Chapter Text
Sasha likes the city. She likes watching its inhabitants go about their rut. She appreciates their humanity. Sasha is sensitive to such things, being a very humane human.
Yes, that’s what she is.
She wears her unevenly cut, platinum-blonde hair sloppily in a braid pinned into a bun, held in place with a pen. Below her choppy bangs (self-cut in the bathroom mirror) are her pitch-black eyes, framed by her red cracked glasses. She never cared to get them fixed. She doesn’t know who to beseech… She has been wearing them for as long as she can remember.
A heavy, olive-coloured shop apron hangs from her shoulders, ending high enough for her loose fitting jean shorts to peek out from beneath it. People always ask whether she was feeling cold. She is, in fact, not affected by the cold. Consequently, everyone (herself included) just assumes she is a little weird, haha.
Under the apron, she wears a black turtleneck. Pssssst, I’ll let you in on a secret: She rarely changes it. Whenever she does, dust comes off her, creating a mess on the floor. The new shirt also gets covered in dust, so the effort is all for naught.
Her boots are ancient: shin-high, brown combat boots. They are far too big for her, so she walks like she is perpetually balancing on rails. Above her boots, her legs are wrapped in wool socks that used to be grey…
Oh, and her skin is weird. I don’t know how to really describe it. It’s in a synthetic white. I shan’t carry on… Sasha refuses to acknowledge it.
Despite enjoying observing the humanity that shines through the cracks in the people’s superficial façades, she is glad to have Sage with her.
They are currently walking to the scrapyard to collect some parts for new creations. Sasha likes to create. She tends to say that creating was what made her so human.
As they walk, they pass fatigued students rushing to catch their train home, exhausted men in suits, noisy drunk men in pubs, and gloomy homeless people. Oh, how peculiar they all seem to Sasha! She takes in the smell of concrete, car exhaust, and her lavender perfume.
Her companion doesn’t like the city as much as she does. Sage is an ungainly being. Sasha never managed to figure out why she made him that way — it wasn’t intentional — but she loves him no matter what. To her, Sage is somewhere between a little brother and a son.
He looks kind. On his head resides a mop of copper-red, short hair, the kind of colour that catches whatever light there is in the room and throws it back warmer. The strands were uneven, some chopped short, others longer and curling at the ends, as if he cut it himself with kitchen scissors whenever it got in his eyes. (He must have learned that from Sasha!)
He looks human only from a distance, and even then, not quite. At each major joint, grey mechanical joints sit under his pale, synthetic skin. His left elbow panel sometimes pops open a few millimetres, revealing metal and a cluster of colour-coded wires that look gingerly installed.
Still, he tries his best to be humanly clad. He wears a white dress-shirt, a black tie around his neck, dark blueish-grey trousers that find their hem just above his knees, a pair of white wool socks and black boots kind of like Sasha’s. Atop his humane attire, he drowns in a black blazer, way too big for him. He mostly wears it so that people don’t see his robotic joints. He hates when they do.
Sage kind of tries to look like those men in suits. Those ones he espies in the city. Ultimately, he just winds up looking like a little boy who stole some of his father’s clothes, thinking he was a “business man just like dad” now.
Honestly, Sasha gave him the traits of the child she apparently remembers being when she created him. She doesn’t really know why, but perhaps that’s why she loves him so dearly.
At the scrapyard, they rummage through piles of metal scraps, metal screws, metal… things. Basically, there is a lot of metal.
“Is this OK?” asks Sage, holding up a flat sheet of metal. “Ah, yes, I can make use of that. Thank you,” the girl responds. In fact, she already has an abundant amount of those lying around in her garage, waiting to be used. She just doesn’t like saying no to him.
She winds up picking up some hinges, screws, and springs. Calmly, they walk back to the garage.
There, Sasha gets straight back to work, fiddling around with some screws. She is creating once again. Meanwhile, Sage sits in his little charging corner. This is his personal safe haven, complete with a pink, lumpy pillow far too big, an old patterned rug, an ancient TV playing but static, and some drawings made by Sasha he secretly keeps. He watches her quietly as she concentrates, sticking out her tongue. That’s what she tends to do when she’s concentrating.
“Ah, I should water the plants,” Sage thinks out loud. He gets up from his corner and tends to the greenhouse next to the garage. Their life is pretty humble. They live in a garage, and Sasha fixes or replaces faulty components, systems, or parts, such as engines, brakes, transmissions, and hydraulic systems for a living. All that mechanic stuff, you know.
