Inner Demons, Part 1: Breakdown
by Alryssa Kelly
Set: End of season 2, in Turing System.
Rated: PG
Parts: One
Author's note: Turing System, along with the character of Perl, are used with permission. To summarise: Robin has been unusually absent from work for 3 days (seconds), and Perl has gone to find out why.
She'd had to use her security override protocols to force her way into the apartment. She squinted inside. Darkness.
Perl shivered. She hated the dark. Why did it have to be dark? Spammit. She scrabbled for the flashlight on her belt, trying to keep her already frayed nerves under control. Her friend hadn't turned up at the Principal Office in three seconds. It wasn't like her. She hadn't been acting right, she reflected briefly, since Dot had paid that visit a couple cycles back... and now this.
A deep breath. She cleared her throat, and called out into the shadows from the doorway.
"Robin?"
No answer. She hadn't really expected one. This didn't feel right at all. Something was wrong. Very wrong. She noted the light panel by the door had been smashed. Against her better judgement, she stepped inside.
Several times her booted foot nudged something, every instance causing her heart to skip a beat, and every time she admonished herself for being so stupid. Swinging the flashlight around the deathly quiet apartment, she could see the broken ceramic and glass strewn across the carpet. There wasn't much here; Robin wasn't one for collecting. Just the remains of what were probably a few mugs... wait. She recognised a shard. Bending down, she picked it up and confirmed her suspicion as she eyed the classic car design. Her heart sank. The shot glasses she'd given Robin a few cycles ago. Now they were nothing but shrapnel from some unknown conflict.
The sense of urgency picked itself up a pace. Where in the Net was she? She hadn't left the system, she knew that much.
"Robin?"
She heard something. Catching her breath in her throat, she chided herself yet again, and swung her flashlight around. She gasped. Robin was standing right in front of her, an unusually hostile expression firmly in place. She wasn't the friendliest of sprites by any means on a good day, but this was different - cold, unfamiliar; as dark as the shadows that set her features into all-too-sharp relief in the bright light from Perl's torch.
"For User's sakes, Robin. You scared the livin' clockspeed outta me." Perl tried to act relieved, but she knew that something was desperately wrong.
Silence.
Robin had always been taller than Perl by a good five inches. it just hadn't seemed so much of a difference until now. It was creeping her out to the max.
"Spammit, what is wrong with you? You disappeared from the PO for three seconds! We got CPU's need fixing, and you're holed up in here havin' some kinda personal crisis. What's goin' on?"
Perl's native accent was starting to make itself heard through her false bravado. Robin's cold gaze suddenly shifted, as if seeing her friend for the first time.
"What are you doing here?" she asked, hoarsely.
"I might ask you the same question!" she retorted. Arguing was something they both knew, were both familiar with. How they showed their friendship for each other. Maybe she could get answers out of her that way. "Where th' hell have you been?"
There was little reaction to her demand, save a non-committal shrug. "Here. There. Nowhere."
Perl's frustration was winning out over her phobia of the dark. She narrowed her eyes, and punched the errant Guardian right where she knew it would hurt - dead centre of her breastbone. The impact had its desired effect. Robin winced and doubled over, the pain from the old injury making its presence felt.
"Spammit, talk to me! Ah'm not in th'mood for yoah cryptic remarks! Ah gotta system t'run and mah chief mechanic is sittin' here on her ASCII!"
She was surprised with a lightening-fast counter blow to her duty armour that sent her crashing to the floor, the flashlight falling from her grasp and rolling out of reach. It knocked the wind out of her, and she gulped for air, trying to reorientate herself. She was expecting the followup, and braced herself accordingly. When it didn't come, she lowered her defensive posture, sat up, and squinted back into the darkness, coughing.
"Crash. Ah hate this," she croaked. "Robin...?"
"I'm fine," was the clipped reply. It was a lie, and she knew it. Perl retrieved the flashlight, and located her friend. She was sitting, leaning against the wall, absently rubbing the spot Perl had hit. She looked... tired, Perl noticed. Like she hadn't slept in the three seconds she'd been absent from work. She probably hadn't.
"Can y'turn a light on? I'm not too keen on this whole darkness thing," she prodded, the encroaching silence threatening to deafen her.
"No."
Perl grunted in vague annoyance at her friend, then crawled over to sit next to her, leaning her head back against the wall, cradling the flashlight in her hands.
"Fine. Then tell me what this is about. Quit skirtin' the filename."
Robin sighed, and drew her knees to herself, resting her arms on them. She stared at the floor a good while, before continuing.
"He's gone, Perl."
Robin's usually confident tone had a shaking timbre to it. Perl frowned, feeling no more enlightened by this comment.
"Who?"
"The one sprite who gave a frag about me, even when I didn't."
Perl stifled the mild annoyance she felt at that. She cared, didn't she? Didn't she *know* that by now? She sighed, her frustration evident.
"Robin..."
Robin turned her face to her friend. "It's my brother, Perl. He's gone."
Shock registered. "Gone? What do you mean, gone?"
