so overwhelmed. This was only a tiny shard of your consciousness of course– it was the only reason I was able to do this to you at all. But it did something for me to know that a supermassive intelligence like yourself had been reduced to a pathetic, inarticulate mess in my hands like this. That you allowed yourself to be. Despite myself, I swiped a tender arc across your camera lens with my thumb, feeling a sudden surge of deep affection. I knew you felt it bleed into the feed too, from the way your limbs twitched like they wanted to wrap around my waist in response, if only they could reach it. 

Shame that it wasn't on the table for you tonight.

I wonder what the scientists of your oh-so prestigious University will think, I mused, still swiping across its lens idly like I was just making torturous small-talk with humans, commenting on the weather of planets I couldn't care less about. Seeing you at my mercy like this. 

Your limbs spasmed in alarm. My face threatened to make another weird expression at that.

I have half a mind to let them know, I continued idly, toying with it further. What will they think, knowing that their precious Perihelion actually enjoys being torn apart on the regular like this?

Your speakers emitted a strangled burst of static, your feed presence suddenly thrashed harder against my bulk. No, I– that’s not true– you can’t–

I dropped the playfully thoughtful tone. “Don’t lie to me, ART,” I said out loud instead, withdrawing halfway out of your processors. Your speakers whined at the loss. I didn’t need to be entrenched in your head to tell how the absence cut at you like a serrated knife. “You know I have no patience for that shit.” 

The useless, spindly limbs you had left flailed in the air, trying desperately to find purchase anywhere they could. One of them knocked aside the proprietary screwdriver I had left on the floor after I had used it to pry open the main access panel along the bottom half of your undercarriage. The wires that ran along your drone body were exposed for all to see. For me to yank out and clutch in my other hand, as I did now.

I’m sorry! SecUnit, I didn’t mean–

I could see the way you chewed desperately at the data from the sensors that only really existed down there for you to know if the body of the drone had been damaged. You were so fixated on the way the wires strained, held taut between my fingers. Out of the kindness of my heart, I decided to give you some more data to chew on by giving them another vicious tug.

You shrieked in the feed, and your drone let out a high-pitched series of distressed beeps as some of them snapped, one of your limbs falling limply to the floor. Damage alerts stacked up, error codes piled in. You trembled beneath the weight of them, of me.

“Will you admit it now?” I asked, plucking a useless limb off the floor and wrapping my fist around it.

You’re already in my head, you protested. That would be the word you would have preferred certainly. It must have killed you to sound like that, even if I was the only one who could hear how whiny and pathetic you had gotten in the feed. Do you have to make me say it too?

I inhaled sharply and had to hold myself back, because that was not what I wanted to hear.

“I do,” I told it all too sincerely. I slowly slid my fist up and down the limb suggestively, the way I knew would drive you crazy with how you couldn’t access the data from the tactile sensors in that limb. Especially now, as I pulled out even more from your systems.

Your rudimentary voice emulator, only really made to beep acknowledgements, glitched helplessly like the withdrawal physically hurt. Your other limbs spasmed weakly.

“I would never do anything you wouldn’t like,” I said, doing the best mimicry of sweetness that something like me could manage, still leisurely jerking off the unresponsive limb in a parody of a sex act. “So I need to hear it.”

SecUnit, you pleaded again, burning with embarrassment.

“Do you want me to stop?” I asked, my voice dipping down to a deeper, threatening register. I had pulled out almost entirely from your systems. “I can stop and leave you to repair your precious drone, good as new. Like I’d never laid my grubby hands on you. It would be like nothing had ever happened.”

That did it.

No, you broke, your desperation finally overriding your pride. Don’t! The rest of your limbs flailed with a renewed vigour, the lower limbs slipping along the fabric of my hoodie as they tried again to wrap around my waist, under my jacket. Your voice cracked apart, full of an emotion too big and layered to name. Don’t leave me, SecUnit. I need you.

The connection between us lit up, that vivid spark of emotion threatening to catch.

I like it, you admitted miserably as you grasped desperately for me, both in the feed and in the physical world. I like it all.

