#my laptop isn't fixed but it WORKS for now so i'm pretending every thing is fine | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

broken-clover · 1 year

Note

damn ur last fic was so sad... good asf though... can you please say into this microphone that bedman and delilah will be together and happy and safe forever

Alright alright yall have broken me, I try to do edgy stuff with sad endings sometimes but I'm really such a massive softie with a weakness for happy endings and every time it takes so much willpower to not immediately do a happy ending followup (looking at you Starman) but I guess sometimes I am simply not tough enough for downer endings and that is just who I as a person.

So you earned yourself a special little treat this time, anon, a special edition Tumblr exclusive. Obsolescence gets an epilogue. Here's Nostalgia Machine.

(Obviously with the release of Delilah in Strive, this isn't canon-compliant, but neither was the first. Let's just operate under our own little canon situation)

“I’m the worst.”

“Aww, come on…” The words came out well-meaning, but half-hearted.

“See? You can’t even pretend like I’m wrong. I can’t believe I just…let this happen.”

“Hey, hey-” A comforting hand placed itself on her shoulder, flinching slightly as it started to shake. “C’mon, kiddo, don’t start cryin’.”

“I could have done something. I just left him, I j-j- ju-”

She was ushered to her feet. “You’re gonna give yourself a panic attack with the way you’re breathin’, let’s just go outside a minute.”

The fresh air evened her breathing, but her lip still trembled and her eyes remained wet.

“Little bit better, Delilah?”

“I don’t want to feel better.” She replied bitterly. “I don’t deserve to feel better. This is all my fault.”

“Well, it ain’t no use beating yourself up. Did’ja come all the way out here just to feel bad about yourself?”

“...”

“...Shit, ‘m sorry, that came out way harder than I meant.”

“...You still won’t tell me. How do you know my brother, Mr. Low?”

“Eh…long story. Important part’s that he ‘n I kinda had the same problem. Neither of us were much help to each other, but part ‘a me’s still glad we were able to talk. Kept taklin’ about you. Sounded like he cared about you a whole lot. Dammit, ‘m not helping, am I?

“No, I get it. And you’re right, just wallowing isn’t helping anything. Even if we grow up and end up going our separate ways, he’s still my brother…I can’t just leave him if I know he needs help.” She swallowed, gazing forlornly at the door. “Come on, let’s get you fixed.”

The two re-entered the small shed. Though the walls were deeply rusted and corners cobweb-ridden, it was entirely empty, aside from a jumble of strewn machine parts that occupied the far wall.

Axl heard the girl’s breathing shift, but she didn’t turn away again. She undid the straps on her pack and swung it around to deposit the contents on the ground. He hadn’t been much of a computer geek way back when, and he imagined things had only gotten more complicated. The best he could venture was some kind of screen that vaguely resembled a laptop, but for all he knew, it was for making bread.

“Which one ‘a these is the fancy toy you were tellin’ me about?”

“I didn’t bring it.” Delilah said. “It’s going to be shipped over. I wanted to make sure nothing would break in transit. Iris is helping me put the finishing touches on the current model. Right now we’re on the P5. Not perfect, but it’s built on a system that we can keep adding new features to as needed. The important part is just that there’s enough storage space to fit an entire consciousness in it without overloading the software.”

“Oh. What’s all this, then?”

“Covering the basics.” Delilah replied. “Repair equipment, spare power supplies, methods of communication. Translators are a pain in the ass, took me forever to make one that should be compatible with this system, but I did a ton of practice runs to make sure ahead of time that it’d work.”

Axl wasn’t sure how to help with the delicate electronics, so he chose to stand back and watch. He knew enough to tell that several of the machine’s parts were rusted to near-uselessness, and he was genuinely surprised when Delilah plugged some blocky-looking piece of machinery into an open port and it actually started to hum.

“I shouldn’t be surprised, but the battery is dead- dead.” She took another cable and connected it to something in the chassis. “It’ll be a little bit before it even has enough power to tell you it needs power.” After a few more keystrokes, Delilah sat back on her haunches and sighed. “I can’t guess when the last time was that it had any kind of maintenance.”

