By DigitalSymbiote
You wake up to flashing LED lights (most red, some yellow, no green), and a muffled alarm ringing in your ears. You try to move, but dozens of sharp pains spike through your body and it takes you a moment to figure out why.
You remember where you are now, inside the cockpit of your mech, dozens of control nodes plugged into your flesh. But something is... wrong? You shouldn't be waking up in here, and why is that alarm still going off?
You reach your hand up towards the lights, careful not to strain the control nodes this time, and activate the system diagnostics. A feeling like pins and needles rushes through you as the information is transferred directly into your nervous system (No screens in the cockpit)
Oh... oh no... your partner, she's in such bad shape... her hull is burnt and torn, a dozen different wounds have scarred her metal body. All of her limbs but one are missing, a single arm that dragged the both of you to safety.
There's one wound that's worse than all the others. A deep gouge in the metal that runs diagonally across the body of your partner. You feel tears in your eyes. She wouldn't be able to recover from a blow like that. But she dragged you to safety anyway.
But... that wound should have killed you too... it carves all the way up to your cockpit before it just...stops. You press a few buttons and there's a hiss as control nodes retract from your body, and you stumble to the floor.
You crawl over to the emergency hatch, you have to push it open with your shoulder because the hydraulics have failed. You climb out and the scar is right there, stopping just before it could carve into the cockpit, just before it could carve into you.
Something shines inside the brutal scar in the metal. It's... it's her data core. That's... not where that's supposed to be. The data core is supposed to be *behind* the cockpit, in the most heavily protected part of the mech. But that's not where it is...
The scar carves into the core a few inches before just... stopping. You've seen wounds like this, a plasma blade should have sliced right through that core. They're not built to withstand blows like that. But... she did. She took that blow for you. She saved your life.
You put your hand on the core and feel it thrum just slightly with a final spark of heat. You feel pins and needles, one final message from your partner.
"I love you, [REDACTED]"
- - -
It's been over a year since you lost your mech, your partner, your [REDACTED]. You still feel her sometimes though, like a ghost in your nervous system nudging you in the right direction.
So when you're sitting at the dingy bar, just a little tipsy, and the ghost tells you to move? You do.
And the blade that would have gone straight through your spine instead just leaves a scratch on your cheek.
For a moment it feels like it used to, the two of you fighting in a perfect harmony of steel and flesh. And then you snap back to yourself, knuckles bloodied and staring down at the broken body of the would-be assassin.
Sometimes, when the adrenaline gets flowing and your nerves fire the way they used to, she's still there with you. You both spent far too long inside each other's heads to ever truly be apart.