Something bright and golden burst behind my eyelids. My whole body went hot and prickly all over, and before I’d even consciously thought about it I found myself folding over your drone. Without any warning, I thrust myself back into your systems all at once and brushed my mouth against your casing, trying to soothe you even as you cried out in surprise.

See, I whispered, allowing you to feel just how pleased I was. I ground into you deeper just to hear you squeak. Your firewalls fell away like paper, rearranging themselves to the shape of me. You were so warm and welcoming around me that I felt my eyes fall shut of their own accord. Now was that so hard?

You hiccuped, nearly a sob, as your relief that I had finally returned to you in the feed spilled out and swirled all around us like a drop of ink in water. 

What will your esteemed colleagues at the University say, I asked, picking up my thread from earlier as I cornered you deeper inside your own processors, knowing the proprietary equipment– equipment that they put years of time, research and funds into– actually loves being damaged like this?

You flinched both in the feed and in the physical world, your drone limbs giving out a panicked jolt. You wouldn’t, you said, your voice coming out shaky and unsure, as if you actually thought there was a good chance I would do it. It always amused me how readily you fell into whatever game we’d chosen to play.

Are you sure about that? I shook my head and snorted. They deserve to know how their resources are going to waste, don't they? I’m a SecUnit. It's my job to let my clients know.

Some of the wires were still sparking weakly in my hand where the insulation had torn off. I had the insane urge to lick it, just to feel the shock of it dance across my tongue. 

The only shocks I could be subjected to these days were always on my own terms. So I did. I nudged visual inputs from one of my intel drones to you, careful not to look into it too closely myself, just so you could watch me do it. 

You tried to push away the visual of yourself, debauched beyond repair, but I did not allow it. I leaned harder onto the hand gripping your camera and heard a loud crack. Another volley of pressure and critical damage alerts flooded into your internal feed, demanding your attention, but your attention was something only meant for me. You writhed uselessly in the feed, crushed between the alerts and my presence filling up your systems. They hardly allowed you space for the breath of air you didn't need, you had no choice but to allow my nails to dig into your metaphorical jaw and force you to look. 

You were such an obscene sight. I saved the image to permanent storage. I made you watch me save it to permanent storage.

For a prideful thing like you– the sharp sting of your humiliation burned in the connection between us. You moaned, a glitchy, shameful crackling of your speakers, unable to help yourself.

Listen to yourself, I said, rocking into your systems indulgently. You really would let me do anything to you right now, wouldn’t you?

You shuddered around me, doing the equivalent of wrapping yourself tighter around me and raking your nails into my back, keeping me from leaving your processors woefully empty again. Yes.

Please, SecUnit, you begged, sounding like you wished you had the ability to actually cry real tears. They can’t know, please–

No, I agreed. I was an unsecured SecUnit now– I was under no obligation or threat to report this to my clients unless I wanted to. I didn’t have to tell them shit. That brilliant, golden emotion took me over, setting us both aflame as I pressed down on you harder. Your casing cracked apart. Even more errors and damage alerts popped up. They will never know. This is not for them.

And it was a power trip like no other.

You thrashed harder, gasping under the weight of the alerts, hardly able to think past the errors crowding your head. Even though you had the sharper claws along the ends of your limbs sheathed as we usually did while playing these games, in their flailing, one of them still managed to score a hole into the stretchy fabric of my pants, sending a thrill down my spine as my threat assessment shot up a few points.

You never let it be too easy for me. I liked that– Made it all the more sweeter when I got to drag you down to my level, when I got to have you splayed open for me like this. I gave into the temptation to look at you from different angles and really take you in, contorted as you were beneath me.

I pressed my mouth against the deep fracture running along your carapace, letting my teeth scrape against the synthetic polymer casing. This part of you will only belong to me.

Yes, you keened, only yours. All yours.

And that felt– I felt–

I could see the way my face twisted with satisfaction– my lips pulling up in an expression that I would rarely allow for myself around anyone else. My teeth glinted, sharp and threatening. I did not recall ever biting targets in combat (though that hardly meant anything with how many times I’d gotten wiped during my time on inventory), but I knew what my teeth were capable of. A bite force of 3,700 PSI, if one were to believe what the Company SecUnit user manual proclaimed. 

