Helping Hands

[mechanical_dream]

This ... oh, this is from so long ago. So very long ago. Right back to the beginning. A robot and a madman, and I hadn't even a name yet, and he was barely hanging on to his, and I should never even have noticed him, really, but those hands were the first ... the first to touch me with something like caring, and I don't think I've ever looked back since. I don't think I ever have.

Helping Hands

 

When he finally managed to extricate himself from the enraged human's cell, 29 made certain all the locks were secured on the door, and allowed himself a moment to slide down against the wall and get his composure back. It was ... difficult, especially once he raised his hand to the optic the human had managed to tear open in sheer desperation. He could feel it, the lense hanging slightly free from the metal casing, the articulated plating of the eyebrow above it hanging skewed and loose. His vision was halved, when he shut off the feed from that optic, but it was that or make himself dizzy as it swayed crazily over his cheek.

Days like these, he really wished there was more than just him left, in this place of rotting minds and desperation. 29, he'd been. Only 1, now. 1, and thirty-six human prisoners. Patients, officially, but ... well. No hiding from the truth of that, not here.

With a crackle of a sigh, he heaved himself back to his feet, ignoring the queasy feel of his eye bumping off his cheek. It hurt, some, a faint but persistent knowledge that he'd been damaged, that he needed to see to it, but it wasn't incapacitating, as such. At all, really, unless he was attacked again. And his last check-up today ... no. That one would not attack him.

For a moment, 29 didn't care. He wanted to go back to his workshop, to fix his eye and hide for a few hours, until the dusk patrol. Just hide, away from the screams and cries and harried conversations to empty air, the pleas and whimpers and furious insults. Just for a few hours. Just for a while. The last one could wait, surely. Surely he could ...

But no. No. He couldn't. Or rather, 29 couldn't let him. Damn his conscience anyway, that niggling little thing that he wasn't actually supposed to have but couldn't seem to be rid of, but he couldn't leave the last man alone.

---

 

The human was curled up on the bed, for a change. That was always a good sign, with this one, who had a tendency to burrow when distressed. Hah. Distressed. Such a mild word, for what 29 saw in this cell, in all these cells, when the fear came crawling up. But that was besides the point. Today, the human seemed calm.

29 studied him for a moment from the viewport on the door, turning his head so his usable eye was forwards. The human was pressed into the corner of the bed in the lee of the window, where there was always some shadow. He didn't like the light, this one. It terrified him. His arms were wrapped around bony knees, his stout form seeming somehow small and fragile, crumpled. There were tear-tracks on his face.

There almost always were.

He'd seen enough. Enough to know it was safe to enter, even damaged, and enough to know he'd be right not to forget this one today. If only because days like these, when the human was calm, when the light didn't seem to terrible to him ... days like these 29 could see something inside the human of what he must once have been. And ... he liked those little glimpses. He liked what he saw there.

The human looked up at him as he stepped inside, pale blue eyes focusing with a glimmer of lively intelligence that was missing on the bad days, drowned behind fear and pain. Today, though, the fear was only a faint shadow on the edges of his gaze, the pain a distant stormcloud behind fair skies.

My, he was poetic today.

Then, suddenly, the human gasped, causing 29 to stiffen, and struggled to his feet, coming towards 29 with in a clumsy stagger that failed him just as he reached his destination, and 29 reached out hurriedly to catch him before he fell. The human smiled up at him in gratitude, and he found himself turning his blind side to that expression, hiding the spike of feeling it drove into his gut. This human was about the only one who ever showed him an expression like that. An expression outside of pain or fear or hate or contempt or rage. He wasn't quite sure how to deal with it.

"Are you alright?" he asked, coldly, to cover his confusion. The human regained his feet, shaking his head in what looked for all the world like exasperation, or some pale copy of it. 29 blinked at him, wincing when his eyelid caught on the damaged lense and wrenched free badly.

"I don't think I'm the one you should be asking," the human rasped mildly, resting a trembling hand on one cocked hip in a strange facsimile of jest. It wrenched at 29 more than the pain in his eye.

