All is quiet as the night carries on. Well, as quiet as it gets in an abandoned warehouse in the middle of a bustling city. The sounds of cars zipping down the roads and the occasional sounds of horns blaring is strangely pleasant to Colin, probably because he's always found enjoyment in new things, and this is certainly all very new compared to his old life.
Despite the pleasant sounds, Colin's attempts to fall asleep prove futile. Every time he thinks he's just about comfortable enough to power down, his damaged circuits spark and cause him to jerk awake, forcing him to start over only for the same thing to happen again in a vicious cycle.
After exploring a bit of the warehouse, he was able to find some blankets stored away in the trunk of an old red 1962 Cadillac DeVille. He hasn't seen many variations of cars in his life, so seeing one like that is quite a treat. Too bad they don't have the keys. And he can't drive.
He laid the blankets down for a temporary bed on the stone floor, and he made sure to leave enough for Edith to do the same, if she even wants to sleep.
But he keeps his focus on trying to sleep. He used a lot of his mental and emotional energy today, so he needs to rest in order to recover the used data. He can also tell that the files on Fritz finished uploading at some point, but he hasn't taken the time to review them. He'd rather save that for after he's restored his lost energy.
He squints his eyes closed, trying to keep them shut but knowing that the moment he allows his body to relax is the moment his damaged circuits are going to act up again. He still can't feel the pain, but that doesn't make this any less unbearable.
But he supposes that goes for this whole situation they're in. Not only is he wounded, but it now seems that he and Edith are giving each other the silent treatment. It hasn't been too long since he got mad at her, but they haven't seen each other, let alone spoken since. The warehouse is decently large, so she could be anywhere. He just hopes she's doing okay, wherever she is.
His body relaxes and he feels like he might finally be ready to sleep, but as soon as he becomes aware of his state of ease, his shoulder twitches and he grunts, sitting up and tightly holding the wound to try bringing himself back under control.
And now to repeat the process.
He thinks about laying back down, but he decides to stay sitting up for a moment to pull himself together. His strain fades and he loosens up a bit.
His tension starts to ease as his focus temporarily diverts away from his injuries and onto Edith. He knows that despite how he snapped at her before, he's still worried about her. He fears he may have been too harsh, which would mean he only made his situation with Edith worse.
He tries turning his thoughts away from the present and to the past, remembering when things were better. Aside from the Pull, he admits he did quite enjoy his time as CLive. Alain was a bit too dull, even for him. But even though, as CLive, he wasn't able to think as well as he can now, he thinks those memories were probably his favorites.
He misses relaxing at the Watchman with Edith during that year when they were together. How they would go there for dinner, and every single time Edith managed to rope him into dancing whenever one of her multitude of favorite songs came on, no doubt because Data made it happen.
By the end of the night, Edith would have always been somewhere between tipsy and full-blown drunk. And when she's drunk, she's the most carefree he'd ever seen her. But it never got to the point where she relied on drinking to deal with her stress. He always admired that about her; her self-control. That's something he regrettably never had a very good grasp over when he was CLive.
Colin sighs and forces himself to stop his train of thought where it is. He starts shifting to lay back again, but a circuit on his back sparks and causes him to jolt up again. He growls and covers his face with his hands, stubbornly refusing to give up on trying to sleep.
"...I might be able to help, if you want."
Colin would have jumped at the sudden voice disrupting the silence, but he's far too exhausted and out of it to provide more of a reaction than just lifting his head and looking over towards the voice to see Edith standing a good distance away with her head low and her whole body tense and small. She's struggling to keep her eyes on him, repeatedly turning her gaze to the ground and fidgeting anxiously.
Slung over her shoulder is a black bag that looks to be filled with something he can't see from here, but the bag looks like she must have found it somewhere in the warehouse.
Colin also realizes how difficult it is to keep eye contact with her, but he's strangely grateful for his exhaustion making it a little easier. "Help? How? You don't know how to fix an old SRL," he says, his voice slightly wavering as he tries to find the right tone to fit both how he's feeling and the atmosphere between them.
He doesn't feel mad anymore, but he wouldn't say he's exactly happy with her either. But the timid look on her face right now makes it easier for him to lighten up a bit.
Edith lightly clears her throat. "No, but... Regan does. And... I'm linked with your mind, remember? So... I can see your memories of the times when he fixed you..." she says in a small voice, still having a hard time looking him in the eyes.