Honestly, she doesn’t really remember how she got here. Whenever she tries, her head hurts and her limbs start to crumble. She was once a child, and now she lives in a garage with enough space for her companion to have a small greenhouse. That’s all she knows.
For dinner they have what keeps them alive, Sasha reckons. Sage doesn’t eat. He doesn’t need to. He is a robot, after all. Nevertheless, he enjoys holding a fork over a bowl of cheap instant noodles every evening, blowing on them to prevent burning whoever was supposed to eat them. He likes to picture himself eating them. He also likes holding a cup of coffee in his hands every morning and feeling its warmth on his hands.
And Sasha eats, too. Like a normal human being. To survive, she reckons…
For being alive requires to survive. She survives in the real world. Living is a thing she does in her head.
She sits quietly, working on a new project, when suddenly a theatrical voice resonates behind her. “There you are!” says a tall, luminescent man who had just appeared behind her.
A fine, white dust puffs from the girl’s joints as she whirls around, a frantic gesture that almost sends her hand flying right off her arm. She sits frozen, blinking chalky eyelashes, trying to process the sight of him.
He has two immense wings, impossibly white, flared out from his back, reflecting the lime-green, eerie light he emits. He looks radioactive, honestly. He wears a heavy cross, large enough to be a shield from all the blasphemous profanity of today’s society.
”You shouldn’t startle people. It’s not proper,” Sasha says. “It’s not good for my composure.”
“Sorry— my apologies. Woe is you,” the angel replies, chuckling. How rude. How sarcastic. “Habit. Keeping you in one piece has, at times, required some haste.”
Yes, Friday is a sarcastic man. But he is a good man. Sasha doesn’t know this, but without him, she would probably be a pile of dust swept into a biohazard bin.
He’d tease her about needing a “dustbuster” after she stumbled, never mentioning that the real dustbuster was the experiment designed to wash her essence down the drain.
“Sasha, what automation do you conjure now?”
“It’s nothing, I mean it’s becoming something,” she answers.
“And what, pray tell, is it meant to become?”
She grins awkwardly and starts to explain:
Notes:
Ermmm.., to be continued hehehehhehebehehhehehehehehhe.
Also, excuse my English. Not my native tongue.
Chapter 2: Miss, Your Flowers…
Summary:
“The man rubs his face with both hands, muttering something about isotopes, health hazards, and radioactive elements. Either he is praying to Mother Chemistry, or revising for an exam.”
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
So, do you remember when Sasha started to explain?
“Well, it’s supposed to be a helper…,” she says. “Someone who can remember the things I forget.”
Friday leans over, his wings rustling like a peacock’s train. “Very peculiar,” he quips. “Is it meant to have fifteen joints in one elbow?”
“Yes!” The mechanic replies instantly.
The aliferous man laughs. “But, wherefore?”
“…Because… movement?”
“Hark, Sasha! That elbow may 1v1 God.”
“She’s going to be careful, I suppose,” the girl says doubtfully.
“Prudence,” Friday argues, “is a virtue most esteemed. Until it turns into the vice of suspicion. This is something you know too well, methinks.”
Sage, having finished watering the plants, peeks in. "It looks very nice," he says politely.
Friday gives the replicant a pitying look. “You don’t have a dignity module either, do you?”
“I think she’ll be the type to notice everything,” Sasha continues. “The type who protects.”
“Protects from what?” Friday asks.
“I don’t know,” Sasha whispers. “I just feel like someone needs to.”
“Hm.” That’s the last sound he utters before disappearing into thin air again.
And for the rest of that week, Sasha spends her time doing what she always does when she is avoiding thinking about something too big: she works. She works until her hands stop shaking. Let me tell you about her week. No, really — sit down for this.
Her schedule looks a little like this:
- Wake up (Technically. Her eyes open, so it counts.)
- Stumble into the garage
- Wrench something. Hammer something.
- Dinner
- Work on her ‘little’ personal project until midnight
Clients come in and out.
“Can you fix the transmission?”
“Can you replace this tire?”
“Can you… tell your… robot to stop staring into my soul?”
“Oh, I’m sorry!” says Sage.
He stands beside her the whole time, handing her the wrong tools in the wrong order. Meanwhile, Sasha is tightening wires with the same ardour as someone knitting a sweater for God.