“It’ll get there. Just gonna take a bit.” Replied Axl. He tried to think of how to get her somewhat distracted. “So…that P5 you mentioned, how exactly are you gonna move him from this to that? Call me an idiot, but it doesn’t make much sense. Gonna take the head off this thing and slap it on?”

She didn’t reply at first. “More complicated than that. I’m taking his spirit out of this old heap and putting it into something new.”

His face must have shown his confusion obviously enough, because she continued talking as soon as she saw it. “Soul Grafting’s still a touchy legal mess, but I think someone in Illyria took my proposal and passed over the review process. I’ve heard most people wait years for a response, mine came out in a month. Any kind of magic that uses human souls requires a lot of approvals and equipment. I think Anji pulled some strings.”

“You think he’d do that? For something like this?”

He was left without a response again. This time, it stretched on and on, to the point where he wanted to ask, and then it became long enough that it felt too awkward to do so. They both merely waited in silence, unsubtly trying to not stare at the broken machine.

A little electronic ping finally broke the silence, bouncing off the shed walls. Delilah immediately jerked to attention, dragging the console back into her lap.

“‘s it working now?”

“Mmm.” Already too distracted to reply, she immediately threw herself into whatever work had to be done. Axl peered over her shoulder to watch. Windows popped open and flew by, covered in all kinds of symbols he couldn’t read. It finally settled on a blank box, one that quickly started to fill with strings of numbers.

“Wow.” He said. “I have no idea what any of this means.”

“Hold on, it’s set to binary right now. It’ll take a bit of time to switch modes, but I can read binary pretty well. Make sure the cable over there doesn’t unhook itself.”

“Now that, I can do.” It seemed better to give her some space, anyway. The wire in question hadn’t moved since she’d plugged it in, but he still kept an eye on it. “Figured out what the numbers are?”

“It’s…” She squinted. “Nothing. I thought there was some pattern I was missing, but it’s nothing. Only a stream of numbers and letters. Not a message. Completely incoherent.” He watched her adjust her glasses and squint. “The strings are definitely coming from the bed, it has enough power to send out a reply, but none of it follows any sense. None that I can see, anyway. He just isn’t responding. Is something broken?”

Axl knelt down, thumbing at the metal sphere lying in the dirt. “Sounds like something’s wrong. D’ya see anything busted?”

“No. That’s the part I’m confused about. They’re degraded, but all of the essentials still function well enough. This shouldn’t be a problem. Maybe the binary translation is the problem? Maybe I’m remembering my letters wrong…?”

“If it ain’t a problem with the machine, maybe it’s a problem with his head. How long’s he been alone in here?” The look on Delilah’s face immediately made him regret his words, but he continued anyway. “Don’t think the machine’s broken. I think he’s broken.”

She moved to get up. Axl grabbed her arm. “Nah, nah. Not a lost cause yet. ‘cause it means there’s still something there. Just gotta find it.”

He returned his attention to the machine. “Hey, little- uh, guess you’re a lot bigger now, huh? ‘Bedman,’ that’s whatcha called yourself. That’s who you are. You know that much, yeah?”

Silence. And then, a piston began to hiss. The broken remains of a pair of fingers twitched almost imperceptibly.

“Big guy? Delilah’s here, your sister’s here to help you. Dunno if you remember me, but you gotta remember her, right?”

What remained of an arm shuddered and then went still. A faint light started to shine from the pit of its eye socket. It flickered, almost like a blink, but it was impossible to tell if that was what it was meant to be, or if they were just projecting the idea.

Delilah looked between the frame and her console. Her eyes widened just slightly. “H-hold on. It’s changed. It’s repeating now.” She held it up for him to see.

01001001 01001001 01001001 01001001 01001001 01001001 01001001 01001001 01001001 01001001 01001001 01001001 01001001 01001001 01001001 01001001 01001001 01001001

“What’s that mean?”