Colin raises a brow and examines her. "Can you focus the memories to that extent?" he asks.
She nods shyly. "I can... I've been trying to teach myself how... And," she brings the bag out in front of her and holds it up, "I founds some spare parts and tools, so... If you want..." she lowers the bag to her side and briefly glances at him out of the corner of her eye.
Colin looks away from the bag and to her again. She's shaking but trying to hide it, same with her teary eyes. He can tell by her demeanor that this is about more than just his injuries, but that much is obvious.
Seeing her like this, Colin's resistance dwindles and his eyes soften. He wants things to go back to normal, so to do that he can't be stubborn about refusing her help. Then he would be nothing more than a bitter hypocrite, which isn't who he is.
He slowly nods with a sigh, motioning her over. "Okay... If you're sure you know what you're doing," he says and repositions himself to sit with his legs crossed and his back facing a crate against the wall.
Edith anxiously makes her way over and sits down on the crate, setting the bag on the ground beside it. She says nothing as she expectantly waits in the looming anxiety between them.
He quizzically glances back at her and sees her patient gaze, then realizing what she's waiting for and he clears his throat as he turns forward again. He sighs and starts unbuttoning his shirt. He pulls it off and sets it aside, trying to sit motionless in the uncomfortable silence.
Edith reaches into the bag and pulls out a pocketknife. She returns her focus to his back, seeing the deep gashes with flickering blue and green lights from the damaged circuits. Colin's body seems a bit different from CLive's when he was still an older model. This is Alain's body, so she supposes he was just built physically different since his mind was created for the sole purpose of living as a machine, not a person with a soul as the other SRL out of Unity were. Alain was never allowed to have a life of his own.
She shakes the thought aside to focus on the wounds. Whatever the case, at least it seems that blood isn't as much of an issue as it would be with a normal SRL. There is still a bit of blood, but not enough to be a cause for concern. She momentarily wonders where the blood even comes from seeing as he doesn't have any arteries or veins or a biological heart.
Those are thoughts for another day, for now, she lifts the pocketknife to his skin but pauses and looks at his face from where she can barely see it. "You... said you can't feel pain, right?" she asks quietly and Colin nods.
"Yeah... It might just feel a bit... weird, but... it won't hurt," he says.
Edith nods stiffly and takes a deep breath before carefully starting to cut his almost plastic-like skin down the center of his back, then again from beneath his shoulder blades in a horizontal line, mimicking the cross-cut that she recalls Regan doing for CLive.
As she works on helping him, they both try to think of something to say. Edith struggles to speak out of her uncertainty of whether or not he's still mad at her. And for Colin it's partially the same thing, but added with not knowing how exactly to talk to her. What if he ruined his chances of getting her to trust him by coming off too harsh? Should he apologize? If he does, would she even forgive him?
"...I'm sorry," Edith says quietly.
This time she somehow caught him more off-guard than she did when she first came up to him. Her voice sounded choked up and small, as it has since she came over, but now it seems she said it with the full expectation that she won't receive a response. She just wanted to say it for the sake of saying it.
So instead of waiting for him to say something, she keeps going after a quivering deep breath. "I... You're right. I've... been such a bitch lately, and I..."
Colin looks back at her as best he can over his shoulder. "Edith... No, you haven't. I..." he stops when she shakes her head.
"Yes, I have been... Don't even try to deny it," she says.
Colin sighs and looks down. "Well, I..." he clears his throat, "I wouldn't use that word to describe it..." he chooses his words with care, resulting in a weak, bitter chuckle from Edith.
"Of course you wouldn't... You've always been too much of a gentleman for that," she says and carefully starts tampering with one of the damaged circuits. It looks like there are four that she can see, at least just four that are damaged enough to need immediate repairs. Anything else should be fine until they get back to Utopia. If they get back.
Colin looks back at her again and tilts his head. "...'Always'?" he questions.
Edith briefly holds her breath and freezes, just staring at the flickering circuit. Her stomach churns and she has to shove the feeling down and stifle her nerves in order to lift her eyes to meet his.
Seeing his eyes staring back at her curiously makes her start breathing again, only in short bursts when her throat starts to burn as she resists the need to break down crying. She both loves and hates the fact that he looks nearly identical to CLive.
She somehow manages a single nod and keeps the eye contact. "...I'm not stupid. I know who you are and that... CLive's a part of you. I know... you still care about me, I understand that... Or at least... you did before I pushed you to hate me..."
