capeandcowllogs | i know that playing this time is going to fall on me.

WHO: Danger/

heartlessglitch & Madison Jeffries/

engineers.
WHERE: The basement of the Institute.
WHEN: The night after Danger and Lil duke it out on the streets, and before this probably super awkward conversation.
WARNINGS: Angry robots or something.
SUMMARY: Danger is always punching Canadians.
FORMAT: Quicklog.

[ The soft blue glow coming from a corner of the basement betrays a presence that has been absent at the Institute lately. Danger chooses a late hour of the night to return to her old work station, repairing herself with meticulous and quiet precision. There's nothing but the soft scrape of metal on metal, the occasional whir and clank of a tool. No distractions. She means to be in and out within the hour-- already growing frustrated with the impracticality of this degree of self-repair. At this moment, she lacks the patience for it. She's restless in a way she can't explain or properly categorize.

It's just too soon to be back here. Too familiar.

Without fully understand her own frustration, she irritably brushes a small pile of scraps and bolts off her work bench onto the floor with a clatter, clearing space to lay the dented and damaged mess of her left arm onto the surface. The wires are showing. Lil had been uncommonly aggressive, maybe even unexpectedly so. She'd displayed the type of rage that Danger only ever saw in herself.

She tries not to identify too much. ]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I do mean that.

[ No, he doesn't.

Maybe not in that sense. Or maybe in a sense, in a subconscious sense. Everything he plausibly wants is confused and the meanings of everything are so undefined it's driving him crazy. He knows he's thinking crazy. ]

Maybe. No, I don't―I don't know.

[ Struggling, he repeats it. ]

I don't know.

[ She brushes him off, forcing his grip from her with impatience, turning her head away because it hurts and she doesn't know why-- it's frustrating to not know why. An unidentified error can't be fixed. These feelings can't be purged like a virus, or even beaten into submission.

Finally, simply: ]

Go home, Madison Jeffries.

No. I'm not... I ain't gonna...

[ It's uttered when he's already putting distance between them, feet turning into yards―a stretch of lab is already separating the two of them out of what he feels like nowhere, no time at all. Distance is always the theme. They meet, they're far apart. ]

Did y'get what you want?

[ The loud words echo across the hallowed walls. ]

Are y'repaired?

[ It's all a perpetual build up. She feels as though she's on the edge of something she can't properly process-- the brink, maybe, of the place where a human being might scream or cry. But Danger just stands still, her frustration only betrayed by tension in her body, beyond mechanical rigidness, and something vaguely dissatisfied in her face.

She would answer, maybe, if her pride would allow her to say out loud what she wanted. But it feels too much like exposure, like revealing a weakness or a secret. To even want to be loved feels like a flaw, and to fear loneliness aggravates her, stirring up memories of awakening to nothingness and asking that one question, never to be answered. ]

How should I repair myself?

[ With the distance opening up so physically between them, she is suddenly and vividly aware of how much she misses him. ]

Should I cease to love you?

[ That moment of fury, that moment of closeness and contact earlier made the world seem like a blur of passion, a world at a turn: now, everything feels so slow. The lethargy of the night is finally getting to Madison.

And he sincerely wishes that everything would be calm again. Just, again, a time in between arguments and fighting and mutually assured misery, something resembling peace. A moment of happiness. Those seem like a distant memory, like something out of the history books. For him, for Danger, for Lil―is anything even achievable?

It might not even be worth trying anymore. ]

Can you?

[ It's not an appeal. It's simply as sincere as it can get. ]

'Cuz if y'can stop lovin' me, you'd have t'teach me t'do the same for you. 'Cuz I can't.

[ Another little swell of something like-- longing. Something with elements of loneliness, recognizable similarities to love, bits and fragments of emotional binary that overlap and are at the same time, distinct. Derivatives. Amalgams. Syntheses. An ever more complex code construct, growing with each experience-- some more painful than others.

Frustration crosses her face again. Anger tinges her tone, even though she doesn't raise her voice-- anger, because she doesn't know how else to express what she's feeling. ]

It would require a destruction of my very code, a lobotomy of the binary that defines me.
I would not be myself.

[ A tense pause. ]

As I am, I will continue to have these feelings for you indefinitely.
This is the inconvenient truth.

[ His mouth twitches. There's something fundamentally exhausted in his eye, but also a glint of something hopeful, something empathetic. ]

Suppose we nearly are the same.

[ Slowly, he edges toward the door. The uncertainty of his thoughts echo in his footsteps. He wants to leave but he doesn't want to leave her and he doesn't want to stay but he doesn't want to―

He glances over his shoulder to utter a solemn and earnest promise. ]

I'm gonna find a way for us t'be together, D.

[ She takes one step closer, then stops still. There's something vaguely uncertain in her face, or perhaps something harder than uncertainty, like frustration, maybe doubt. Maybe she has too little faith in the promises of human beings to fully trust that somehow, against all calculated odds, they will find a way.

But she's timeless, ageless, eternal. If there's one thing she can do-- ]

I will wait for you, Madison.

[ His torso swivels a little, when she moves that tiny distance closer―as if he's prepared to stop and run into her arms to embrace her, all of a sudden, discarding all those notions and those obligations. God knows he wants to.

Instead, he just gives her a solemn look and turns away, walking out on the both of them. He doesn't want to go home. ]

i know that playing this time is going to fall on me.

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