Null Protocol || Ramattra x Reader

☙Chapter Thirteen❧

The days seemed to blur together and (Y/n) wasn't sure how long it had been since she first got trapped in this cave. A couple days? A couple weeks? The minutes seemed to stretch impossibly long when she was shivering, lips blue and chapped, and her stomach rumbled almost constantly. The only saving grace to make the time pass faster was her music player, which she'd found in her bag when she was searching for a piece of paper to write a goodbye note on. The note to her parents was tucked into the front pocket of her toolkit, her parent's address facing out so it would be the first thing someone saw as they pulled it out with a written request below it that her bag be brought to that address if the stranger was able to.

It was a shot in the dark, she knew that, but seeing as that was all she could afford, she decided to keep her hopes up that some kind person would stumble across it eventually and give it to her parents – she was near the monastery so it wasn't outside the realm of possibility that a monk would find it. She shivered, putting her uninjured arm over her face so her hot breath would warm her blue skin. Even while wearing her mittens, she couldn't feel her fingers, and she bit the tip of her glove to pull it off so she could switch the track playing through her earbuds. The music didn't exactly make the situation any less dreary but at least it captivated her attention so she wouldn't be the chatterbox Ramattra hated so much.

The omnic sat in front of her as always, arms crossed as he scrutinized her slow movements. She was taking a break from affixing his giant arms to his robotic frame in an attempt to warm up, as she was forced to work without the mittens due to the parts requiring her nimble fingers. Ramattra grumbled about how much faster the omnium facility was more than once, but with the chill so deep in her bones, her fingers were practically moving in slow motion despite her efforts to speed up. She'd grown accustomed to the cold, no longer feeling it while her body still shivered, and that was perhaps the only saving grace she received. Her body was wearing out like a car on its last couple miles of use, running on nothing but fumes and one rough bump away from falling apart altogether. The end goal was in sight, she was so close, she just needed to hold out a little longer.

"What is that device?" Ramattra's voice made (Y/n) glance up at him, pulling an earbud out and nestling it behind her ear.

"Music player." Her reply was short and choppy, and he made a disgruntled noise as he loomed closer to peer at the small, square box.

"What kind of music does it play?"

"Whatever I want."

"I am surprised you brought anything for entertainment," he mused, but when she didn't reply, his gaze drifted to the folded paper sticking out of the front pocket of her bag. "Did you finish your little goodbye note?"

"Yep."

"Do you honestly think it will find its way back to your family?"

"Nope." He huffed, pressing pause on her music player so she'd give him her full attention. For the past couple days – or maybe it was one day, she couldn't be sure – he'd been his stoic, reserved self, only speaking to tell her how to affix his Nemesis enhancements to his regular Ravager model, but over the last hour, he'd been more insistently prompting her to speak. He couldn't produce enough conversation topics surrounding her work so he branched out, but she kept her replies as brief as possible.

Ramattra crossed his arms, a harshness to his gaze that caught her attention, and she rose a tired eyebrow. "What?"

"You are unnaturally quiet, human. Why?" His fingers tapped against his other arm impatiently, and she shrugged as her eyes drifted away.

"I realized I'm a chatterbox."

He scoffed. "That has not stopped you before."

"It weren't a problem before." She slipped her mittens from her hands, snatching a wrench off the icy floor and leaning up to tighten a bolt connecting the giant arm to his frame. He was forced to uncross his arms to reach up and stabilize the arm for her, holding it in place like he had been for the past however long she'd been working at this.