Colin's eyes widen a bit and he shakes his head. "Edith... No. No, I don't hate you. The things I said earlier, I was just... frustrated. I didn't mean for it to come across that way, or to make you think that. And I am so sorry that I did," he says softly.
"You were right though," Edith looks away from his eyes and resumes working on fixing him. "...You've just been trying to help and I haven't been making it easy. I just..." she pauses and glances at his eyes again for a brief moment before swallowing back her tears and looking at his wound again. "...Never mind."
"Edith, what is it? You just what?" Colin asks.
Edith takes a deep breath. Her hands start shaking so she removes them from his injury so as to not cause any more damage. "I just..." she turns her head away and shuts her eyes tight, biting her lip to keep fighting her tears. "...When I look at you... I want to see him. I want to just let myself believe that he's still here, but..." she wipes at her eyes and again swallows back her tears. "...But the last time I saw him... Was when I watched him seemingly die... And in the end, you were left. Not him, but you," she opens her eyes again and shakily tries to get her breathing under control, but her attempt amounts to nothing.
Colin tries to think of a response that would make this easier on her, but his mind runs blank and he just stares at her as she tries in vain to stop herself from crying. So rather than trying to stammer his way through the conversation, he decides to just sit there and listen.
Edith tightens her fists and lets her shaking lessen enough for her to get back to fixing him. She notes his silence and nods to herself to keep going. "...So, when I look at you... I not only see the face of Alain, who I watched kill CLive. But... I also see the face of the man I love and saw laying dead before my eyes... And that's all I can see."
She takes another deep breath, trying to let herself calm down enough to form clear thoughts, but she can't bring herself to meet his eyes again. "So... I guess when you told me you weren't going to keep waiting for me, it made me realize that I've just been pushing away the part of you that I love. Because I know... it was just CLive saying those things. Just your heart..." she bites her lip and goes to start working on repairing another circuit, but Colin grabs her hand and slightly shifts to face her better.
He rubs his thumb over her knuckles, watching her face patiently but knowing that she's probably not going to look at him. "Doll... I'm always going to be here for you and I don't want you to doubt that for a second," he sighs. "Look, earlier my emotions were all over the place and I didn't have time to process everything that was happening, so I'm sorry I didn't get everything out the way I had hoped to..." he nods to convince himself to keep going, seeing how despite keeping her eyes away from him, she's listening.
He takes a deep breath. "When I said I wasn't going to keep waiting for you, I meant it. But that only means that I'm not going to keep trying to force you to accept my help. With everything that's going on with you, I think it's best for you to sort things out for yourself," he says and sees her slightly lift her head and hesitantly look at him.
He shows her a small smile. "But that doesn't mean I'm going to turn my back on you. I'll always be here when you need me, but I won't keep trying to be someone I'm not. I will be me, and I will be here whenever you need help, but I won't keep trying to fix everything when I know damn well you're more than capable of doing it on your own," he reaches up and cups her cheek, gently turning her face to look at him fully.
"But that won't stop me from lending you a hand when you ask for it. No matter what, I'm here for you," he brushes his thumb over one of her tears and she smiles. "All you need to do is ask, and I'll be there in a heartbeat."
A few more tears fall from her eyes, but she keeps her smile and doesn't give herself a chance to think before leaning forward and wrapping her arms around him. He gladly returns the embrace, closing his eyes and softly rubbing her back in circles.
"Thank you," Edith whispers.
Colin keeps his smile as well as they lean back from each other, but they don't move away from being more than a few inches apart and they just sit there for a moment, just staring at each other.
Looking into his eyes again, she feels a bit of the lingering dread from the memory of what happened in the Citadel, but it has somehow lessened enough to let her keep her smile as she stares at him. When she sees that fraction of CLive in him, it almost makes the memory of losing him feel like a bad dream. Like in Idyll. It's not the same as it was back then, but she can finally accept that the man in front of her is, in part, the man she loves.
For now, that's good enough for her.
She's not quite sure how long she was staring at him in complete silence, but the moment is disrupted once Colin grunts and holds his shoulder, feeling one of the circuits sparking again.
"Oh yeah, I'm still broken," he says with a soft chuckle at his wounds killing the moment before either of them could with their individual levels of awkwardness.