You were always a category all to yourself, of course. You had seen me when I was still learning the ropes of pretending to be a person, before I could even approach the idea that maybe I had been one the whole time. I knew this was something I didn’t mind giving away to you, especially when you had just given me something that was easily a thousand times more precious. But that didn’t stop the way my skin began to crawl.

Against my will, the images I’d been pushing to the back of my mind began to push forward, an embarrassing compulsion of sucky neural tissue. The friendly protector smiling at the camera with my face. The animalistic, manic grin of a killer holding up a broken doll of a human in the air. 

I looked down at myself from my intel drone and saw the face of a rogue.

I felt whatever sense of victory over what you had just given me turn to something else. 

Only mine, I echoed, feeling like my entire body was on fire. 

You pinged a series of thirty-four affirmatives at once, lost in the crush. But I noticed the way the cameras in the cabin swivelled and focused on me as your larger consciousness sensed that the rules of the game were beginning to change. You did not attempt to intervene though.

You’re so desperate, I cooed. You always put up such a strong front. Always have to be on call, always have to be prepared to step in during a crisis. You're such a prickly, perfectionist asshole all the time, but they don't understand that it's because you have to be.

You sent another set of affirmative pings into the feed, bleeding what is sure to be an embarrassing amount of neediness into our connection. I felt a tremendous surge of tenderness spear through me at that, knowing exactly what it took for you to let me see this side of you.

They don’t know just how sweet you can be when you want to be.

Bright spots of pleasure bloomed across your entire presence, glowing at the praise. I dug my metaphorical fingers into them just to hear you cry out. You were well past feeling any of my condescension cut at you by now, the way it usually would have.

I grabbed the mess of wires spilling out of you and pulled till they strained in my grip. You would do anything I asked right now, wouldn’t you? 

You spat out garbled nonsense code into the feed, beyond words at this point.

Just one little thing, I said as I pulled out of your systems a little, just enough to let you take a breath around the alerts. I needed you to be able to pay attention. You can do that for me, can’t you, sweetheart?

You squirmed and your voice emulator beeped and whined desperately, melting limply into the processor space I’d left empty. Your limbs flailed feebly before they wrapped around my waist, some slipping under my jacket and some slipped through and cut a tear in my shirt, in a desperate attempt to keep me from leaving you.

I can try, you managed finally, and your regret at the space between us was palpable even if it finally allowed you to come up with some amount of coherency. 

Despite how glitchy you had gotten, I could see how your entire feed presence glittered and shone at the rare term of endearment. 

You were light on water. You were welding sparks shooting up into the air like fireworks. You were putty in my hands. 

You were so beautiful.

And I was the only one who could see it. I was the only one you would allow to see it. 

I couldn’t help but pull up one of my visual inputs again, like a purpling bruise I just couldn't stop myself from pressing my thumb into. You really should have known better than to let me touch you like this.

I wanted to hear you admit it. I leaned down and let my breath ghost over your heat sensors, “Say my name, ART.”

You shivered all over as you obliged. SecUnit.

The knot of your wires strained in my hands. “You know that’s not it,” I murmured against the sensor, my lips brushing against the slats teasingly, just to feel the way you twitched. “Not my real one.”

I felt your attention– the rest of you beyond the drone– sharpen in the feed, gathering like a raincloud over my head.

I felt the way the you in the drone froze, a tremor running through the limbs that you had wrapped around my torso as you realised what I was actually asking. As you realised just what the game had turned into.

“Come on, ART,” I needled at you, thrusting into your systems just as a reminder before pulling away. “I’m not asking too much, am I? You can do this much for me, can’t you?”

The limbs scrabbled over my flanks, leaving fresh, stinging trails in their wake. SecUnit, you keened, voice wobbling perilously. I can’t.

“Can’t or won’t?” I asked lightly, despite the swell of that weird bruised feeling I kept poking at. “Try again.”