But on one special Saturday night, Friday emerges out of curiosity. “Pray tell, how fares your project upon finalisation?”
Sasha jolts up, “I told you to stop startling me!” Her left hand makes a tiny chalky puff when she slaps it to her chest. “Ah, well, my project,” she regains composure, “It’s ready.” Or, ready enough for her to be scared to touch it again.
Sage doesn’t even know she’s procrastinating. He’s too busy attempting to fix a toaster that, frankly, should have been declared dead weeks ago.
Sasha is hunched over the machine’s lifeless body— I mean “offline replicant”, sorry — when suddenly, somebody knocks on the door. Which is weird. It’s already after 22 o’clock. Usually, after this hour, her only visitors are intrusive thoughts and moths buzzing around her lamp.
“Who on earth—?” begins the girl before Friday has disappeared again. Typical. She walks towards the door and pries it wide open. “Hello, excuse me—“
And then someone practically explodes:
“YOUR FLOWERS—“
That’s the greeting. No “hello”, no “sorry to bother you”. Just “YOUR FLOWERS!”, declared like an accusation.
Sasha blinks. Hard. Chalk falls from her eyelashes. Standing in front of her is a man who looks like he has been awake for three consecutive days.
He stands with a natural slouch, the posture of someone who has carried too many textbooks, too many regrets, and far too many fishy jobs.
His hair is deep green. It’s messy and tousled in a mad-scientist kind of way. Some strands curl outward, while others flop over his forehead like they gave up on trying.
His skin is tanned but in a pale kind of way. On his forearms, revealed beneath his scrunched-up lab coat’s sleeves (which, by the way, looks like it’s seen war), there are as many scars as stars in the sky. Cuts, burns, and more burns that probably stem from lab accidents.
His shirt is a dull-grey, wrinkled button-up. He wears a black tie, slightly crooked, obviously tied in a hurry.
Around his chest hangs a tactical-looking crossbody pouch, filled with things that have no business being together: a half-eaten granola bar, at least three empty pens (that he shakes ferociously whenever he needs to note something down, just for them to leak onto the paper and then run dry again), a pipette, and some small vials he definitely should not be carrying around.
His trousers are loose, baggy work trousers with the cuffs turned up twice — partly for style, partly because he bought them at a thrift store a few sizes too big.
And then there are his boots — black, worn, heavy work boots tied sloppily. He walks like he’s used to rough terrain.
Oh, and his face. How could I forget about that? His face looks tired, like he has been kicked around by life. Dark circles decorate his pitch-black eyes. He grins more than he thinks he does, and when he opens his mouth, unmistakably, his left front tooth is missing.
His ‘sentence’ begins with a breath. He has to remind his lungs of how to participate.
“…You… Your flowers! Those, uh… behind your… your greenhouse, I think? They’re not normal.”
His words come out slower than he thinks them, as if his mouth is trying to catch up with his brain.
Sasha squints at him.
He squints at her.
It’s a very squinty moment.
“Oh,” she finally says. “My friend— I mean, robot plants those.”
“Your… robot… It plants weird, uh… flowers?”
“Yes, he likes gardening.”
She chose not to mention that Friday helps him with it sometimes, when there’s not much to do in Heaven. How would she explain to this total stranger that, from time to time, a lime-green glowing angel appears in her garage? Wasn’t it already discombobulating enough that she has a flower-planting robot?
The man rubs his face with both hands, muttering something about isotopes, health hazards, and radioactive elements. Either he is praying to Mother Chemistry, or revising for an exam. Or maybe, maybe it’s still about those flowers?
But how? They are just flowers.
Sasha tilts her head and goes, “Oh, you know plants?”
“…Yes, yes… I DO, but— but anybody with, ahem, eyes in their head should know that whatever you’re planting looks HORRIBLY off!”
Sage, having finally discarded the toaster-fixing project, watches whatever is going down in the doorway right now.
“…Miss, you are a mechanic, yes? …You must have an, uh, a Geiger counter somewhere!” the man rambles on.
“Uh, yeah, I think I do. Why?”
“…GIVE ME IT, now!!!! I mean, PLEASE!”
Now, who on earth was this homeless mad-scientist-looking man begging for a Geiger counter in Sasha’s doorway? She enquires, “Who are you?”
“…Oh, yes, yes. My name… Joshua.”