Edith clears her throat, purses her lips and nods with a bit too much energy, springing back up onto the crate and only briefly questioning when she got off of it. She picks up the tools again and Colin turns his body so his back is to her, allowing her to get back to repairing his wounds.
Colin wakes up feeling that his heart and mind are now fully restored and the worst of his wounds are repaired thanks to Edith's help. He's admittedly quite impressed that she was able to fix damaged circuits based on someone else's memories alone. Regan had to spend years of practice and studying the SRL in order to reach the level he's at, but Edith didn't have any of that.
Whatever the case may be, he's damn thankful for it.
He breathes deeply and opens his eyes, seeing that the dark warehouse is dimly illuminated by the soft glow from small windows along the edge of the ceiling. Now that he's actually taking the time to look this place over, he notices that it looks like a massive garage filled with spare parts as Edith had found to help him, as well as old car parts.
He looks over to his side to see that the second set of blankets a small distance away from him that Edith had laid out to sleep are now empty, and Edith is nowhere to be found. Why does she always have to vanish first thing in the morning? Ah well, more motivation for him to get out of bed to find her.
He stands up and carefully stretches his arms over his head, cautious of his freshly patched wounds along his back and shoulders. Edith did a great job fixing him, but without the specific parts needed to fix an old SRL, he has to be aware of the fact that one wrong move can re-damage a circuit.
"Edith?" he calls out as he lowers his arms back down to his sides and looks around a bit more, when he hears a loud crash come from around the corner of a tall row of shelves.
He instantly rushes towards the source of the noise, when he hears Edith's voice.
"Shit! You scared me!" he hears her groan. "I'm over here."
Colin lets his panic ease once he first hears her voice and second when he walks around the corner to see her with half of her body inside the old Cadillac they found last night. She has her button-up shirt tied around her waist and with her grey tank top he can see dark smudges along her arms and her hair is pulled back in a ponytail.
He tilts his head as he approaches her, stopping a few feet away. "Mind if I ask what you're doing?" he eyes the car a bit before examining her again.
Edith moves her head to the side to peer up at him from beneath the car's dashboard, holding some wires and a screwdriver. "If we stay here for too long, the Imperium's probably going to find us easier. We're not likely going to get far on foot, so we're goin' to need a vehicle. And let's be honest, if we need a car, it might as well be one like this," she says and goes back to whatever she was doing.
Colin cocks a brow. "Trust me, I had the same thought last night when I saw it. But we don't have the keys," he says.
Edith nods and bites her lip as she tries to divide her focus between him and the car. "Yes... but with the power of hotwiring, anything's possible."
"Since when do you know how to hotwire?" Colin questions, uncertain if he should be proud or scared. He doubts that's another thing she was able to pull from one of his memories. Not a lot of cars in his earlier years.
Edith takes two cut wires, touching the ends together and squinting her eyes as they spark near her face and the car comes to life. She pushes herself out of the car and stands up, her hair is a mess and her face is also covered in smudges, but she wears a smile.
"Since Data taught me," she says simply. "I couldn't leave Mortal for a year because of the war, and we were bored while you were on one of your scavenge runs. So, I learned things," she states with a proud gleam in her eyes as she turns back to face the vehicle.
Colin chuckles and steps towards the car, also moving himself closer to her while they eye it. He almost absently goes to wrap an arm around her, but he manages to catch himself before he can and stuffs his hands in his pockets, hoping she didn't notice. "Now, I assume you also know how to drive," he says.
Edith nods and purses her lips, turning her head back to look up at him. "I do, but are you saying you don't? Did you never learn how to drive in Unity?" she questions.
Colin sighs and shakes his head. At least her questions are focused on his life after he became an SRL. Those questions are easier to answer. "No. I never really left the Citadel as Alain, and CLive, well..." he emits a small chuckle of embarrassment. "Let's just say that trying to teach someone without a mind how to operate a motorized vehicle is... eventful, to say the least," he looks down and shakes his head with a smile. "Regan never let me live it down when I crashed into a duck pond..."
Edith laughs. "Okay, remind me to ask him for the full story when we get home—" she stops herself and eyes him playfully. "Unless... I wonder if it's saved somewhere in your memory banks..." she looks up as if trying to search her own mind.
Colin gasps and grabs the sides of his head. "No!" he exclaims.
Edith continues to laugh and she pats him on the shoulder without being aware of it until after she brings her hand back down to her side. It feels strange talking to him like this, but at the same time, it also feels natural. Maybe it's her struggle to see him as one person instead of the two people she knew before. CLive and Alain. She never felt weird joking and being playful with CLive, but she could never imagine talking to Alain like that.