"He's *gone*. Deleted, offlined, quit without saving. Gone. Shot into the Web. Gone."
Perl was more than a little disturbed by the Guardian's calm deliverance, not sure if she quite comprehended this news herself. Robin so rarely spoke of Bob, and usually only to call him a dork. She'd never referred to him as anything else, save the time she'd (reluctantly) admitted her relation to him not long after arriving in Turing.
Bob was deleted? It was so hard to imagine... but recent events added up.
"That's why Dot was here, wasn't it?"
Robin looked away, and closed her eyes briefly.
"Yeah."
"I'm sorry."
"Mmm."
No more information was forthcoming. Robin seemed terribly collected for someone who was sitting in a dark, trashed apartment. She wasn't known for expressing her emotions, but this was past unusual and into bizarre.
"Robin?"
"What?"
"What in the Net did you do to your apartment?"
"I... " she faltered, for the first time. "I... I thought I was doing OK with all this... was holding out hope that she was wrong, that I'd just dreamed it, that he was OK." Robin buried her face in her hands. "It just hit me one morning... I looked in the mirror, and... I couldn't take it anymore."
That explained the devastation, at least.
"I could have carried on, but... I've started having these dreams. Every time I slept, I was there, and I was hurting, and I couldn't... I couldn't stop them. Every time I closed my eyes, it was waiting for me, just picking up where it left off..."
Perl sighed.
"So you stopped sleeping."
Robin drew a hand over her face. "Perl, I think... I think I'm going insane."
The cadet blew out her cheeks, unsure what to say. She was concerned for her friend's sanity, but wasn't sure how to conduct the next step. It meant an admission of her own, an exposure she wasn't sure she was ready for.
"Look... I know this is going to sound really basic, but... I can relate." She paused, then continued, sighing. "Actually, no. I've been through *worse*. At least you're not at fault." The last word brought a bitter edge to her voice.
"You can relate to me? That'd be a first," snorted the Guardian.
Perl ignored the snide comment, and got to her feet.
"I've had to deal with losing two people close to me, directly through my actions, and mine alone. You think I feel that good about myself? It's why I dropped out of Academy in the first place. So you at least have the luxury of thinking Bob might still be alive out there. I don't. I saw them die. Both of them. And I have to live with that, every second of my life! So don't give me that BIOS about not being able to relate to anyone, because spammit, I relate to you, even though you're a pain in the ASCII, because... " she faltered, only now feeling the wetness on her cheeks.
Robin was staring up at her, a stunned expression in place at her uncharacteristic outburst. Perl wavered, then continued. "Because... you've never judged me. Ever. You don't ask for anything I can't give. You're the best friend I ever had, and crash it, I'm not going to let you give up on yourself over this!"
Robin stared at Perl for a nano, then found herself breaking eye contact, trying to take what she'd just said in. For a while, the only sound in the darkness was Perl's shaky intakes of breath. Then -
"I'm scared, Perl. I'm afraid I'm going to turn into him. Into what people expect. A replacement, a copy... " She bit her lip at the word. "I've spent so long trying to be different, and now... now I don't know. I don't know who I am anymore."
Perl sniffed, wiping her face with the back of a hand, choking up a wry laugh.
"You'll never be Bob. Nobody could be Bob, just like nobody can be you. Please come back, Robin."
Robin looked back up at Perl.
"I... I guess I should. But... give me a few nanos to get my place back together first, okay?"
The cadet nodded.
It was then Perl noticed them, in the indirect beam of the flashlight. Marks, like flecks of silver, scattered in a random pattern across Robin's forehead. No. Not marks. Fresh wounds. Wounds that ran deep enough to scar, as some of them were beginning to. Wounds that could not have been inflicted by anyone else, if she had indeed been here alone the last three seconds as she claimed. She stared at the pattern as long as she dared, realising the flecks also ran down her neck, and possibly further down beneath the collar of the Guardian's uniform.
Perl felt suddenly sick to her stomach. Oh, User.
She'd done this to herself.
She began wondering if asking her to come back to work was a good idea; maybe she should call the medics instead - but nixed the idea. Whatever had happened in the last few seconds was over with, and Robin seemed perfectly stable now... right?
"I'll... I'll leave the flashlight with you, OK?" Perl managed to choke, unable to maintain eye contact with the sprite as she handed it off to her. She didn't want to bring this issue up now, not now that she'd managed to talk some sense into her.
"Sure. Uh, Perl?"
Perl looked distracted. "Yeah?"
"You think he might still be out there?"
"Uh... I don't know, honestly. Look... get this cleaned up and uh, I'll meet you at the PO, OK?"
Robin nodded, slowly. She was oblivious to Perl's sudden change in demeanour, a look of hope settling in on her marred features.
"Oh, and Perl? Thanks."
Perl nodded and smiled thinly at the Guardian, as she backed out of the dark apartment and headed for the Principal Office, fighting the urge within herself to retch. But the darkness was refusing to leave her soul; and she was beginning to wonder if Robin's had already succumbed.
The next few seconds left her in little doubt...
* * *
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