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“Hey, Nori! Haven’t seen you in a few weeks, have the experiments got to you?”
“Haha, a little. Nothing crazy, but I’m always super tired when I come back, sorry I haven't talked much.”
“It’s alright, these things happen. Do you want to hang out now, or would you rather sleep?”
“Hmmm… Why not both?”
…
“Sure, why not.”
Please. Please just stop. She doesn’t want to see this any more. She doesn’t want to feel this any more. Why, why her? Why did it have to be Yeva?
“Hey, it's alright, you didn’t have a choice. Disassembly drones used to be like us, sure. But they aren’t any more, and we both know that.”
“If that ever happens to me, promise you’ll stay safe after I'm gone, okay?”
“I know, I know. I shouldn’t think such sad things, but still… You’ll look after yourself, right?”
…
“Thank you.”
She tries to scream, but she can't, too caught up in the memories of her lover. Tears stream down her visor. This time, she can't be here to help her, she's alone. Completely alone. She looks down, for a brief moment the memories fading. Glancing down at her tail, that she shredded into pieces as it tried to help her. Retreating to her mind to try and ease her pain. Another flash of agony hits her, drawing her back into her suffering.
“It's… Nice, being like this.”
“... Yeah.”
“Could we do this more? If you don't mind.”
“Sure, that would be nice.”
She claws at her visor, tearing it apart as she tosses away her beanie, hitting the floor with a splash as it lands in the oil she's throwing up in an attempt to get out what she had eaten. Please, get out. Get out. Please, please be okay. Please let this be a nightmare, not even a vision, just a stupid nightmare. Please let her wake up in Yeva’s arms, panicked and scared, please let her be comforted and cared for by her, not eaten and torn apart in a desperate attempt to save her from a cruel fate.
“Kill me.”
“Please, I’m begging you, Nori.”
“Kill m-”
And then, she screams. She lets out a blood-curdling, agonizing scream that makes her entire body violently shake. She holds her head and she can’t stop. She won't let herself. She deserves this, all of this, for what she's done. She pulls at her hair, clawing at herself as she screams.
She can still taste her. Her core, it was supposed to be a beautiful, glistening ruby colour. But no, it's been tainted into a disgusting and horrid yellow. Running solely off of instinct and hunger, that's not her Yeva. And yet it still was. The very fabric of her being that she consumed, deformed and tortured by the humans or not, it was still her.
Nori’s eyelights glitch from violet to ruby, her colour. It never suited Nori, anyway. She was better off with someone else, someone who wouldn’t fucking eat her. Her scream stops as she runs out of breath, but she doesn’t relent, she wants the world to know what they’ve done. What kind of monster they’ve made. She takes a deep breath in and lets it all out immediately, over, and over, and over.
“Nori? Are you feeling alright?”
The red X on her visor, glimmering radiantly with oil. Her cursed form was shown to the world, to her world, to Nori. On a battlefield where only one drone leaves alive. What other choice did she have? She couldn’t get Yeva to snap out of it long enough to survive. It was her fault, it was all her fault.
“Oh, it's okay, Nori. I’ll be fine. It's just another experiment, something that weak won't take me out.”
She should’ve tried harder, she should’ve held her closer. Or maybe she should have let Yeva kill her, tear into her core and eat it like she did to her back in the arena. Give her strength to fight, regardless of where that inevitably would’ve led.
“I don’t want to turn into one of those things.”
“If I ever do, you’ll eat my core, okay?”
“My strength will go to you, if something like that ever happens, I want you to make the right choice.”
Yeva… Why? Was she preparing for this? Was she waiting for this to happen? Did she know? Nori’s eyelights change back to violet, the visions and flashbacks fading as the room returns to normal. The agonizing pain of her system slowly deleting every ‘unneeded’ piece of information inside Yeva’s core, fully digesting it in her body.
Gone, forever.