Fragile poured the last of the water into the roots of the massive philodendron plant that sat in the corner of the main room, nestled in between an old and worn wooden cabinet and the large bay window that looked out over the backyard. She placed the can gently on the ground in front of it before she walked back towards the quaint little kitchen-space and allowed herself to transform, going from her two-legged form to her much-preferred quadrupedal one in one swift motion as she jumped clear from the floor to the counter. She sat, curled her tail around her paws, and looked out the front window at the world outside.

Clouds were beginning to amass outside, and in fact they already had; the sky was a light but ever-darkening grey, casting the garden outside in a pre-storm bleariness.

A few moments later, she heard the front door open, with some effort, and the distant rumbling of thunder outside — and then the familiar patter of small footsteps in the entryway as the door creaked shut.

“You don’t have to do all that,” she mewed with a god-natured tone, as the phone rounded the corner, covered in dirt and limping ever so slightly. Her red eyes flickered across his small form; it was endearing, in some ways, how eager he was to help, and how hard he tried to prove himself to her — but perhaps he was trying a bit too hard to make himself appear useful.

“N-nonsense!” he stuttered, tentatively using a hand to stabilize himself against the wall as he turned and looked up at her. He seemed hesitant to even perform such a mild action. “I-it’s the l-least I could d-do!”

“…I just don’t want you getting hurt, is all.” Fragile purred.

He waved his other hand at her dismissively, closing his eyes for a moment. “I-it would be nothing but a m-minor setback, anyway.”

Purr still rumbling in her throat, the cat frowned. “Not to me,” came her answer.

3GS tried to put her tone from his mind. “D-don’t worry too m-much,” he replied. “I-it is… i-it’s simply what I d-do.”

A sigh escaped her as she glanced back over her shoulder at the spitting start of rain on the earth outside. “You should go clean up,” she suggested, her attention back on him. “Do you want me to help?”

“…I’m f-fine,” he said proudly, if not a little facetiously. “Really!”

Yes, despite his own words, he couldn’t help but feel a nagging regret once they’d left him, at his tacit rejection. There was very much still a part of him that wanted her to keep doting on him, as she had been, particularly when he had first moved in with her (mostly for lack of better options, of course). But even with her apparently unending patience and desire to lavish him with all sorts of care he was entirely unaccustomed to (and, guiltily, adored), he couldn’t help but feel it wrong to keep taking without giving, or at least without serving a purpose — and then in turn feel guilty, and then guiltier still for feeling guilty.

This was not something he was at all used to, to be given anything so freely, let alone love or anything remotely like it — 3GS had always wanted it, surely, had always sought it from his father-creator, but had always fallen just short no matter what he did. He had always been a jinx. His failure to retrieve the desired number of samples on his first and only real mission had only cemented that — in the process he had started a war on foreign soil, and had survived active combat, only to be tortured and tossed away all in the name of progress for all his troubles. He could still feel all the old pains, and they never quite went away.

The cat sighed. “Okay,” she replied, resigned. “But please, do let me know if you need me, okay?”

The phone gave her a noncommittal noise of acknowledgement before he turned away and made for the stairs down to the basement on the other side of the kitchen, which were half-converted by her into a much easier to manage series of ramps; the scale of her abode was much different than anything in his world, and he could still remember with surprising clarity how titanic and imposing she’d seemed crowding the halls — or, well, the closet — of Meeple.

As he made his way down to clean himself up in the bathroom, she let her own thoughts wander. She didn’t want to seem unappreciative, particularly not towards him. Fragile knew him well, given her perceptiveness, and thus she knew why he was working (and perhaps overworking) himself to the degree that he was. Even if he hadn’t informed her directly in the odd rest-deprived and vague rant the general state of his whole being was self-evident to cluing her in on a prescient idea of what might have happened to him.

…But really, the crux of the matter was this: she knew he was afraid. Not of her, specifically, and logically he must know that as well, that she wouldn’t rid herself of him or kick him out or send him back — but that looming terror of outliving his usefulness comprised so much of him, and still ran in his systems, and thus to abate it he set himself to work — and tried to make himself as unobtrusive as possible — even to his own detriment.

Still, she could tell it was wearing on him. His joints, mechanical as they may be, weren’t what they were over a decade ago, when he’d seen active use — and wouldn’t be, even if they hadn’t suffered the kind of damage and neglect they had for other reasons, many beyond his own control. Fragile kept putting off confronting him directly about it mostly because he was shockingly stubborn, when it came down to it, presumably a thread of the same resilience that had kept him, somehow, alive.

A sudden yelp followed by a loud crash pulled her from her thoughts, however long she’d been stuck in them, as her head whipped towards the stairs to the basement. “Everything okay?” she called, strong and firm voice etched with worry.