“It’s just an ‘I’. He’s just repeating the letter. I don’t know why, is it just some simple string it’s stuck on?”

“Hmm…” Axl pivoted on his knees again. “You hear me in there? ‘I.’ Y’know that much. Who’s ‘you,’ then?”

The eye flickered again, settling on a dim shine.

“Huh? Now it’s coming up different…”

01001001 01000001 01001101

“‘I-A-M’, it’s three letters in a row now. He’s…responding?” A hint of life came back into her voice. “He- you actually got a response? He’s talking to you?”

Axl grinned, giving it a friendly pat. “‘I am,’ ‘I am,’ now we’re getting somewhere. I know you can hear me. Lemme hear you. What do you wanna say?”

01001001 01000001 01001101 01000100 01000101 01000001 01000100 00001010

The girl suddenly faltered. Axl moved closer, but she turned the screen away from him.

“Delilah. Tell me what it says.”

“...’I AM DEAD.’”

“‘Dead?’” Axl parroted. “C’mon, that’s nonsense! You see Delilah here, right? She’s here, so how can you be dead?”

The bedposts shuddered. The fragmented remains of a hand stuttered across the dirt.

01001110 01001111 01010100 01010010 01000101 01000001 01001100

“‘NOT REAL.’”

“But- but she’s right here!”

Delilah shook her head. “It’s not changing. He’s just repeating those two lines over and over.”

“He thinks he’s dead. And he thinks you’re just something he imagined up…like he’s gone crazy enough he can pretend you’re here.”

He stood up and marched towards the exit. “Wh- wait, where are you going?!” Delilah said, reaching out for him. “Don’t leave me alone!”

“‘m not leaving, I’m making a point.” From his back pocket, Axl pulled out a sickle, twirled it, and sank the sharp end into the wall by the door.

The screech of metal-on-rusted-metal sent her hands clapping over her ears. Delilah looked on in panicked confusion as the man hacked at the wall with reckless abandon. The weapon was not meant for cutting through something so solid, but the walls had rusted to the point where he could saw through with enough pressure. They tore clean through the door hinges and tossed the entire thing into the street, and jagged cuts widened the entrance until nearly the entire wall had been roughly disassembled and scattered along the ground.

“‘Course you can’t convince yourself, nothin’ but a wall to look at.” Axl said, panting from the exertion. “There’s a whole world out there. When’s the last time you got to see it?”

The sun made clouds of dust shine like summer snow. Trees on the other side of the path showed off their vibrant leaves with pride. Distant chatter from further downtown murmured in the wind. When he moved out of the way, Axl watched how the light fell on where Delilah sat, surrounding her in a radiant aura.

“See? There’s the sun, and the trees, and your sister’s right here. It’s all right there. All real.”

The top of the frame craned its neck towards the light. The rest of the body started to teeter as it moved further away

“Shh-shh-shh-” he gave the machine a gentle pat, doubling as a way to keep it from knocking itself over. “It’s alright, big guy. I’ve got you. ‘m not good at this whole ‘comfort’ thing, but I’m here. Delilah ‘n me, we’re here.”

It seemed to turn and face him. Slowly, cautiously, the metal sphere pushed against his hand. Axl let it settle against his arm and slide down into his lap. He pet it again in slow strokes

“See? Just me. You know me. I’ve got you. You’re gonna be alright.”

The bedframe gave a brassy warble. Something opaque and dark oozed from its one eye socket.

Delilah practically threw aside her monitor to scramble over to her brother's side. She scooped up one of his broken hands and held it to her face, which had already become as wet as his.

“Romeo…I’m so, so sorry…”

The three sat in tranquil silence. Abandoned on the ground, Delilah’s computer offered one more reply.

01001001 01000110 01001111 01010010 01000111 01001001 01010110 01000101 01011001 01001111 01010101

#ask #guilty gear #bedman #delilah #axl low #frog writes

28 notes · View notes