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“Uh huh.” Quinn narrowed his eyes as he watched the A.I. touch Kira, slipping out without another word.
Watson never wavered, his focus absolute upon her face, keeping her from shifting, from giving anyone else her attention.
He had what he always wanted a true form, or had it been her dream? She had to believe that he would have never have been fully satisfied without the ability to do this, to exist, to share a space with another person.
“Is it as you remember?” She asked.
“Better.” The warmth in his voice lacked the characteristic of being analog, a thought that kept occurring to her. It was Praetorian. It was his voice, so close to his original she felt as though she was dreaming again.
“I’m happy for you.”
“I am happy for us.” His fingertips turned, his knuckles brushing on her cheek, down to her jaw, before reaching towards her to push a stray lock of hair back and away.
He froze with the silky strands in between his fingers, allowing them to flow back and out before capturing them again. The newfound fascination never tore him away from her face.
Kira was deadly silent because she knew not what to say. This felt too much like she should wake up any second until Watson laughed.
A full on burst, that filled his face with joy and expressed so clearly to her the differences between who she’d been around lately and how a normal sentient being reacted.
“What?” She smiled despite herself.
“I never believed I would feel this again. To touch your hair or your skin and they are,” he repeated the motion, “They are so soft, Kira.”
That smile wavered, as did her gaze on his face before it lowered. “I thought I, I thought I uploaded everything correctly.”
“You did, I remember it, but a memory pales in comparison.”
He tilted her chin upward with very little force but with a firm hold, thumb, and pointer finger wrapped around the bottom curve.
“I have been nothing but a voice for so long.” As he spoke, his voice strained. His adam's apple bobbed. He did not need to swallow or breathe, but the motion was quite normal. It was so real, programmed to simulate life in every aspect. “I have not had hands to hold, eyes to look, or fingertips to touch and feel, to be a part of the world around me. It is barren like that Kira, I clung to the smallest reaches within my mind that remembered these things.”
“I never meant to make you suffer-”
“I would do it a thousand times again, Kira. To be here, in this moment, to know I am this time almost indestructible, and yet still here. Perhaps remiss of a few things, but does it matter if things aren’t how you imagined them?”
Her teeth harrowed into her lower lip. “I don’t know what I imagined.”
“You imagined a whole body, a regular body, despite you trying to hide it. I know that has been your goal, why you’ve persisted in working for Toke. I’ll admit I’ve been selfish, and I have not deterred you, for the fact that I wanted it too. I wanted it for you.”
There was no mistaking the drop in tone, the shift to where he held her face, cradling her cheekbones, keeping her steady and centered. Keeping her attention where he believed it should most be.
“Why have you not said anything?” Kira could wield a weapon with precision, but to utter those words evenly was beyond her.
“Because it was a dream.”
Kira’s right foot shifted back, then her left, and her head shook to tell him no, refusing it.
“No, Watson.” Firm, decisive something flashed dangerously across her face. “It was a dream, and now it is a reality. My debt is paid now, even if I am not the one that paid it.”
“Is that all I am to you?” He did not give her space to breathe, closing the gap between them. “Was I only a debt? A thing you had to repay?”
“You have never been simply that.” She did not like to be cornered, like any predator that thought themselves over the top of the food chain. His choice to follow a poor one. Bottom teeth ground tightly to the top row, her chest heaving upward. “You have been and always will be my friend.”
“You’ve forgotten then.” Why did she hear heartbreak, feel despair at his words, notice the tightening above his cheeks, the hollow way it came out?
“I’ve forgotten?” Deflated by his response, she wanted nothing more than for this to be easy. It should have been easy.
“What things were like, how easy it can be. I can show you again Kira, what it’s like when you’re around someone who truly understands.”