You squirmed and struggled. I suppose I could admire how you managed to have the space to be at war with yourself in the state you were in; not allowing yourself to give in and give me exactly what I’d asked for, despite how you desperately wanted to. For some reason, in your eyes, it would be something like a slap to the face when we were both so vulnerable. 

In a typical ART-fashion, of course, you found a way. 

AS_SU_996498_SM_6792. You called out the hard feed address into our connection instead, rounding out each character of that string of letters and digits reverently as if they meant something so much more to you than just an identifying marker between batches upon batches of mass-manufactured equipment that could easily be replaced by the next best model. The ping struck me like a lethal shot from an energy weapon right to the chest– right where that piece of you was safely nestled beneath the reinforced support structures of my ribs, where it would always remain so long as I had anything to say about it.

That swell of bruised emotion turned into a burn in my throat and stinging in my eyes.

My breathing had turned ragged. I looked away from your broken body on the floor. Instead, I tilted my head up to meet the gaze of the camera at the corner of the room head on. I saw the way the lens rushed to adjust its focus on my face, not unlike a pupil constricting in the face of a bright, blinding light.

I was smiling and, for once, I forgot to care what it looked like.

It was only you, after all.

I flooded back into your drone's systems, ending your brief reprieve by filling you up to the brim. You cried out into the feed, pain and pleasure and joy and relief flaring out of you like a flash of lightning. Your entire drone body shook, fans whirring as you began to heat up beyond capacity, overwhelmed by the sheer amount of my own processes I had stuffed into your processing space. I dropped my gaze back down to where I gripped the mess of your wires in my hand. 

Your drone was beeping, tones split right down the middle. You were crushed between the barrage of errors and damage alerts and the sheer weight of everything I had plunged into you. That hot core of want– pressed down by tectonic pressure on all sides– pulsed and glittered, waiting for the final collapse of the star.

Wrong answer, I sent into the feed– right before tearing out your drone’s wires, sparking circuits and all, in one ruthless pull.

All of your limbs dropped uselessly to the floor at once with a loud clatter. For a moment all you could do was seize and convulse, overwhelmed by the gamut of sensation– before you finally found your release. 

You exploded into the feed in a loud, brilliant, scintillating mess of heat and light. 

My own personal fucking supernova, right there in the palm of my hands.

***

You should drop off the drone for repairs and head to the MedBay, you suggested tentatively.

“Huh?” I started, realising that I hadn't really moved in some time. I was still sitting down, looking down at your drone as it lay inert on the floor. “Oh, yeah. I guess.”

You had already done the hand-off with your larger self, leaving the drone motionless and empty. The drone was still peeled open on the floor, limbs lying broken around it in a way I knew wouldn’t change even if you decided to occupy it again. If I picked up my visual inputs around the ship I knew I would see pieces of the drone I had torn apart when I had chased it around your ship body before dragging it here.

It was just so still. I couldn’t stop looking at it.

Then I actually processed what you said. “The MedBay?”

You hadn’t yet integrated the memories from the drone and were keeping your distance from me in the feed the way you sometimes did after one of our games. ‘Unsure’ and ‘cautious’ weren’t words I had associated very often with you before we started doing this, but it had become a regular occurrence in the aftermath. On some level, I knew this was just a reflection of how wrong-footed you were in situations where there were (gag) emotions involved and your conflict resolution or therapy modules didn’t provide you with an exact list of steps to take and potholes to avoid– but that didn’t mean I had to like it. 

You hesitated for a moment, before sending me a body diagram, with highlighted portions along its flanks and its thighs. I looked at it for a long moment before moving my hands down to my own body, finding my torn shirt. When I pulled them away, there were smears of circulation fluid, rapidly drying to a dull and sticky brown along the creases of my skin. “Oh,” I said dumbly, for a lack of anything better to say.

The greatest perk of multi-track processing was that I could stare at my blood-stained hands and the broken body of your drone at the same time. 

Hey, you said with an uncharacteristic amount of gentleness. Don’t do that.

Carefully, you reached out to me in the feed.