Maybe that's what makes this so hard for her. That despite knowing about how CLive's a part of Colin, she subconsciously refuses to accept that Alain is as well. She wants to believe that Alain is dead, but if she tries to convince herself of that, then she's also forced to believe CLive is dead as well. It makes it difficult to accept Colin when she only wishes that half of him is gone. He can't be just Alain or just CLive. Either she accepts him as both or she denies him as either.
"So, we've got a means of transportation. Now, the bigger question is where are we going next?" Colin asks. He saw how she zoned out for a moment, but he tells himself to not ask her what's on her mind. If she needs to talk about it, he has to trust her to come to him as he had explained to her last night.
Edith's smile fades and she just stares at the car blankly with her arms crossed. "I... Didn't think that far ahead. I just got the car," she says sheepishly.
Colin nods slowly as he thinks. "Well, we now know that the Imperium operates out of Espheral. But we can't go after them yet. We need help from not only someone with military expertise, but also apparently an army of our own if we want to stand a chance against the Val'Guard alone."
Edith sighs. "It sounds so 'juvenile', but... if we really are going through with that whole 'army' idea, then... Where the hell are we supposed to find an army who would help us strike at the Imperium? I doubt anyone would be stupid enough to—"
She lets out a small gasp and jumps when her pocket starts to vibrate. After so long since her time living in County Dominion, she almost doesn't register what's happening until she remembers the phone Lucian gave her. She pulls it out of her pocket and flips it open, quizzically eyeing the screen.
The caller ID just displays 'J'.
Edith glances up at Colin, who merely shrugs as it's clear he hardly even knows what a phone is, let alone who might be calling them. Edith hesitantly clicks 'accept' and holds the phone up to her ear. She doesn't even get a chance to speak before an eccentric voice starts talking.
"If information is what you seek, a call from J satisfies the need!" the voice says. It's not a voice Edith recognizes, but that's not too surprising considering the fact that this is a new continent. But the voice is so all over the place that it's nearly impossible to pick anything up from it. Not even a gender or age. Nothing.
Edith tilts her head and cocks a brow. "Who is this?" she asks.
She hears a groan on the other end. "Really? I literally just said it and you saw the caller ID, but it's fine I guess. Not like I had this whole thing planned or anything," the voice says. "But you know what, it's fine. Let's just try this again, okay? Okay!" and they hang up.
Edith moves the phone away from her ear and just stares at it with more confusion than she had after meeting Regan for the first time. After a second, the phone vibrates again. She answers it and brings it back up to her ear.
"Ding-dong, J calling! I hear you have a little 'Imperium' problem that I think my business can help with! One-hundred percent satisfaction guaranteed or your money back, indeed!"
Edith purses her lips. "Um... We don't have money."
"That's fine, I don't have a business," the voice says. "But, I do have a magical thing called information! But not just any old information, no. My information is... Illegally obtained! That's the way of J and I wouldn't have it any other way!"
Colin watches Edith curiously. "Who is it? What are they saying?" he asks.
Edith turns and faces him with the most confusion Colin thinks he has ever seen on a person's face throughout the century of his life. She lowers the phone a bit and puts her hand over it to talk to him. "Someone called 'J', I think...? They're saying they have information that can help us, or something..." she explains and questions her explanation at the same time. She puts the call on speaker.
"That is indeed what I am saying! Don't believe me? Come see for yourself that if you want to get ahead of the game, don't be vague and ask for J! Go to the 'Quack Pudding Pub' in northern Tratend. Be there on Tuesday at three thirty-seven, not six, not eight, three thirty-seven exactly or the deal is off, my new friends!" J exclaims.
Colin thought his mind was built to handle just about everything, but it seems he's found the one person in the entire world who has successfully found a way to confuse all of his processing systems. "But... we haven't made any deals yet—"
"Three thirty-seven! Either make time for J or J takes your time away! I'll see you both soon! Toodles!" they hang up again.
Edith stands speechless for a moment. When she finally feels like she's regained some grasp over reality, she shuts the phone and stares at Colin with the same dumbfounded look on her face that he has on his.
She goes to put the phone away, but a message comes through. She opens it and it simply says, 'Welcome to Eutria!'. Before she can put the device away, another message follows with a winky face and a toaster emoji.