No response after a beat or two told her she should go look, so she hopped down from the counter and padded downstairs, making for the bath. The sound of frustrated mechanical breathing as she got close told her he was at least mostly alright, though audibly upset.

The cat rounded the corner to see what had been on the counter strewn about on the ground, including a few plants, and one 3GS laying flat on his back on the floor, covering his pixelated face with scarred metal hands.

“3GS,” she said softly, after a moment. “…are you okay?” He flinched, like he wasn’t expecting her to be there.

“Um,” he offered, as he made himself stand with obvious difficulty, sheepish and struggling to find the right words. “Y-yes, I-I’m… fine.”

She blinked at him.

“M-my apologies,” he added quickly, his expression souring — anxious smile falling, and his pixelated brows furrowing. “I-I did not mean to concern y-you, or t-to… uh, make any sort of… o-of… mess.” 3GS was stammering; he sounded strained, as if he feared he might choose the wrong set of words and set her off at any moment. “I-I promise, I-I will not — i-it won’t happen again.” Please forgive me, he wanted to say. It was an honest mistake.

Fragile still seemed perplexed.

“I-I was merely trying to do as you a-asked,” he continued. “T-this was the r-result of nothing b-but a minor g-glitch, w-which I promise y-you, is no big thing! I-I can control i-it, I a-assure you, a-and I can c-continue to be of great a-aid to you.”

She stepped closer, bowing her head down to put her face on his level.

Instinctively he made to back up, nearly tripping over his own limbs, which felt ethereal and vacant like they barely belonged to him — but he managed to catch himself. “P-please,” he said urgently. “Let me fix t-this, I-I’ll do better. I…” 3GS stared into those deep red eyes of hers; they held none of the same sick malice or contempt that his creator’s had, but everything he’d ever internalized, everything he’d ever committed to his memory banks and everything that made up every fibre of his being was screaming at him to keep going, to keep negotiating, if not outright pleading, for mercy. It was instinct at this point, the sinking feeling in whatever he called a heart urging him to repent for yet another failure. “I p-promise,” he said, desperately, continuing to back up until he felt his chassis make contact with the porcelain tub, and he winced at the jolt of pain through his damaged back. “I promise, I-I’ll fix this, I’ll do b-better, just d-don’t.”

“…Don’t what?” her tone was gentle. Kind.

“Don’t… uh…” After a moment, he realized he didn’t even know what exactly he supposed he was going to ask her not to do to him. Be cross with him? Get rid of him? Worse? Or perhaps he merely wanted her to excuse his own incompetence?

“…Did you fall?” she meowed calmly, her paws flexing as she felt the disturbed dirt scattered across the floor.

He hesitated. “Y-yes,” 3GS replied, looking away nervously. “A-and I s-sincerely—”

“Are you okay?” Her voice was firmer this time, and her words cut through his with ease.

“I-I… yes.”

“You’re sure?”

…He wasn’t sure, not really, but he responded with a plaintive noise that he couldn’t quite help, backed up against a wall like this. In response she only furrowed her own brow, but she sat back, allowing him space.

Logic dictated to him that this was a reasonable and expected action, because logically he knew that she was nothing like him, but he couldn’t help the emotional confusion he felt anyway. Despite what he knew he was used to ill treatment enough that he expected her, on some kind of level, to lash out at him — to swipe at him, or trip him, or continue pinning him against the wall, even just to reprimand him for making such a mess of her things, but instead she was just… sitting there, making no effort to do anything he might have expected Cobs to do.

“You can tell me.” She was plain-voiced and steady. “We’re in this together, aren’t we?”

“I…” he was… well, confused, to say the least, wrapped up between reason and feeling. “I don’t… know.” 3GS’ screen flickered, and he sank to the ground, bringing his knees close to his screen.

As if taking a hint, she too brought herself to a casual recline, tucking all four paws under herself as she laid down on the floor, all the while saying nothing.

He considered his words carefully. “Are y-you not… upset?”

“What, about the mess?”

“…Yes?”

“Not particularly.”

The phone’s response came out far more indignantly than he had intended. “Why?”

“It was just an accident,” she mewed. “And it’s only a mess. Not the end of the world.”

“But—” It should be something! He wanted to shout. Whether it was accidental or not shouldn’t have even mattered — he was a guest in her home, and even here he couldn’t stop himself from messing something up, from failing at his task, the accident-prone, clumsy jinx that he was, with a no-good failing fake body that had only brought him more misery than it was worth. “It should m-matter t-to you!” he growled, crushed voice glitching fiercely.

“It can be fixed,” she replied calmly.

“Even t-that?” His voice was almost a commanding bark as he emphatically jabbed a finger towards a de-potted plant, roots still partially threaded through the dirt, laying strewn on the tile. He cringed at the jolt of pain the sudden swift and exaggerated motion send through his shoddily repaired and aging arm.

