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“I’m back, mom and dad.” Doll says in a monotone voice. She looks over at her parents, covered in a white sheet. Though, it's more of a dark grey from the oil that stains it. It taints its surface and darkens its soft fabric, leaving the texture nothing but a rough and chipped version of its once comforting form. She’ll have to change it later, she doesn’t want her parents to be uncomfortable.
She walks away from the two at the table. They were waiting for her, but she’s not hungry, and far too tired to eat anyway. She’ll have to apologise later, but she’s sure they won't mind. They have always been very forgiving when it comes to her… Issues.
Walking into her room, she sighs as she falls onto her bed. Her tired eyelights opened to observe the roof above her. Stained with oil, so high up and out of reach, yet unable to escape Doll’s actions. To kill her own kind, how vile. She understands that she needs to in order to survive, but it doesn’t change how guilty she feels with every kill. And it doesn’t change how her feelings of regret make it worse when she remembers her laughter as she tore each drone apart, as they screamed for help and all she did was smile. She’s repulsed by the fact she genuinely enjoyed killing. To finally get all of that emotion out of her system, and for what? Another meal to eat, simple as that. It makes her sick that she really has to do this, and that she even takes some amount of joy in it. Of course, it all fades eventually, and she's forced back into a neutral state to avoid a complete mental break. But the second she closes her bedroom door, it all comes crumbling down, whether she likes it or not.
God, why couldn’t she have been made normal? To not think like this, to not have to act like this, to not… Be this. Why, out of any drone in copper-9, did she have to be the monster? The villain? The murderer? Was she the only one mentally and physically equipped enough for the task? Or was it dumb luck, pure coincidence that she ended up like this? Doomed by fate, maybe. Maybe she really was just doomed to suffer, to experience ripping off a drone's hand, instead of holding it with care.
She moves herself to lay on her stomach, her head resting on her pillow. Moving her hands in front of her face, and slowly bringing them closer to each other, eventually intertwining fingers with her own hands. She just stares at them, admiring the sight. It feels far better than them staying separate, she wishes she wasn’t such a danger to everyone, maybe then someone would look at her without fear or hate, or someone would look at her in general.
Sneering in disgust, she moves her hands away from one another, moving them to cover her face as she groans in annoyance. She needs to stop doing this, it's shameful. She needs to stop thinking this, it's awful. It hurts so much.
Feeling that burning feeling in her circuits again, she grits her teeth in pain as she holds her mouth with one of her hands, the other being used to sit herself up as she coughs. A loud, continuous cough that won't leave her alone. Oil spills from her mouth and all over her hand, accompanied by a few flower petals. She spots a slowly falling petal as she opens her crimson eyelights. A purple hyacinth, her mother's favourite flower. She said it represented loneliness and regret, but she never saw it that way, as it reminded her of an old friend. She wonders who that could have been? Not like she’d ever find out now. Now that everyone she loves is-
No. No, no, they’re fine. They’re just sleeping, calm down. She’s not completely alone, she has her parents. She’ll ask mom about it later, and she’ll get a response. Because they’re alive, they’re alive.
Tears form in her crimson eyelights. She immediately tries to wipe them away, but more keep forming. That damn program just won't leave her be, no matter how hard she tries, it always catches up to her, all of them do. The solver, whatever repulsive executable makes her cry, and some subset of the solver program that keeps growing flowers and suffocating her as she tries to survive. What a mess, what a vile mess. Is this really the life she gets to live? It’d be best if it were to end already. Seriously, can these flowers suffocate her and let her die already? Is she just going to come back later using the power of the solver, or can she finally rest? Would she see her parents on the other side-
They’re alive, don’t think like that.