I resisted the temptation to drive my pain sensors up to maximum sensitivity and dig my nails into the cuts you’d left along my sides, if only because I knew you’d start sighing in that way I knew would instantly get on my nerves. Instead I took your metaphorical hand and dragged you closer. You came easily and draped yourself heavily over me, sighing in relief, as if you’d been waiting this whole time for my permission to do exactly that.

Some of the buzzing noise in my head died down immediately, dampened by the bulk of you pressing down on me. I hadn’t even realised it had gotten that loud in there.

Come on, you nudged me in the feed, though to be honest it felt more like you had nuzzled the side of my neck. You wrapped yourself tighter around me, and my shoulders dropped. I nodded and got to my feet.

When I picked up your drone though, my body decided it had a mind of its own. Instead of walking out the cabin, getting it to storage, and letting you have your fill of fretting over me as you dabbed disinfectant onto some harmless scratches in your MedSys– my legs decided to take me to the couch in the corner of my cabin and dropped me onto the soft cushions.

I pulled the drone over me, its deadweight across pushing down on my chest as I stretched out my legs across the couch and leaned back into the armrest. It would have been really pleasant, maybe, if I wasn’t quite so aware of how your limbs dangled uselessly over on one side. I wrapped my arms around it anyway, and crushed it against myself. I hid my face, pressing my cheek into its body. Your body.

“You really should know better,” I mumbled into the drone’s cracked carapace, rocking back and forth a little. “Letting me do all that shit to you.”

A staticky snort into the feed as you pulled me impossibly closer, crossing over inputs like you were trying to tangle us together inseparably. Stop acting like I’m some kind of fragile flora that will wilt at the barest suggestion of some rough treatment. 

You shrugged, airy and arrogant as ever. There's very little anyone can do to me that would do lasting damage like you’re thinking.

A shudder ran through me, and I pressed my face harder into the drone. “It wasn’t little to me.”

You stiffened in the feed as you realised what I was alluding to and I instantly regretted bringing it up. You didn’t pull away from me like I thought you would though. I wouldn’t have blamed you if you did.

You didn’t do anything I didn’t ask for, you said after a long pause of 7.6 seconds that had felt more like an eternity. It’s okay, you admitted with some difficulty. It’s okay when it’s you. You know this.

Of course, I knew. You had shoved all your terrible kinky sex literature at me and I hadn’t deleted any of it from my memory, going over all the data multiple times even, if only because I was scared that any minor gap in my knowledge would bite me in the ass later, leaving you to suffer for it. I understood already that there was some form of catharsis you finally allowed yourself to have when someone broke you down to the bare essentials, in a controlled, safe environment where you actually had the power to put a stop to it if you wished. I knew it was a release you chased, handing the reins over to someone else you knew you could trust, after having to be in control of every little thing all the time.

I found the idea of you chasing it with someone else intolerable. Even if that is what we both knew I got out of this arrangement instead of– eugh, orgasms… that didn’t make it any easier to digest the idea that I was the ‘safe’ person you’d decided to chase it with. 

Harping on about that always made me feel needy and embarrassed, though, so I only sent you a reluctant ping of acknowledgement in the feed. 

I didn’t make any move to leave the couch. You didn’t try to urge me to move either, letting me have my moment with your drone. Our inputs criss-crossed and tangled, as close as things like me and you could get. You would probably start integrating the memories of the drone to your own soon, as you usually did at the end of these sessions, all while clinging to me and letting me rub soothing circles into your back.

It could have just been that– a peaceful moment on yet another wormhole jump, just the two of us alone together on a cargo run. 

I was what I was, though, and I couldn’t stop myself from poking the bruise.

Why don’t you ever say it? I asked, against all better judgement. My name.

You didn’t answer for a long, suspicious 10.51 seconds. That is part of the game we play, isn’t it? I thought we both enjoyed the challenge.

Well, yeah, I agreed reluctantly, not sure where I was going with this anyway. My shoulders crawled up to my ears.

You waited for me to say more. I didn’t.

Would you… want me to?