"I am fine," he countered, stiffly, wondering at the urge he felt to wrap the human in an embrace, shaking his head to dispel the notion and cursing as his optic swayed. Damn it, this was just ridiculous! The human apparently thought so too, if the snort of pained laughter was anything to go by. 29 glared out of his usable eye, and huffed in annoyance, but all that got him was a bright, faded grin.

"You're a bad liar, you know that?" the human observed softly, and took 29's hand, leading him to the bed while he was still staring at their linked fingers in bemusement. Before he quite understood what was happening, he was seated on the edge of the cot, and the human was standing over him with his fists on his hips, leaning in to squint at the damaged optic. 29 almost recoiled under the scrutiny, but forced himself to be still when he sensed no harm in it.

"Have an interest in mechanics, do you?" he asked waspishly. The human quivered, but covered with a challenging snort of his own.

"Hush up and let me see if I can do anything with this," he growled, reaching up slowly and hesitantly to let his hand hover over the blind side of 29's face. "If ... if I may, that is?" And there was a quaver of fear in there, the whisper of a spirit used to being battered, and before he knew it 29 found himself nodding, letting the stubby, shaking fingers gently explore the metal around his damaged optic, the dented curl of his eyebrow.

It was ... a strange sensation. He didn't think anyone had ever touched him like this before. Not gently, with the kind of soft fascination he could see in this human's face. It quieted something inside him, that feeling, that expression, and not even the twitch of pain as clumsy fingers brushed exposed nerves could dent that calm.

"I can repair myself, you know," he commented softly, gently, not moving beneath the hesitant exploration. "I do it all the time." The hands went still for a little minute, washed-out blue eyes meeting his remaining optic, a depth of sadness and compassion in them that had 29 shaking himself, little tremors of confusion and ... something a little like hope, he thought, though he honestly couldn't have said what it was he found himself hoping for, not then. All he could have told you then was that he felt it.

"I know," the human whispered, the words scratching free of a raw throat. "Doesn't mean you should have to." And 29 had no answer to that. None at all. So he stayed quite, and watched the human's face as he squinted and grunted and traced the edges of the damage, lifted the optic carefully to see if it could be fit back easily. It could, as it happened. 29 could have told him that. But it seemed ... better, to let him figure it out himself, to let him work and help and not focus on the fear and madness that hovered ever-present in the darkness behind his eyes, in the light beyond the window. 29 wondered, sometimes, what it was like, living with that, living that way. If it could be called living ...

"Hey, have you got something thin, that I can tweak these connections with?" He started as the human spoke again, blinking with his good eye, realising he'd been somewhere else entirely and bringing himself back to reality with a start. He looked up at the human, at the scrunched expression of worry and concentration on the tear-stained face, and nodded mutely, slipping his small repair kit out of the compartment under his chest plate. The human stared a bit, then accepted it with a shrug, and got to work in earnest.

29 bore it stoically for a few minutes, ignoring the little shoots of pain, until it became apparent that the human, admirably focused though he might be, was shaking far too badly to actually manage the task he had set himself. 29 could feel his optic being pulled jerkily into place, and realised that if left alone the human was going to set the lense crookedly. He reached up to catch a wrist, pull the hand gently away from his eye, but then, to his shock, the human slapped his hand away!

"Excuse me ..." he said, heavily, prompting the human to look up.

"What?" the man responded, testily, and 29 blinked at the temper, actually stunned. This human didn't get angry, or annoyed, or anything outside of terror or blank misery. This human ...

"You're doing it incorrectly," he snapped. "Do it that way and you'll leave me with a lopsided eye!"
 

"You already have a lopsided eye!" the human barked back, withdrawing his hands so he could prop them on his hips, glaring. "In fact, you've an eye hanging around your neck! Now hush up and let me fix it!" And he reached forwards again, his hands bumping into 29's as they came up to intercept, batting furiously in what quickly descended, to 29's bemusement, into a slap fight.