“Sasha,” she holds out her hand. Joshua realises only after at least four seconds of staring into her eyes brazenly.
“…Ah, excuse me,” he says before taking her hand and shaking it kind of violently.
The girl clears her throat before skewing around into her garage to fetch an almost antique Geiger counter that has been loitering in a dusty corner for years. “Give me a sec.”
Sage retreats into the back of the garage to avoid making eye contact with the madman standing in the door.
After a minute, Sasha returns. “There it is.”
Joshua replies, “…Let… Please let me have it for, er, a… moment. Or, or follow me.”
Together, they step outside. It is already dark. The air smells stale yet sharp, of pétrichor. It is a damp autumn night.
They walk around the greenhouse and notice the way the leaves shimmer green in the shade of imminent night.
“…This is NOT bioluminescence!” He holds out the Geiger counter, which immediately starts clicking.
“Oh,” murmurs Sasha.
Notes:
*my glasses fog up* NYEHEHHEE (this is my mad scientist laugh)
Chapter 3: Friday Crashes Dinner
Summary:
“Do you… want tea? I can make you some. I can even hold the cup if it’s too hot for your hands. I’m good at that.”
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
“Oh, yeah that looks bad,” Sasha says, as if everyone involved was only born yesterday.
“Um, yes... Miss. I think your flowers must be radioactive, haha. That... That’s not good and all.”
“But, but why?”
The only realistic cause for this could be a nearby nuclear disaster. Which would be tragic, of course. But Sasha simply blinks at him. Joshua turns pale. Then green. Then something in between.
“S-someone must have exposed these plants to an unstable isotope,” he mutters, already pacing. “Ah… Structural anomalies, the soil matrix… oh no, oh no no no, this—“
“It’s okay. Sage grows them with love.
He looks at the sickly glowing plants. “That’s not love, that’s radiation!”
Joshua stares at the floor intensely, absorbed in his scientific musings, until he spots a feather lying between the petals. But when he asks Sasha about it, all she has to say is, “Oh, that’s just Friday!” as if it explains anything. Friday sheds everywhere. It’s actually annoying.
Who the hell is Friday? And why do his feathers violate several safety regulations?
“Well!” Sasha claps her hands, dust flying everywhere. “Mystery solved. Thanks for coming by!”
“Do you… not understand?” he asks. “This— This is a hazard, uh I should call someone. Or… or run—“
“Are you hungry?” she asks out of nowhere.
“N-no,” he lies.
He hasn’t eaten in a while. Honestly, he would dress up as a pigeon just to have random passers-by feed him dry bread. Haha. Pigeon Joshua — that would be funny.
“You can stay for dinner,” says the mechanic, with a blunt, honest sincerity that can and will break a grown man.
He stiffens. “What— Why— How do you know I’m broke?”
She shrugs. “Oh, you have the aura. Hungry, poor man aura. Very distinct. Like Sage when he wants attention.”
And before he can argue back, Sasha has already turned to the garage, apron swaying and chalk trailing behind her like fairy dust. And somehow — against science, against reason, against anything logical — he follows her.
Poor Joshua doesn’t know it yet, but this is the beginning of his downfall.
“Sage, we have a guest!”
Silence reigns.
Then, a head pokes out from behind a shelf.
Sage looks at Joshua. If he had a heartbeat, it would have just tripped over itself.
He straightens his blazer. (He’s been doing that a lot lately. He thinks it makes him look “professional.”)
“H-hello, good evening, sir,” he chirps.
Joshua was not prepared for the person behind the radioactive plants to be a trembling, overdressed robot boy who speaks like he’s meeting royalty.
“Hiiiiiiii…” he tries, waving one awkward hand.
Sage waves back like a windscreen wiper.
“He’s a robot,” Sasha adds proudly, as if the little whirs his joints make didn’t give it away. Joshua nods. Of course the radioactive plants were tended by a Victorian child in a business suit who is two screws away from collapsing.
“Do you… want tea? I can make you some. I can even hold the cup if it’s too hot for your hands. I’m good at that.”
The chemist chose not to think too much about what he had just said. “Uh…”
The last time he’d had tea was when Halua was still there. He remembers sitting cross-legged on a concrete floor, next to her. Weak, watery tea boiled over a trash fire. They drank it pretending it was something nicer.
Tea.
Joshua swallows. “Uh, thank you… but not right now.” His voice cracks awkwardly.
