Which Flesh is Your Flesh?

Chapter 17

Raven wasn’t sure what they were going to do now. He and Iguazu had crossed a threshold that Raven had stood on the edge of for a long time. Being the last one still standing when the Ice Worm went down had propelled him into the doorway, but he’d stubbornly braced his hands against the door frame to prevent himself from being forced through. Iguazu, and whichever one of the dead men had come up with that stupid stunt, had tackled him through, the dead men ensuring their places in the footnotes of his legend, and Iguazu finally beginning his own. Raven didn’t want to have a legend. He just wanted to be sitting on a couch somewhere playing with Iguazu’s hair while the other pilot nodded off in his lap.

Of course that couldn’t happen. Not now and not ever. The version of him that a calm life would’ve been possible for had been dead long before they had even met. By the time they had started this fucked up approximation of dating there were already whispers on the wind about The Worm Killer, The only G13 that’s lived this long, the false Raven more dangerous than the real thing. He’d met the real thing, he was pretty sure he’d killed the real thing. There wasn’t a version of events where he lived in comfortable obscurity AND he held Iguazu in his arms.

He couldn’t say there weren’t benefits to how things had shaken out. As fucked up as it was, he didn’t mind how he looked now. It was helpful to be further from the dead man. The patchwork of different tones of skin and metal made it harder for him to recognize that old face in his own. That was better. It was easier to accept what he was when he wasn’t comparing himself to someone he only half remembered being. He was healing up alright, his bones fusing around the pins of his exoskeleton and the sutures forming purplish ley lines across his skin, marking the places where it had been cut before it was ripped off of him. His face definitely looked a little off. It was still bruised greenish yellow and slightly swollen, but he knew it would look a little better once it had healed. He even had a few tiny bristles of hair poking up from his scalp. It used to be black, but it was coming back shock white, probably from all the fucking stress. Well, he couldn’t say it didn’t look cool, even if he looked like more of a Magpie than a Raven.

His exoskeleton didn’t feel separate from him anymore. It wasn’t, his bones had healed around it, removing the damn thing would be like ripping out his spine. He liked it that way. If he hadn’t had a year of forced practice he probably wouldn’t have felt the same, but he was used to its strengths and limitations by now. If anything he had been getting more and more frustrated lately with how weak he was outside of it. That gap in his self perception was a lot harder to bridge when he’d gotten accustomed to having the load capacity of a small forklift. He wasn’t getting anywhere close to that just by working out.

He’d fully come to terms with it now. He couldn’t go back, all there was was forward.

Iguazu watched as Raven packed up Snail’s electronics, and addressed the box to Arquebus’s consumer electronics recycling program.

“That’s twisted.”

“They’ll check it for batteries before it goes to the smelter. Once they realize it’s human remains they won’t melt them.”

“Sure, but it’s still fucked up to send somebody human remains in the fucking mail.”

Raven raised an eyebrow.

“At least I mean it as a threat.”

“I think my mood regulator might’ve been busted.” Iguazu lied.

“Mhm,” Raven responded, rolling his eyes.

“It’s a serious problem!”

“I know it’s a problem, but that doesn’t mean you aren’t a shit liar.” Raven closed it with two layers of packing tape.

“What do you mean I’m a shit liar?”

“You always reply too fast. You’ve got a good poker face, but you have to learn when it’s better to just shut the fuck up.”

“I do?” Iguazu draped himself over Raven’s shoulders, letting his whole weight rest on him. “How about you make me?”

“Hm.” Raven pulled a strip of packing tape away from the roll, the sound of it made Iguazu shiver. “Alright.”

Raven took Iguazu back to his room. It was still depressingly barren, but he’d at least changed his sheets to fabric instead of plastic. He had Iguazu lay down on the bed before taping his hands to the bed posts, his ankles to his thighs and finally taping his mouth shut.

“You remember how to change the colors on your LEDs right?” Iguazu cycled his eyes and hair through the full spectrum like an overgrown gaming pc before settling back to teal. “Good.” Raven popped open the panel in the center of his chest and Iguazu’s fans started whirring louder. “Still good?”

He didn’t answer, equally horrified and mesmerized by what he looked like under the hood. Blood ran through his body in thick tubes, his artificial heart pumping it to his brain as his artificial lungs filled it with oxygen pulled in from the spiracles positioned on the sides of his chassis. Eerily clean bone was implanted inside of him, fresh blood cycling out of plastic tubes implanted in the marrow. His artificial heart rate stayed steady even as his mind reeled. Raven forced Iguazu to look at him.

“Are you still good?” Iguazu nodded. “Okay. Make sure you tell me if that changes alright?” He nodded again, shutting his eyes tightly as Raven ran his hands along the inside of his paneling.

“Feels interesting doesn’t it?” Raven asked as his fingers brushed the underside of his haptic sensors. Iguazu tore his hands free from the tape as he arched with the sensation. Raven’s eyes narrowed slightly.

