Chapter Text
There’s a weight on his lap, and a sense of confusion that crept into Aoba’s just-waking mind. He couldn’t remember falling asleep. In fact, a long time ago the line between consciousness and sleep had blurred into something unintelligible. All that made a difference in the two was his presence. His voice, that never wavered from being anything but kind despite cruel words that poured from his lips. His body temperature remained ever-consistent, and touch was warm in a way that could have been comforting in some other universe. Between loving strokes came the scratch of nails probing into his flesh. It wasn’t as if there was a way for him to tell his good and bad actions apart anymore. Toue had made sure that whatever consciousness he had was left smothered by new programming, the bastard.
Because of this, Aoba never placed blame on Clear for what he had done to his body in the pits of oval tower. He hated the things that he did, begged for an end until his will shriveled, but at the core he knew that Clear was simply unaware that he had ever done anything bad. Through every second of agony, he felt sure that the man he’d come close to (Maybe deep inside he did love him. It was confusing to think about.) felt a similar anguish underneath Toue’s wiring. Wherever that little space of light and broken music lay inside of him, Aoba knew that the real Clear remained there. What had that song been like, he wondered. He recalled the night that Clear sat on his rooftop and sang him to sleep. That’s when life had been normal.
“Aoba!”
The young man’s attention was drawn back to the foreign weight in his lap. As his mind drifted into focus, he was able to note his strange surroundings. The room was saturated with dust and warm air, perhaps due to the heavy sheets and blankets draped over his body. Aoba felt the thing in his lap stir, and weight was transferred to his chest.
He opened his eyes. In front of him he caught the familiar gaze of his allmate, paws pressed to his torso and his tongue hanging out of his mouth. Aoba noticed that he had arms to reach out to him with. This wasn’t anything more than a dream, he came to realize. Though in his sleeping state he found it hard to remember how to use his own limbs. But somehow he recalled the movements required to stroke Ren’s fur; burying his palm there. A smile graced his lips as his allmate rubbed against him. Such behavior would have been strange for the real Ren, but this one was far from the one he knew. His presence was more than welcome however.
Aoba raised the mechanical pup into his arms, cradling him. “Ren... I missed you.” He breathed. For a dream, he noted that his voice was unusually hollow. He could barely remember what it had been like, all that time ago. For the moment he focused on the feeling of his partner in his arms, and this he could at least recall.
“I missed you too, Aoba.” The canine model admitted. “I’m so glad that you’re back now.”
“Yeah...” Aoba sighed, saddened by the lucidity of his dream. He hoped that Clear would come to wake him up soon, or else he’d depress himself with these memories of his companion.
As if on cue, a click echoed from the door on the opposite end of the room. As he waited for his dream-enabled vision to fade into black, he was surprised to find it pure as ever. He felt as if he could see better than ever before, but his vision was incomplete in a way that he couldn’t place. Aoba turned towards the door, and blinked when the lenses of a mask poked out from behind the wood. He felt another twitch of grief in his stomach when the old sight of Clear’s gas mask came flying back to him. He’d never worn it again after he’d been reprogrammed. Aoba had come to believe that Toue had tossed it away.
Clear’s apparition approached him, and Aoba suddenly became unsettled by the mask. He wanted to see Clear’s face more than anything. A very real anxiety settled into his stomach as he was forced to stare into the blank expression of the gasmask. Though he tried to scramble in a state of panic, Aoba was unused to the feeling of limbs weighing him down, causing him to fall back onto the bed. He startled Ren in the process, and the allmate hopped to sit under his elbow instead. The feel of his fur was enough to bring Aoba back down from his spike of panic.
“Aoba-san, please be calm.” Came Clear’s voice from under the mask. Hearing the familiar tone gave him some relief. At least this wasn’t a stranger, or one of the other androids. “You’re not going to be used to them just yet, you’ve got to give yourself time to adjust properly.”
Aoba blinked. With one eye, he blinked. The other was covered in something soft; and light didn’t filter through. He felt a crawling sensation in his shoulders, and no longer felt so sure that he was living in a dream.
His one eye wide, Aoba hefted up his arms. No, these weren’t his at all. Each proved to be a different color, and neither matched his natural flesh tone. They were much too pale; closer to Clear’s in color. His focus turned in to see his legs, he noticed the same was true of them. Shaking he lifted the strange hand to feel his face. These fingers were sensitive, but he was positive that this face belonged to him.
Beads of cold sweat ran down his body, and there was a distinct difference in feeling between his body and that of the limbs that had somehow been attached to the stumps Clear had left in trying to ‘perfect’ him. Aoba turned to the masked man that sat hunched over the bed’s side.
“...What is this?” His voice rattled out like his throat were a tin can. Clear hurriedly reached into the pockets of his coat, pulling out a bottle of fresh water. He said nothing, only offering it to Aoba. His expression was impossible to read beneath his mask. Was he worried? Was he smiling or angry or completely without emotion? Aoba didn’t like to play this guessing game. Clear wore his emotions on his sleeve and seeing him like this struck fear in Aoba’s heart.
Finally he reached out and took the bottle, perturbed by the silence about them. He took a sip, and his throat ignited with thirst. Before he knew it he was choking and soaked with half the bottle of water; dropped straight from his new hand. Clear jumped and put his hands out as if to help, but did not reach to touch the human’s body.
“Aoba-san, are you alright?” He questioned in haste. Aoba continued to hack the water in his throat for a few seconds before he could respond.