“Oh yes! Of course, some people dislike hot beverages. I can prepare lukewarm water in a cup if you’d prefer that.”
“Uh… no, it’s okay. Really…”
He shoves his hands into his pockets.
Halua isn’t here anymore.
He’s not in the slums anymore.
To get his mind off of things, he decides to observe his surroundings.
The garage is messy. He can tell it’s a home. And a fire hazard. And also kind of like a big warm hug, somehow.
“You live here?”
“Yes,” Sasha says from the kitchen.
“You… sleep here?”
“Yup.”
“You eat here…?”
“Exactamundo.”
The man’s eyes shift to a project on the table. There sits an offline replicant with wires for veins. “Oh, you’re… building someone,” he exclaims.
“Yes, although, I don’t know what to name her yet.”
It does not move, but Joshua swears it watches him.
“…Cool,” he lies.
He looks at the half-wilted flowers on the table — proteas, left by Sage. Proteas are known for surviving wildfires, storms, disasters,…
Then, he looks back at the robot. All metal, all resilience, built to survive anything.
With nothing better to add to the conversation, he suggests, “Why don’t you name it Protea? Like the flower?”
“Good idea!”
This is it. He had just bestowed a name upon one of Sasha’s creations. It’s over. The narrator (hi) would like to clarify that at this moment, Joshua’s sanity drops by at least 5 points.
And now, dear reader, let me show you Sasha’s kitchen. I say “kitchen” in the same way one would say “unicorn” because it is — at best — a concept.
There is a metal sink that drips constantly and a stove older than her memories. The stove has but two settings:
- off
- FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, TURN IT DOWN!!!
Between yonder is a slab of metal with countless dents that suggest that she has dropped wrenches on it, may or may not have used it as an anvil once, and welded something there, where the countertop should be. It reflects the flickering overhead light in a way that makes everything look like a scene from a low-budget sci-fi movie.
Above hang two cabinets, also made of metal. One closes properly, and the other refuses to. Being right next to the wall has resulted in the handle having chipped some of it away, from whenever Sasha swings it open too fervently in her hungry throes, rummaging for canned foods.
Under the cabinets lives a small shelf with spices: paprika, rosemary, some dried herbs Sage grew, something labelled “flavour sand”, and another jar labelled “not poison :)” with the smiley drawn aggressively.
A jar on the counter holds some bent forks, two pairs of chopsticks (but only one matches), and some spoons.
The fridge hums like it’s trying to summon demons or communicate with something… something…
Inside there is a bunch of milk. Sage likes buying milk. Sasha lets him.
By and large, Joshua already feels safer here than he has anywhere in months. (-3 sanity)
Sasha chops vegetables with the proficiency of somebody who thinks she remembers how to cook.
Joshua stands awkwardly at the end of the kitchen zone, unsure of where he is allowed to exist.
“You can sit,” Sasha says, pointing at a chair at the table with Protea on it. It serves as both a work desk and as a dinner table.
She tosses ingredients into the pot.
He suddenly realises just how hungry he is.
Sage sits down opposite to him. “Sasha cooks very well,” he says gently.
“Mhm.”
Dinner is calm. The soup actually isn’t bad at all. It tastes normal. So human. Sage sits with his untouched bowl, blowing on it politely, happy just to be included. Joshua tries not to breathe in all the dust.
“So,” Sasha starts, “why were you out so late?”
“Oh, you know… studying. I’m in chemistry, if you couldn’t tell yet.”
“So that’s why you recognised that radiation.”
“Yeah,” Joshua shrugs, “I’m pretty good at—“
—FLASH
A neon-white explosion of light bursts behind him, knocking a cup off the table. A winged man appears, looking like he had just crawled out of a nuclear reactor. The air suddenly smells like pennies and ozone.
“Hark, good even! I sensed a miasma of guilt and regret, thus compelling me to—“
Joshua screams.
Not a little scream.
A piercing, high-pitched, window-vibrating yelp.
Sage gasps. “Sir, are you hurt? Your heart is very loud.”
Friday opens his mouth to introduce himself, but Sasha dismisses him. “Not now. You scared him.”
“I strike fear into every heart! Fear is but a player upon the stage of my charisma!”
Joshua, hyperventilating, can only point feebly.
“WHO— WHAT— WHY—“
The girl slurps on her soup. “Oh, that’s Friday. He’s an angel. Or something. He shows up when he feels like it.”