“Come on, Iguazu.” He forced his hands back down again. “You can stay still for me can’t you?” He dug his fingers into Iguazu’s sensors and he moaned through the tape, but he forced his hands to stay still. “That’s a good boy.” Raven bound his hands again. “Now stay.” Iguazu gripped the bed frame hard to stop himself from moving. He wasn’t sure if it was agony or ecstasy that he was feeling. His brain struggled to reconcile the visual of Raven, his rough hands in his guts, both too mechanical and too biological at the same time, the horror he wanted to feel as he watched, and the way those hands paused as they brushed each wire, so intimately familiar with every inch of him knowing just where to tug to make his sensor arrays explode with uninterpretably intense data. His fans kicked into overdrive as Raven removed his neck panels, wire and plastic tubing snaked up to his brain, the column of motors that made up his spine was studded with pieces of vertebrae.

“Beautiful.” Raven spoke with quiet reverence as he set the plates aside. Then he ran his fingers along Iguazu’s spinal column and he had to fight not to break out of the tape again. Raven stood up for a moment to retrieve his dick. He grabbed it fairly quickly, but before he turned back his eyes lingered for a long moment on the data transfer cable on his desk. He picked it up, coiling it in his hands for a moment before returning to bed.

“Hey Iguazu, are you down to try something crazy?” He locked his cock into place as he thumbed the edge of the connector. Iguazu switched his LED display color to green and Raven smiled like a shark. Carefully, he felt at the back of his neck before inserting the cable, then he gently lifted Iguazu’s head, plugging the other end into the port embedded in his spine.

“Hold tight this is going to be a little disorienting.” Suddenly Iguazu felt warm metal beneath his hands, though he still felt cold hands on his metal. His hands moved without his input, straightening the cable he watched his own face, eyes darting to the fiber optic cables of his hair and the lights inside of his working eye, at the same time he watched Raven’s eyes as they darted back and forth, searching his face for any changes in his expression. He felt concerned that his partner was suffering in silence and complete trust in the man that had his hands in his guts.

“Fuck,” he felt himself curse, knowing that it was really Raven, but still feeling it like the words came from his own mouth. “You really feel that way?”

There wasn’t a point to lying when he was already in this deep. Iguazu nodded.

He felt a swell of emotion, strong enough that he felt like he was going to cry.

“You shouldn’t trust me so much.” He caressed his bones making him shiver. “But I’m glad you do. I’m really really glad you do.” He kissed his silvery cheek, the wetness of his tears cold against his face. He wasn’t sure which of them was crying, maybe it was both of them. Maybe it didn’t really matter.

He felt his cock enter his hole, silicon on silicon, what should be inanimate responding to the feeling of someone inside of him, to the feeling of someone being inside him. His hands were gentle on his chassis, his chassis was delicate beneath his hands. He was loved, he was loved, the feeling bouncing back between them so strong it ached. Neither was accustomed to it. To love and be loved, despite the hurt, despite the wounds they’d carved into each other, that they'd likely carve into each other in the future, had seemed impossible, both sure that the other couldn’t possibly forgive him for what he’d done, resigned to be a punching bag if nothing else. But, somehow, despite everything, it was mutual. At this point that practically seemed like a miracle.Neither of them lasted long. The cascading feedback pushed both of them over the edge.
He gently closed the panel in his chest before initiating the disconnect. Iguazu started to come down from the high a bit as their minds disentangled. Raven pulled the tape from his mouth and Igauzu stretched his jaw, moving his mandibles around to make sure nothing had been bent out of shape.

“You know, I’ve been thinking.” Raven said as he slipped Iguazu’s neck panels back into place.

“About what?”

“I’ve got contacts in the RLF. I don’t know how long it’ll be safe for us to stay here given all the shit that’s gone down, and it’s somewhere to go.”

“I’ve killed a lot of their fighters,” Iguazu warned.

“So have I,” Raven replied. “You’ve got a better excuse than I do for it.”

“Fuck it why the hell not?”

“Good for you, Raven! I’m glad you decided to join the fight!”

Iguazu nearly jumped off of the bed.

“Who the fuck is that?”

“Oh good, you finally got coral burn in. Meet my co-pilot.”

A year later Raven opened his door to see a kid on his front step. That was unusual, he was under the impression most of the kids around the town the RLF had set up camp in were afraid of him. Not that he really could blame them. This kid did seem a little bit afraid, her eyes went wide the second he opened the door.

“Can I help you?” He asked.

“Uncle Rusty said you’re good at fixing things.”

Raven pinched the bridge of his nose. Fucking Rusty. It was one in the goddamn morning.

“Depends what it is.”

“My brother’s arm is broken.”

“I’m sorry, kid. I’m a mechanic, that’s not something I can fix.” he started to close the door

“It’s not a real arm, it’s a proseesis!”

“Prosthesis?”

“Yeah, a robot arm! He got hurt in the factory!”

Raven sighed.

“One second kid, let me just get my tools.”