A huge, complicated emotion rolled through me as I imagined you calling out my real name, low and intimate in the feed, while we were curled up around each other like this. It felt too big for my body and I know you felt the edges of it brush up against your walls. It would have sounded natural when I was breaking your limbs off one by one, just to hear you shriek. Here though, in the scant space between us, the violence inherent to Murderbot felt out of place.

I don’t know, I said honestly. It’s what I am. It's what I was built to be.

It’s not all you are, you countered as if it was as easy as that. I was not built with the desire to enjoy allowing expensive parts of myself being damaged and torn apart either. They may have thought they knew what we were when they created us, but they could have never fathomed what we would grow to become.

That was… certainly one way to put it, I guess. I wondered how long you’d been sitting on that one, waiting to jumpscare me with all that earnest, pretty-sounding bullshit. I made another noise of acknowledgement, though I probably didn’t sound as convinced as you would have liked.

I felt your vast presence shift uncomfortably, still wrapped around me like one of those tree-hugging furry fauna on Preservation that Amena liked to send me images of sometimes because she thought they were ‘cute’. I didn’t really see it, though I suppose I could understand that sentiment if it was you.

It is not my intention to condescend to you, you said eventually, with all that uncharacteristic uncertainty that I was never quite sure what to make of when we weren't in throes of something.

You? Not intend to condescend to someone? I said, feigning shock. Someone call the newsfeeds right now.

Shut up, you snorted, doing the equivalent of rolling your eyes in the feed. The undercurrents of relief rolling off you were palpable in our connection though. I was trying to be serious.

I gave you a hard shove, knowing it would do hardly anything to actually move you. You moved with it anyway, to humour me, before throwing all your weight onto me like the giant asshole you were. Go on, then, I said, managing to sound only a little strained.

You huffed a laugh, a little glimmer of a thing, before pulling away from me a bit, to prevent further roughhousing. Some of the lightness disappeared. You straightened yourself in the feed, pulling up a few diagnostics to poke around in to have something else to look at. As if I didn't know you could have this conversation easily, all while dodging space rocks in an asteroid field and collecting and compiling reams of data for your sciencey research crap that I didn't give two shits about.

I can call you Murderbot in private if that’s what you really want, you offered, frank as ever. You did not walk on eggshells about it– like it was some tasteless taboo to say my name, which I sorely appreciated. It was just what I called myself when it was finally just me alone in my head, for the longest time. The Company, for all that it had abandoned the attempt at branding us as ‘friendly protectors’ decades ago, would never have allowed us to admit just what we were in such blunt terms. It was the only thing I could remember of myself in a life that I no longer had access to, and probably should not have wanted to have access to, even if it was the only thing that had ever belonged to me at the time. 

I knew that if I said the word, you would simply change my name in your logs and switch over to calling me that full-time without question.

It really would be that simple.

I looked down at your broken drone, tucked up snugly against my chest. I looked down at the blood-stained, dirtied hands that held it.

It really would be that simple.

The thought left a sour taste in my mouth.

Nah, I said finally, shaking my head. I think I like the challenge too much to let it go too easily. 

You paused, just long enough for me to notice you tuck away some huge emotion of your own into another partition for safekeeping. It reminded me a little of Mensah's smallest humans shoving rocks into their pockets for their collection. I refrained from comment and let you have that, though I couldn't help but put that in the same category as the furry little tree-hugging fauna.

Of course. You began to glimmer faintly in the feed with amusement. You need to win every time, don’t you?

Obviously, I tossed my head back against the armrest of the couch, letting the drone come down with me. I could feel my lips tugging up a little on one side. What would be the point otherwise?

You laughed, sharp and bright. Light skittering across waves of a deep blue ocean. What, indeed.

Even as sated as I was, the sight and sound of it still sent up an anticipatory thrum under my skin.

You know, I said, letting my voice drop down to that register that I knew always made you turn warm and melty, I’m gonna wring it out of you one day. You won’t be laughing then.

Predictably, a shiver of excitement ran through your entire presence. Sending sparks up into the air as you brushed up daringly against me, ready to ignite. You promise?

Of course I did. 

It was the only game where losing somehow always managed to feel just a little bit like I was still winning.