Friday bows deeply. “Charmed, mortal.”
Joshua tries to faint to get out of yon situation. He fails. Sage gets up and pats his shoulder. “It’s OK. He does that a lot.”
Notes:
when i was trying to write how sage blows on his soup i couldn’t help but burst out laughing when i imagined a boy sitting with his back straight, blowing on a plate of soup at an awkwardly silent dinner table
Chapter 4: Angel Keeps Scaring Me So I Stress-Ate an Entire Pot of Soup
Summary:
“I wouldn’t be able to move. That scares me. It scares me even more than that one time she fixed my eye sensors. That must be how humans feel about going to the dentist.”
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Sasha stares at the angel. “This is not proper of you.”
Joshua, still frightened, asks, “Does he have to be standing right behind me?”
Friday retreats into a corner with an offended look on his face and retorts, “Chill, mortals! My influence extends solely to sinners and houseplants.”
“So the radioactive Friday guy is real,” he muses. “That wasn’t a dream with that strange feather.”
Joshua's hands won’t stop shaking around the spoon. He keeps waiting for the nausea, the burns, anything. Nothing comes. Friday lounges in the doorway like a radioactive gargoyle.
“I should go,” he declares, “before your angel decides I’m a sinner after all.”
“No. Stay,” the girl says. “You’re still hungry.”
That doesn’t hit very far from home. Joshua can’t bring himself to leave when there is a slightly over-salted, warm soup on the table, so instead, he has another plate.
And another. And another. Until the pot is empty. Once the initial shock is over, he is too hungry to care about some weird, sickly glowing angel.
“Wow. You must have been hungry. Pray tell, have you been eating a sufficient amount, mortal?” Friday approaches and bends down behind Joshua’s back.
“AHHH—“
“First of all, stop scaring me like that! And—“
He hates this question. He hates how his throat tightens around the answer. Sage tilts his head like a worried puppy. Friday stands unnervingly still. Sasha watches, looking over the frames of her glasses.
“Well, I’ve been, uh, studying and job-hunting and… I don’t know; I kinda forgot to keep track of stuff. Eating. That sort of thing.”
He laughs awkwardly.
“I didn’t really have the money anyways.”
Sasha's face softens in that strange way it does when she stops performing "human" and just is something benign. “I get it,” she says.
And as the day starts drawing to a close, the boy contemplates having to leave again. But before he can express his gratitude and storm out the door, he has already been invited to stay the night.
“You don't have to go,” Sasha says, like it's the most obvious thing in the world. She points at a lumpy couch in the corner of the room.
“I have room for you. And blankets. And Sage likes guests. Right, Sage?”
Joshua opens his mouth, closes it, and opens it again. “You don’t even know me.”
She shrugs. “Hm.”
He looks at the empty plate in front of him, at Sage’s hopeful eyes, at Sasha’s messy hair. He tries to say thank you. What comes out is a cracked laugh that sounds more like a sob.
Sasha stands up, already cleaning dishes.
“This will be awesome! We can watch TV together!” proposes the robot, pointing at his static-playing TV.
And for some reason, Joshua agrees. Not much later they are sitting on the floor, in front of the screen. They listen to the roaring.
The replicant sits cross-legged next to the chemist.
“Sasha said that this was what the sea sounded like.”
“Is that so?”
“Mhm.”
“Cool. Has she been to the sea?”
“She’s told me about her memories of having been there. It must have been nice. But if I were to sit in the sand, I’d probably end up with a bunch of it on my joints. That would be bad.”
“Oh yeah, it would.”
“I wouldn’t be able to move. That scares me. It scares me even more than that one time she fixed my eye sensors. That must be how humans feel about going to the dentist.”
And this is how they spend the rest of the evening, simply chattering to each other until either one gets too tired. For the first time in a while, Joshua has an actual mattress to sleep on.
He used to sleep wherever he could. For example, in the empty lecture halls after hours. He still has a master key that works on half of the science buildings. The seats are terrible, but the place is heated, and the beamer’s hum is soothing.
Or in random 24-hour laundromats. The dryers were warm, and when anyone asked him what he was doing, he would just say he was “waiting for his laundry to finish”, and they’d leave him alone.
Joshua lies there staring at the rafters, listening to the faint hum of Sage’s charging port and smells the moist soil from the greenhouse. He pulls the blanket to his chin.