“Yes,” she answered truthfully. Fragile rose to her feet, her shadow falling over him as the ceiling light crowned her head like a halo. 3GS didn’t move; perhaps some part of him, learned as it was, expected something to come down on him, a hand or some sharp implement, but… it didn’t. Instead, she turned her attention to the plant and in one practiced paw she picked it up while with the other she took the pot, a little metal bucket that had survived the fall entirely intact. “Watch.”

With great care she placed the plant, a homely little fern, back in its container. She clawed together dirt from the ground with capable motions, and when she got all she could gathered she gingerly tipped the bucket over and pushed as much as she could back into the container. Pulling it right-side up when she finished, her strong paws patted down the earth firmly — and when she was finally all finished, she picked up the little pot and set it down right in front of his anxious form, wordlessly.

…It seemed rather dour. “…i-it’s still dead.”

A soft laugh escaped her. “It’s not dead.”

“L-looks like i-it to me.” He frowned.

She exhaled through her nose deeply and in good humor. Of course he wouldn’t know. “It’s just stressed,” she replied. “It might take a little while, but it’ll recover. They’re resilient that way.”

“…O-oh.”

“So,” she said after he stared at the plant for a moment, refocusing her attention squarely on him. “I’m going to ask again, and I want you to answer me honestly this time. Are you okay, 3GS?”

“It… uh, i-it hurts a bit, I-I suppose, but it’s r-really not…”

The sudden sensation of her paw against his screen shook him from his train of thought with a wince he couldn’t control. As she cupped her paw around him, her thumb pad gently wiped at his face — where a cheek might be, if he had one — and the layers of dirt that coated it, carefully brushing away the debris with a soothing touch. 3GS looked up at her with a stunned look, studying her expression — but where in someone else he might have expected contempt, or malefic pity, or even pleasure in his fear, he saw only care in her face, on a level he could scarcely make any sense of. “W-wh…” he stammered, voice buzzing with old damage and uncertainty.

Her voice was soft and sympathetic, and soothing in its dulcet tone. “It’s okay if it does,” she purred.

“I… I don’t u-understand,” he replied. “I-it’s not a… it d-doesn’t… matter — I f-failed the task I-I was meant to perform, a-are you not displeased?”

A quiet and understanding huff. “…It was just a little mistake.”

“I h-have too many of those.” I am one of those.

“Nonsense,” she replied, matter-of-factly, as she pulled her paw away gently. “Things happen. They’re just how you learn.”

I should know better by now. “I-I should be better.”

“There’s still time.”

“I-I’m old,” he replied quickly, “I-I’m obsolete, I’m… I-I should know how to do things, b-by now, and y-you gave m-me a second chance, and I o-owe you f-for it, even i-if I don’t… know why y-you bothered, and I-I just want to deserve it.”

Fragile sighed. “But you already deserve it.”

I don’t. “N-no, I… I can’t.” His words were wispy and strained and marred by nervous glitches. “I have t-to make it up to you.”

“…Make what up?”

“I… make up f-for me. The fact t-that it’s me. That I’m m-me.”

“3GS.”

He closed his eyes and clutched his fists at his sides with a grimace. “P-please,” his voice was a staticky hiss. “You don’t understand — I-I’m not… a good p-person, I’ve done…” You’re not a person at all. “…I’m n-not a person, I’m… a machine, a-and I’ve already failed a-at every other purpose I was e-ever intended for, y-you… I-I’m… parts, scrap, nothing, I d-don’t understand why I’m even still… I j-just want it to stop.”

Sadness clouded her eyes. “What do you want to stop?”

“Everything,” he growled. “I-it all h-hurts so much, everything, b-but I don’t want to die. Just… to stop.”

“Stop?”

“Yes.”

“…Why?”

“I-I’ve spent such a long time just t-trying to — ensure m-my continued existence, and w-waiting, and hurting, b-but now… I’m just s-so tired — and I k-know I have something g-good here but I-I’m afraid of losing it, I don’t want to l-lose it and I don’t w-want to keep begging or anything of the sort, but I-I… i-if everything just ended r-right now, it w-would all be over, and nothing could ever get worse again, a-and then maybe I’d…”

“…You’d what, Three>”

Once he had fought so hard to stay alive, to not be disposed of or hurt, to remain useful to his creator even at lengths of great suffering — all of which had amounted, of course, to nothing. If every nightmarish memory of those days was destined to keep haunting him until the end, then… “I-I’d… be, uh…” 3GS looked rather sheepish as his speech faltered. “…Content, finally, I s-suppose.” No longer a burden. No more trouble, no more pain, no more disappointments.

She tilted her head — a knowing look flashed through her gaze, as it often did, but she spoke with a coy and deliberate curiosity anyway. “…You don’t like it here?”

“N-no, I—!” His response was a yelp as he tripped over his own words. “I-I do, truly! You are a-a gracious host, for s-sure, a-and really, I appreciate y-your patience and your, a-ah, approval, more than I-I could ever express, I just, I-I want to stop fighting.”