She thinks about what it’d be like to be loved. To not be a terrible, good for nothing murderer. How would it even be real? She can’t imagine it. A drone that actually likes her, that it isn’t a way to get closer to her and hurt her somehow. Or just because they pity her. Pity, by far the most revolting thing she can think of. Why care for someone, if in the end you’re only doing it because you feel bad? It makes no sense at all, and yet, everyone does it. The amount of times she’s heard Lizzy ask her if she’s okay, only to overhear a conversation she had with Rebecca about how she only said that because she felt guilty just leaving her there. She’s sure her parents would agree with her, that they’d care about her genuinely, if they were still here-
They’re alive. Stop thinking about that. It didn’t happen, they’re sleeping.
She coughs again, this time she wasn’t prepared, and they creep closer and the roots pierce an important part of her circuits, one of her legs going completely limp. She coughs up an entire plant, but the roots are still attached to her insides, and so it just dangles in her mouth as she hacks up more petals. All the surrounding flora stained with her oil. She shakes uncontrollably, her laboured breathing only making her coughing worse, along with her emotional state. Her crimson eyelights hollow as she grits her teeth in pain. Is this it? She can’t walk now, not unless the roots let go and her solver allows herself to heal. And she knows that won’t happen.
She’s going to die.
Amidst her intense breathing and shaking body, she begins to laugh. Her oil stained metal teeth tainted with oil and covered in small roots and plant matter. She falls back onto her bed as she holds her stomach in pain. She can’t stop laughing. It gets more intense as she feels the roots and flowers inside her creeping around, growing at unnatural speeds, and it only makes her worse. Oddly, a sense of joy washes over her, completely drowning out all sense of sadness, rage, or disgust she had felt before. Nothing but pure euphoria as her other leg goes limp, drowned by the roots embedded in her body. She wonders, why isn’t it heading for her core?
And as she thinks about it, a sharp, agonizing pain of something going right through her core hits her. A root piercing her very being. And yet, it doesn’t hurt as much as the truth that her family is dead, and she is alone.
They’re dead.
She laughs louder. Not in an attempt to drown out the pain, but because she can’t stop herself. She grabs at her hair, pulling it as she grits her teeth. A brief moment of silence as compared to her voice that echoed throughout the room in pained laughter and laboured breathing, drowning out all sense of pain that she still felt, physical and mental. She feels the roots creeping onto her core, and one of her arms falls onto the blanket below her. Then, she takes a deep breath, some of the roots catching in her mechanical throat, but she’s too busy bursting into laughter again. Occasionally interrupted by small moments of coughing, she keeps cackling. As if something were the peak of comedy. And well, there certainly was.
Her life was one big joke. Nothing more. She’s just a plaything, born to be tortured.
She takes her single, still operational limb, her right arm, and uses it to cup her face shakily. A single sense of touch before everything goes dark. She laughs again, though more quiet as everything turns sour again. That sense of pain of the roots that pierced her core fading into a numbness in her stomach. She feels her systems losing strength, her wires snapping, and every piece of her failing. She can see her eyelights dimming by the decrease of light in the room.
“It’s okay.” She hears a voice, one that she recognises, one that she so dearly missed. Looking up, she sees her mother. Finally awake, huh?
In place of her arm, her mom is gently holding onto her face, she has a warm yet somewhat bittersweet smile as she looks at Doll, and tears in her ruby eyelights. A smile that she hasn’t seen in a long time, those lights that she hasn’t seen in a long, long time. Oh, how she missed this. She feels safe, almost. Tears start pouring from Doll’s crimson eyelights uncontrollably. She’s been so alone, she’s felt so alone. But she’s not any more, she's safe now.
She cries, a smile on her face, and reaches out toward her mother, who swiftly pulls her into an embrace. She feels so much lighter, as if she were the weight of a feather, rather than a powerful machine made almost entirely of metal. Her bedroom fades into nothingness, leaving them on a blank emptiness. Yet it's so welcoming that she doesn’t feel any sense of fear. She wraps her arms around her mother, and though she's still crying, she feels happy. So, so happy.
She’s not alone any more, she’s finally home. Everything is going to be oka-
[FATAL ERROR]