"Listen ..."

"Look, if you would just let me ..."

"Don't do ..."

"Hell in a handcart! Just let me fix the damn thing!"

"NO!"

The human froze, a quiver running up through his spine as fear flared in his eyes at the sharp and implacable tone, blunt fingers snapping back away from 29's face. 29 winced, sorry now for snapping, but he did need that eye, after all ...

"I'm sorry," he said, softly. "But you've done enough. I can handle it from here, you know." The human nodded jerkily, shuffling backwards. "No, listen," 29 called after him, then growled in frustration when he realised he had no idea what to call the human. After nine months, and he still had no idea of the man's name. Humans didn't answer to numbers, which was all he knew. 0. Patient zero. And that was wrong. "Listen," he repeated, looking directly at the human. "I ... thank you. I don't ..." He growled again, shaking his head in frustration. "People, humans ... I can do it alone. I can do it myself."

And that quickly, the fear faded back in the human's eyes, and something softer replaced it. Compassion. Sympathy. Understanding. And he nodded gently to 29, and smiled a faint and battered smile. "Alright. Alright."

It felt like a slap in the face, and 29 dipped his head, looking down at the hands in his lap, metallic and gleaming, and he noticed with shock that there was a hint of blood on them, not from earlier, from the attack, because he had cleaned that in the hall, but from here, from this human ... he looked up, seeing a torn knuckle on the human's hand, realising the edges of his joints must have caught and torn at the softer human hands while they wrestled, and he hadn't even noticed, hadn't even realised ...

"Hey? Are you alright?" the human asked, coming in again to kneel in front of 29, biting his lip as he looked up at him. 29 stared, agonised, and reached out on something like instinct to take hold of the damaged hand, rubbing the pad of one metal finger over the wound, watching as the human looked down, blinking in surprise. "Hey. I didn't notice that," he said, baffled and innocent, and 29 felt something jagged bloom in his throat.

"I'm so sorry," he whispered, holding that fragile hand gently, cradling it, and wishing for one fierce, incandescent moment that he knew how to fix it, how to fix all of it, how to take away every wound on those blunt hands, in those faded eyes that leaked tears in the shadows while the light prowled the room. "I'm so very, very sorry."

"Hey. Hey." The human looked almost panicked, his free hand coming up to pat desperately at 29's shoulder, rubbing in worried little circles over the plating of his shoulder. "It's okay. I'm sure it's okay. Just a spot of blood, you know. Just a bit of a cut. Nothing to worry about. Nothing at all." His voice was soft and rasping, worried and baffled and compassionate, and 29 rather thought, just for a moment, that he loved the human. Just a little bit.

"I ... I don't even know your name," he whispered, helplessly, looking up at the grey, stained face with a kind of desperate, possessive hope, and the human smiled a little, a hesitant little grin that said he wasn't quite sure what was going on, but that at least he could answer.

"Dowling," he said, smiling. "Name's Dowling." He frowned a little, casting around for something, but whatever it was wouldn't come, so he put it aside with a shrug. "Used to be more to it, I think, but it's all gone now, so Dowling'll have to do, I'm afraid." He smiled sheepishly, like the holes in his memory were his fault, and 29 found himself reaching up, tugging the man gently forward into a hug, finally giving into the urge to hold him, to just hold him, this soft and fragile little human who smiled at him in gratitude and tried testily to fix his eye and panicked when he had to comfort someone. This silly, impossible, crazed human.

"Isander," he whispered, so soft it was almost inaudible, his deepest, most treasured secret, the name he'd taken for himself when he realised he was more, so much more, than his creator had intended. His little blasphemy, his tiny stake on personhood that no-one in all the world would grant him except himself, and maybe, just maybe, this man. This madman. "My name is Isander."

And Dowling pulled back a little, and smiled at him, bright and faded and mad and happy. He smiled, and reached down to grasp Isander's hand, and shake it, firmly, like he would another human's, another person's.

"Pleased to meet you, Isander! Very pleased to meet you!"