Null Protocol || Ramattra x Reader

Chapter Twelve

"What?" He shifted under her stare uncomfortably, and she shot him a small smile.

"You're real gentle when you wanna be."

He scoffed. "The best leaders are both merciless and merciful to fulfill the needs of their people. If I were not capable of both, my people would suffer for it."

"You and Zeny are so alike but so different." She felt his heated glare and smiled awkwardly. "That was a compliment." He turned wordlessly back to the ice boulder, grabbing one of the arms stuck under it and tugging on it. It stayed firmly in place and he grumbled as he released it. "Speaking of Zenyatta, how exactly do y'all differ so much when you both hail from the same monastery?" She knew they were brothers in the monastery at one point, and while it was clear they believed in the same thing early on – deviating later in life to go about peace for their people in different ways – she wondered why they still called each other 'brother' even now.

Ramattra stayed silent as he retrieved his staff and shot the nanites swirling around the orb at the boulder, creating a mound of shaved ice but doing little to make a dent. (Y/n) searched her bag before retrieving a hammer and hacksaw, offering them to the omnic. When he didn't acknowledge her, she frowned. "Ram." Predictably, he turned to glare at her, and when she held up the tools more insistently, he stabbed the rod of his staff into the ground beside her toolkit and snatched the tools from her with a huff. He positioned the hacksaw against the ice over one of the arms, then took the hammer and slammed it down on top of the saw to dig it into the ice.

(Y/n) flinched, gasping out a, "That ain't how you use it!" With another swing, the hammer pushed the saw through the ice and a piece fell to the ground beside the arm. She released a breath of steam. "You're gonna break my tools." She slid her arm into her jacket and shrugged the other side onto her shoulder so she could zip it up over her injured arm and cast.

"I am using them like tools are meant to be utilized." He ignored her as she struggled to her feet and walked over to him, her hand on the saw stopping him just short of pounding her fingers with the hammer. He openly glowered at her as she gripped the saw handle and demonstrated sawing into the ice, though she struggled to cut through it like she was weaker than before. After a beat, he slid his hand under hers to do it for her. "You are truly pitiful," he grumbled. "And I do not require your aid. I am aware of how to use your human tools."

"You claim mighty big things for someone who took a hammer to my saw like a caveman learning how to use a stick and stone." He shot her a look and she grinned slyly. "Breaking the daggum hacksaw won't help us, now, will it?" He bristled as she only laughed, squeezing his hand with a playful gleam in her eyes that the rising sun caught.

"You speak as if you have any power in this situation." His head dipped in a gesture at her body leaned against his to remain upright. "Even now you struggle to stand."

"You're letting me use you. Don't that boil your coolant or something? Or are you actually as zen as Zeny and you only pretend it bothers you?" He didn't like the way she said it, and the next second, he grabbed her hand over his and pushed it into her back as he pinned her body between him and the boulder. Her hot breath fanned against the ice as she gasped in surprise, and his hips pinned her shaking body against the boulder so she couldn't move.

"Do not assume to know me." Each word was deathly cold, and it made a shiver travel up her spine as he leaned over her to speak directly in her ear. "I would never let a human use me as you do without something to gain out of it. If either of us is being used, it is you." She nodded rapidly and his body disappeared from behind her, letting her catch her breath as she flexed her arm after the uncomfortable angle he held it at – likely intentionally.