The kid’s brother was still a kid himself. He couldn’t have been older than seventeen, but a jagged starburst of a scar covered his right shoulder. He had a fairly simple prosthetic arm, just a claw grip without haptic sensors or sensory nerve hookups. Though crude, that type tended to be fairly reliable, so Raven was having a hard time understanding why this kid’s was thrashing around like an angry snake, clearly outside of his control. He could see why he’d been called. Two men were trying to hold him down, but they were already bruised from the battering the arm had given him. Raven motioned for them to step aside and they did, letting the guy with the exoskeleton protecting him take the hits. He grabbed the kid’s arm and held it down by the wrist so that he couldn’t get grabbed by the claws, and then flipped open the access panel in the underside of his upper arm to force a shut down. The boy stared at him with wide frightened eyes, sweat dripping from his forehead from the thrashing.

“You want to tell me what you tried to do to this thing? It’ll make it a lot easier on all of us.” The kid tried to protest but one of the men cut him off. He was bruised fairly badly, but behind that he looked fairly similar to the kid, he was probably his father.

“Tell us what you did, Petros,” He sounded tired. The fact that he didn’t even bother to defend his son made it clear that this was a fairly regular occurrence.

“I tried to increase the generator output.”

“So you swapped out the transistors? You used one that wasn’t compatible and it confused the signals to your arm.” Raven turned to the kid’s father. “I’m going to need more specialized tools than what I brought with me. I can take him back to my place for repairs or you can wait until the RLF mechanic team starts work in the morning.”

The boy’s father glanced sympathetically at the bolts that studded the skin of Raven’s arm, the wounds long healed. Goddamn it.

“If Rusty trusts you that’s good enough for me.”

Raven and the kid glanced at each other warily.

“You’re not going to ask me why I did it?” The boy grumbled on their way back to Raven’s. His arm hung limply at his side but he carried the weight like he was used to it.

“No, it's none of my business. I’m a mechanic not a psychologist. I just need to know what you broke, not why you broke it.”

The kid glanced at him before looking away.

“You’re Raven, right?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re different than I thought you’d be.”

“How so.”

“I’ve heard the stories.”

“So what, did you think I was going to show up with a cape and a ray gun?”

The kid’s eyes darted to his chainsaw.

“Not exactly.”

“You think Rusty would let an ax murderer hang around town? You seem like a smart kid, think for two seconds.”

Raven attached his tool bag onto the carabiner hooked into his belt loop before fiddling with his keys. He cursed, finally turning on his flashlight so that he could see them better in the darkness. Then he unlocked the door to his and Iguazu’s place.

Raven had built it largely himself. Having an AC to do the lifting made things easier, especially when it came to digging out the basement. Iguazu had insisted on decorating for some reason, but it was still fairly spartan. Most of their furniture was made from pine wood, the trees were abundant here in Rubicon 3’s northern regions. Raven had built most of it, but Iguazu had shown a flair for ornamental carving that had livened up Raven’s more minimalist tendencies. Most of the textiles were Rubiconian made wool and mealworm leather or repurposed canvas and nylon from military uniforms. Anything upholstered was stuffed with pine needles. The whole house smelled like a Christmas tree farm, but at least it didn’t smell like blood.

He tossed his keys into the paint can they kept by the door and took off his shoes. Then he stared at the kid expectantly until he bent down and undid the Velcro straps of his own boots. Once the snow covered boots were quarantined to the space right in front of the door, Raven gestured for the kid to follow him down stairs.

He had the kid lay his arm on his work bench and popped open the panel on his arm again.

“You might feel a little discomfort.”

“Like the nerve uplink?” The kid clenched his good hand.

“Like getting a reflex test. You might feel a phantom movement.” Raven reassured him, before beginning to desolder the bad transistor.

The kid’s arm twitched, the claws at the end of it sliding shut as Raven removed it and the kid grimaced. Raven went through his supplies until he found a replacement that would work and then soldered it into place. Then, he picked up a hand mirror and angled it until the kid could see the inside of his arm.

“You see this here?” He indicated a small dip switch on the board for his arm’s motor systems. “This is how you actually adjust the force you can output. Right now it’s set for personal use, but you can bump it up into an industrial configuration if you need to. I don’t know what you’re trying to do, but make sure you practice with it first, you’re more likely to hurt yourself than whoever it is you plan on hurting if you don’t.”

The kid looked at him with suspicion.

“You were going to try it again weren’t you? It’s quicker for me to just tell you than to have to keep fixing the damn thing until you figure it out yourself.”

The kid started to say something but Raven put up his hands.

“Don’t tell me anything, I don't want to be charged as an accomplice.”

The kid opened and shut his claw, testing that it actually responded correctly.

“Thanks.” He still seemed uneasy, his eyes occasionally darting to one of Iguazu’s spare faceplates.

“Don’t mention it.”

After he sent the kid home Raven dragged himself back up stairs to bed. Iguazu already sat awake, glowing in the dark.

“What’s going on?” He asked.

“Nothing, just had to make a house call. Some kid tried to modify his arm and managed to bust it. It was a pretty easy fix.” He crawled back into bed, wood creaking beneath the weight of his frame.

“I’m surprised they called you this late.” Iguazu wrapped his arm back around him. “Almost sounds like an urban legend. Go to Raven’s house after midnight, knock three times and he’ll do minor repairs for you.”

Raven snorted, pulling the sheets back over them.

“Fuck off,” he replied fondly.