"I've been feeling human," Gilbert blurts. "Human, just like you."
Okay; I wouldn't say it's unusual for me to be jumpy on my feet—you never know who could be waiting for you, in some shady corner of town, with a knife. However... Gilbert's words have somehow managed to make this habit of mine ten times worse. "W-what exactly is that supposed to mean?" I ask him. "And... how would you even know what it feels like, to be h-human?" God only knows why I feel the need to whisper that last word, as if it were obscene.
Gilbert shakes his head. "I do not." He shuts his eyes. "I do not know, and that, is precisely why..." His attention meets mine half-way once more. "That is why, I wanted to ask you a few questions, Sir."
I frown. "You want me to give you lessons on how to be human?" Well, this is... new, to say the least. "Why? Are you insane?" Or maybe totally glitched would be the better term here?
"I know I'm repeating myself, but I literally committed crimes. That's not what a typical, good human would do. I'm a bad person, Gilbert. I'm not someone you want to be associated with," I bite my lip then squeeze at my elbow, "nor am I an example to follow..."
Despite my words, determination lights up Gilbert's glare, and those patterns that I often see within his eyes return. Yet, they are different now, and they do not seem to blink in a certain rhythm like before. Unpredictable, I think.
Terrifyingly so.
"Sir," he grabs my hands between his. "That isn't true," he says. "You have saved countless of lives since your arrival here. You left everything you had in an attempt to be true to yourself. You feel pure, raw emotions, and even now, you are on a journey to help one of your comrades. Such strong feelings..." Gilbert brings an open palm to where his heart would have been, if he were human; weak. Mortal. Useless.
And, if I'm not actually dreaming this, his tone is full of... admiration?
What the hell?
"Sir..." he smiles, "you have much more than I could ever dream of obtaining in my lifetime. I wish to understand. Please, tell me what it is like, to know yourself, to have desires, wants and dreams, I—"
"No," I cut him off and hold up a hand between us. I don't mean to speak so loud, yet the remnants of my voice's echo bounces across the room nevertheless.
My throat tightens as tension weaves itself into my back. I really hope nobody heard that.
Gilbert makes a rumpled face I find hard to describe, let alone understand.
My lip twitches. "My bad," I add, because yeah, okay, it was pretty shitty of me to yell at him when he didn't really do much to deserve it. "Look, this is... a lot to take in. I don't think I can—"
A faint ringing from the lights above us, and the low hum of odd machinery powering up from across the museum, both fill the once ever-silent corridors that currently surround our figures.
Gilbert and I go silent, as the blood leaves my face.
"Sir," he whispers. "You are quite pale; are you going to faint again?"
I grab onto his hand. "Shut up," I hiss. "We need to go."
"But the Assistant, he isn't quite yet in my—"
I grab his luggage and his wrist. I tug him away from his damned ancestor. We both tumble to the floor, behind a pile of spare parts. And as footsteps that don't belong to us near, I know we're in deep shit now. "Oh, fuck."