He tries not to cry — not because he’s sad, but because his body is so relieved, it doesn’t know how to express it. His spine realises it doesn’t have to sleep upright for once.
Not much later he drifts off into a deep slumber. I’m lying; the sleep is not deep. He’s a very light sleeper, a habit he has picked up from sleeping in any place that could somehow serve as a bed.
Usually, his dreams are what wake him up. He sees dirty streets that the townsfolk go out of their way to avoid. Then he sees his sister, hears her bright laugh, despite the circumstances.
She only says, “Come on, Josh. We’ll be late!”
Late for what? In dreams, he never knows. So he tries to run, but his legs feel full of lead. Halua becomes smaller until she is swallowed by the alley’s curve.
Then a sound drifts in: men yelling, his heart pounding, the engine of a white van, Halua screaming; the dream cannot decide which it was.
He tries to grab her hand, but his fingers close around nothing.
Joshua cannot see the men clearly. But that does not matter. His stomach knows them. His bones do. A gloved fist hits his face.
The ground tastes like dirt and copper. His mouth tastes metallic, and his tooth rolls somewhere into a puddle.
He wakes with the taste of metal and with a sense of phantom pain in his mouth.
Notes:
BECAUSE I HAVE PHANTOM PAIN.
Chapter 5: The Art of Becoming
Summary:
“Hm. They owe you a PhD already.
Oh, and stop trying to die, Joshua.”She walks away, and he finishes his cigarette.
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
The garage is still dark. Friday is nowhere to be seen (thank God). Joshua sits up on the couch, shaking, wiping sweat from his face.
His tongue instinctively goes to the tooth gap.
Still gone.
Sage is awake as well. He has simply been sitting in his corner, quietly coming to terms with his existence (which he needs at least 20 minutes for every morning before he can be labelled fully awake.)
He tilts his head, mechanical joints clicking. “Your breathing pattern is distressed,” he whispers. “Should I get Sasha?”
“No,” Joshua croaks. “Just a bad dream.”
Then, the door that leads to the mysterious back room, which is filled to the brim with “things that might be useful someday”, comes ajar. Sasha emerges.
She fixes her glasses. “Today I have a turbo encabulator to fix. And a man who wants me to ‘check the vibes’ of his car.”
Joshua rubs his eyes.
“Oh. Good morning, by the way,” she adds.
A flash.
“Hark! Good morn. Awaken, ye slumbering souls!” Friday declares, like God’s theatre kid. “My very soul doth quiver with anticipation, eager to witness the grand spectacle this day shall unveil upon life’s stage!”
Sasha walks into the kitchen without even bearing an eye at him. “Don’t monologue before breakfast.”
She doesn’t usually eat breakfast, but having been witness to Joshua’s appetite yesterday, she supposes he would like a little meal.
So not much later, she is staring at a burning pancake like a bomb tech who has simply accepted his fate. It’s okay. She can make some more.
After having made at least ten, with about a third of them being burnt, she declares, “Breakfast! Some are charcoal-flavoured.”
Joshua discovers that charcoal-flavoured pancakes actually taste okay if you drown them in “flavour sand”.
Breakfast is the last moment before they all diverge into their own lives.
“I have classes now,” says Joshua.
Sasha asks him to fetch a tailpipe from the scrapyard on his way back.
She opens the garage door for business. As per usual, she fixes stuff.
A client gives Sage a lollipop. Sage looks panicked. Sasha whispers, “Just take it.”
He accepts it like it’s a holy relic and stares at it for a while.
At around 10:00 Sasha is already lying beneath a delivery truck with a shredded transmission. She spends three hours down there, emerging only for water.
All the while Joshua is sitting in the back row of a lecture hall. The professor is droning on about the quantum mechanics behind chemical bonds and reactions. Half of the slides are wrong. Joshua mutters corrections under his breath the entire time.
After the lecture, he heads to the lab.
His project: synthesising ferric hexacyanoferrate because the commercial tablets are stupidly expensive. Just out of spite. Does he need them? No.
Finally, he decides it is time for a break.
Joshua leans over the railing of the university rooftop. Just him, the wind, and the city. He lights a cigarette as he watches the tiny cars crawl like ants.
Then suddenly, his former professor appears with a clipboard in hand. She is about to take a wind-speed reading for God knows what when she notices the young man.
“Mister Mwita, you still haven’t quit smoking?”
“Professor Klein. I thought you retired.”