“Y-yeah...” He replied, voice considerably stronger than it had been.
“...Are your arms working, then?” The machine asked in a small voice. Aoba could tell that he wasn’t looking at him, even through the lenses of the mask.
Experimentally, the human held out his arms. They felt too heavy for his weakened body, and they likely were, but they worked to the point where he could flex his fingers to open and shut. “Mm. They... Work.” Aoba paused. “Why do I have arms now?” He asked, almost like a child. Clear twitched.
“...Toue’s new programming malfunctioned.” He muttered after a pause. “I realized the terrible things that I was doing to you Aoba-san, and I did my best to replace what I’d taken before it was too late.” As he spoke, his voice grew closer to tears. “I’m so glad that you can actually use them, you wouldn’t wake up until now, and I worked so hard to smuggle in the parts for you.”
“So, they’re... Metal? Alpha parts?” Aoba questioned. Curiously he tried to remember how to flex his toes, surprised when they jumped to his command. Clear’s head sank deeper between his shoulders, and Aoba was surprised to see his old scarf wrapped over his shoulders again.
“Yes. Aoba-san, I’m sorry they don’t look normal, I did the best I could, I swear that I did.” He was definitely crying now, tears welling up and dripping out of his mask. “I’m so sorry Aoba-san, there’s nothing I can do to make it better again, I tried so hard...” He hiccupped. This was more like the Clear he remembered, his emotions bubbling out at a moment’s notice.
Aoba blinked, slowly. “What are you sorry about? It isn’t your fault.” He breathed. Well, not his fault directly. He’d been the one to rip Aoba apart, but not the one who broke his mind to think it was alright to do so. He saw Clear’s head jerk up, and heard Ren shift on the other side of him. There was a prolonged silence that fell over them.
“...Huh?” The android sputtered. “Aoba-san, what...?” Clear’s voice trembled, and through the mask he was barely audible.
Aoba sighed through his nose. “It isn’t your fault. Toue was the one to reprogram you the way that he did, right? And you’ve done your best to fix it.” He felt his lungs grow tired from the sudden length of speaking. Which was well enough, as Clear didn’t respond. For a moment Aoba continued to command his limbs to move, twiddling his fingers nervously. This man felt like the Clear he’d known before, but there was no knowing when his clothes would be stripped off and he’d be placed until the touch of his glove and scalpel again.
“Aoba-san, that doesn’t make any sense. I did all of those awful things to you, and I never even thought twice about it. I thought that I was helping you. It’s not fair for you to just forgive me for what... For all the things I did.” Words came shaking out of his mouth only to echo through the mask.
“That’s true.” Aoba replied. “But you’ve done your best to fix what you can, haven’t you?” He asked, motioning to his limbs. This couldn’t replace the pain and fear, the rape or the hollow words Clear had spoken to him, but this was a start if anything.
“Stop it!” Clear’s voice cut through the air, and Aoba felt his new limbs spasm. Ren hopped onto his legs protectively. But the white-haired man didn’t move to threaten him, instead he curled up into his body like a child. “You aren’t supposed to forgive me like this, I wanted you to make me hurt like I did to you Aoba-san, I don’t deserve anything else. I tried my hardest to punish myself for everything I’ve done, but it isn’t the same... So please, Aoba-san, don’t treat me like this... I don’t deserve to be alive like this.”
Aoba sighed again. He listened to Clear break down, voice cracking and tears pooling in the lips and ridges of his gasmask to drip out of the bottom. Dark stains littered his scarf and coat from the drops.
“...Is that so?” He asked. “Then... As punishment, I’ll remove something important to you, Clear.”
There was a click, and a loud clatter. The mask crashed to the ground, lenses shattering after Aoba unlatched it from the man’s head. He wanted to pull his hands back at the sight beneath, but he seemed to lose the memory of how to pull them. So they dropped wherever gravity pulled them, and Aoba was left with a loose jaw.
Clear begrudgingly lifted his head, looking at Aoba for the first time since he’d entered the room. One eye met another, and a black crevice in his face gaped where the other had once been. Willing one hand, Aoba put his finger to the eye that had ended up in his skull, and things settled into place.
“Eye parts were hard to come by. People noticed when they went missing. I thought that... I thought that causing myself some kind of pain that you went through was only fair.” Clear’s whole body trembled as he confessed, looking into his severed eye that rest in Aoba’s socket. “It was hard to connect, but my nerves are identical to a human’s, so I only had to bring up records on how to reattach it. I hope that it’s good enough, Aoba-san.”
“Clear...” Aoba felt his eye, noting the superior quality to the ones he’d possessed before. His lid fell over it partially, and he reached out to touch the white mop of hair that that been obscured by the mask. “Thank you for this. It means so much to me.” He smiled, looking into his eye’s partner on side of the bed.
With that, the android came undone. He clasped Aoba’s hand in his own, taking it from his hair and sobbing with it pressed to his face. He blubbered every form of apology that he could muster, and Aoba only murmured small responses. Watching tears roll out of that one eye that remained, he didn’t feel afraid of the man in front of him. Rather, his stomach stirred with elation. Maybe now there could be some sort of normalcy in his life again, and Clear could be normal, and he could feel alive again. Surely there was something that could be made from this, whatever it was.
Aoba felt Ren’s body press up against him again, and his and Clear’s eye pushed tears out onto his face.