I cheated myself; Like I knew I would

[hatesgoodbyes]

Who: Tex and Church
What: Checking in on him after the LW events
When: After returning from San Diego
Where: Church's room
Rating: r for profanity



It was just fucking great that the place would do something like this. No sooner had she gotten Church to the hotel to start looking over him then they were back at this place.

She didn't bother to try to reach him through the journal, she knew where his room was and she would just go look him up herself. She was just going to make sure he was functional because as bad as it was here him being utterly messed up would be worse. It would be like inconvenient.

The grumbling was undoubtedly quiet up until the moment she spotted the name on the door. Knock? Yeah right. Not like there was anything she hadn't seen before, so she just let herself in.

"Hey, wanted to say I've gotten used to doing repairs and--WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?"

Comments

[hatesgoodbyes]

"Yeah, going by my luck the chances of that aren't great." She folded arms across her breastplate and looked at the floor as if in thought.

"I could take a look at them, Don't know how much they would be like anything I've worked on but..who knows, right?" She's forcing a level, nonchalant tone in her voice, trying to keep that part of it casual.

[originalcopy]

"Sure, yeah. I can figure out some basic repair stuff, but most of it's way over my head."

He goes over to little terminal he uses to access CastleNet and works through the encryption to access the prints.

"But you know, I'm not exactly good with computers and mechanics and all that shit."

He shrugs and offers her the chair once the blueprints come up. Most of the plans are surprisingly straightforward and easy to understand, but the neural net is far beyond what they're used to.

[hatesgoodbyes]

"Yeah, add computers and mechanics to the list." She scoffed and shoved him slightly as she took a seat and looked over the plans.

"Fuck." She could understand about half of what she was looking at, but there were things here..processing interfaces that worked like neural pathways to give the reactions of a realistic human body. Pupillary response, involuntary reflexive actions, breathing for coolant of the interior parts..there was shit here far beyond anything she'd ever dealt with and with that her head fell and what hopes had soared in the past two minutes crashed down.

"This is really fucking specialized, no robotkit shit here. You'd need someone like your friend who understood these kinds of things, someone that could work on a nanotech level and a shop that could handle all that. The parts fabrication along would require... "

Yeah best not to beat that dead horse, right? She just pushed away from the desk and stood. "But you've got yours and that's good. Like I said it gives you a chance for something almost normal."

[originalcopy]

"Then we find someone who understands it. There has to be someone..."

Fuck! Why did the castle have to send Harper back?!

Why hadn't he asked Harper sooner, he could have had a body here waiting for her. This was such bullshit!

"Tex, we'll figure something out."

[hatesgoodbyes]

She grunted noncommittally and moved back for the door, she needed...fuck she just needed to not be looking at him looking like that.

And face it Church, keeping the inanimate form of you on again off again girlfriend around would be way fucking creepy. It
s probably for the best that you didn't do that.

"I've got a few bugs to work out too so I'm going to work on that. I'll see you around." Because really this was getting painfully awkward.

[originalcopy]

He opened his mouth to protest but realized it wouldn't do any good. She didn't want anything to do with him like this.

His shoulders slump and he tries like hell not to look disappointed. Or worse hurt. Even though he feels like shit about this whole situation.

Which of course means that instead of letting himself acknowledge that pain, he'll just cover it up with bullshit anger. Because it's better to be angry than hurt.
His posture changes to reflect that, shoulder square again and he sets his face in a carefully neutral expression.

So fine, fuck her! If she wants to be a bitch let her.

"Yeah, sure. See you around."