“Nope. And you? Are you a Doctor yet?”
“Not yet, haha.”
“Hm. They owe you a PhD already.
Oh, and stop trying to die, Joshua.”
She walks away, and he finishes his cigarette.
On his way home, he takes the long route past the scrapyard because he's carrying the rusted tailpipe Sasha mentioned needing.
He stumbles into the garage smelling like smoke and iron.
Sasha is welding. Sage is humming to the flowers once again.
Joshua drops everything onto the table:
The rusty tailpipe and the antidote he made.
“I made two years’ worth of metal poisoning therapy.”
“That’s pretty cool,” Sasha looks up and says. “Oh, and thanks for that tailpipe.”
Sage comes in from the greenhouse to greet him. “Today the flowers grew two centimetres. They missed you.”
As it is getting late, it’s time to work on a personal project. Back to Protea. Time to finally finish her. I mean, she is finished. It’s just that…
“She looks like a fridge,” Sasha admits, hands on hips.
…yes, what she said.
Sage gasps. “Sasha, she cannot remain fridge-like!”
She pats his head dustily. “I know. That’s why we’re giving her style.”
The replicant walks to the shelf next to his corner and comes back carrying a sketchbook full of meticulously drawn design drafts. Yes, Sage was truly an artist.
“I think Protea should look… sleek. Elegant,” he says.
Sasha stares. “You’ve been holding out on me.”
He opens the sketchbook. It’s a work of art.
“Please stand back. I must do hair.”
Sasha blinks. “You do hair?”
“I observed 42 tutorials.”
He pulls out synthetic strands. White with lavender undertones—carefully aligning them. Sasha watches, fascinated, as the strands seem to fuse onto the robot’s head, cascading into a long, silky ponytail. The light grey of Protea’s metallic skin contrasts sharply with the nearly luminescent white hair.
Sage flips pages in his sketchbook until he lands on a concept drawing: a figure clad in tight, layered blacks, with high boots and a stiff collar. He nods approvingly at his own work.
“The key to concealing a threat is to make it appear unconcerned with camouflage,” he explains.
Sasha crosses her arms. "Looks great, but where are we actually going to get that? I don’t have a fashionable, all-black, combat-chic wardrobe lying around, Sage.”
Sage closes his sketchbook with a decisive thud. “Thrift store.”
Not very long after Sasha calls Joshua. “Chemistry boy, come with us.”
He complies. I mean, what else is he supposed to do? Refuse after having been granted dinner, breakfast, and housing?
The moment they walk through the door of the store, the scent of patchouli and old clothes hits their noses.
“We are looking for monochrome severity,” says Sage to the shopkeeper.
The woman peers over her round glasses at the odd trio: the dusty woman, the broke-looking student, and the metal boy who doesn’t seem to be breathing.
Not really knowing what to do with the replicant’s request, she points over to a rack of black clothes. “Like that?”
“Thank you,” Sasha tells her, and they walk towards the rack. “So, Joshua… You’re the expert here, right? Where does the good stuff hide?”
“Me?” Joshua flinches, a flash of genuine indignation crossing his face. He hates being defined by his poverty. “I’m not a thrift expert, Sasha. I just know how to identify high-quality textiles that haven’t been ruined by cheap mass production,” he corrects.
Sage has already begun looking and has snagged a short, utility-style black jacket with four functional zip-up pockets and a high collar.
The next twenty minutes are just them rummaging through clothes. Sage’s eyes scan the store. He silently presents a heavy-duty black cotton turtleneck and a pair of sturdy black shorts. Joshua locates the perfect pair of laced combat boots—reaching just below the knee—from the bottom of a neglected shoe bin.
Anon, they pay the bewildered cashier and retreat swiftly back to the garage.
Now, Protea stands before them, the new clothes having settled onto her chassis. The transformation is complete. She is no longer a fridge.
The black turtleneck provides a stark base layer beneath the utilitarian jacket, zipped up to its high collar, framing the grey of her metallic skin and the white of her new hair. The thick fabric of the shorts matches the heavy combat boots.
“Wait. She needs socks,” Sasha says, gesturing to the gap between the shorts and the tall boots. “Or else she’ll freeze.”
Not much later, her outfit is complete with a pair of high, black socks.
Notes:
chemistry boy, IM GAY!!! OKAY?! IM GAY, LITTLE CHEMISTRY BOY!