Fragile’s eyes softened, and her face drew a little closer to his. “Fighting…” she murmured, contemplatively. “Who are you fighting?”

…He held up his hands to look at them, and then his gaze passed over his arms — and then to his legs, and his paw-like feet, drinking in every detail like it was the last time he’d see any of it; every scratch, every ‘scar’, every blemish and speck of dirt and grime — every haphazard weld line, every bit of chipped metal, every bit of himself — and he frowned deeply. “I-I don’t know. M-myself, maybe.”

For once, her words failed her. Instead, her ears pinned back against her head. Immediately aware of her sudden shift in demeanor, he stiffened. “M-my apologies, madam, I didn’t mean to insinuate that I-I am ungrateful, o-or anything,” his voice grew more worried as he watched her rise to her feet and draw closer, her gaze focused on him, “p-please—”

It was his turn to lose his words as she suddenly — albeit carefully — lifted him from the ground and brought him in close to her chest. He let out an alarmed and undignified squeak unbefitting of a thing like him, he thought, and he remained tense even as he heard that strange sound she so often liked to make buzzing underneath her skin. Her arms wrapped around him in what he quickly gathered from a cursory search through his database was a hug, though the contact and the action were both notably foreign.

3GS protested, pushing back against her with weak and half-hearted movements that lacked real conviction, a tremble evident in his limbs. “Stop it,” he hissed bleakly, but there was no venom in his words.

She didn’t say a thing at first, and not for a good few minutes, even as she listened to his exhausted objections, spoken into her fur.

“…You’re not here to be useful to me,” Fragile said finally, pulling away to gently set him on the ground before her; he staggered on his feet, and with a mild amount of force she helped him to the ground.

A pained and glitchy rasp answered her. “T-then what do you want from me?”

“Nothing.”

“That d-doesn’t make any sense.”

“I think it does,” she mewed. “People don’t have purposes, they just exist.”

The phone huffed. “You’re n-not — you d-didn’t listen to me, did you? I-I told you, I’m not alive. Not like you. I’m no person. I’m… a-a set of parts, arranged to fulfill a purpose — at which, might I r-remind you, I failed, miserably, and was punished for. S-so why are you bothering with a third-rate m-machine?”

The cat sounded bewildered. “A third-rate machine?” she repeated, as if to reprocess the words over again.

“Y-you heard me,” came the irritated reply. “…And a-anyways, you have a-all this power, but you… y-you don’t use it. You c-could have anything you want, from anywhere you want — so why did you p-pick me?”

“Because, I… I c—”

“You don’t even know m-me.”

“Okay, sure, but that doesn’t preclude caring about you,” she said, her inflection stalwart. “I picked you because… well, you looked like you needed somebody, and… I needed somebody, too — and I wanted you, not anybody else. I wanted you to have something good. I want you around, I like having you here. Maybe I can have anything I want, but I don’t want all that; I want to be here, and I want to get to know you, the you you are, not somebody else.”

“The m-me I am is nothing,” he retorted, with a snapping edge. “N-nothing but an u-unsightly failed experiment.” A valueless prototype. “The o-only thing I’m good for now is…” His words trailed off as painful memories flashed through his mechanical mind, visions of pain so vivid as to be felt even here, even now — and he considered how novel it was to even be capable of feeling it, or at the very least some close facsimile to it, the imitation of life that he was. Would always be, too, no matter how much he longed otherwise.

“You feel things just as deeply as anyone else, don’t you?”

Maybe, but… “W-who cares? It doesn’t matter. It never h-has.”

“I do,” she said. “It matters to me.”

3GS looked defeated.

“…Listen, Three.” The feline began to speak. “I don’t know what happened to you, what you did or didn’t do or what was done to you — and you don’t have to tell me, either.” Fragile spoke plainly, her tone wise and soft. “None of that matters to me — and it’s not because I don’t want to hear it, or because I don’t want to know about you, because I do; it’s because… whatever happened to you, and whatever terrible things you believe about yourself because of it, I don’t believe. I can see how hard you try, trust me — but you don’t have to prove yourself to me. I don’t need that. You have a place here regardless, and nothing can change that. I want you to feel safe here, and to know that. What matters to me is that you’re just as much of a person as anyone else is, whether you can see it yourself or not, because I can, and… I’m sorry that someone made you think otherwise.” She offered him a small smile. “I like you. Please, stay.”

Digital tears pricked at his pixel eyes. They sure felt real. “You’re r-really something, aren’t you?” he mumbled.

She laughed. “I guess that’s one way to put it, yeah.” A second later, she offered him a paw, her palm outstretched. “Come on,” she added. “Let’s get you cleaned up, okay? And… try to move forward. Together.”

…He took her hand.