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Fandom: Shane Acker's 9
Word count: 2,235
Focus: 2 and 5 (implied pairing, but nothing that can't be read as friendship)
Summary: 5 is afraid of every shadow, thinking that a machine has found him. 2 is worried that the group is drifting apart, leaving everyone alone. But it is possible that these two can work through their fears together.
Notes: This was written in a gift exchange, which I was ridiculously late for. My secret buddy was Socks-And-Notebooks, and she since 2x5 is her OTP, I decided to write up some fluff for her gift. Despite the fact that this was nearly two months late (I also have a vid to make as an extra gift) Socks seemed happy with it, which made me happy in return.
The noises of war had quieted considerably over the time Two and his kind spent in the cathedral. They had occasionally seen humans taking shelter within the building’s walls, but the people soon left again to continue fighting. The humans never noticed the group of dolls watching them from the shadows and aside from the memories of these watchers, they left virtually no clues of their presence.
It was funny, in a sort of sad way, how Two noticed the explosions and other sounds the less they came, as if he’d become used to the horror and blocked it out, only to be reminded anew of it whenever he thought it had finished. Now, whenever there was a sound Two would look up from his work and to the windows, but of course he couldn’t see anything. The cathedral windows were too high to show the fighting on the ground, and the sky forever remained untouched by all that happened below it.
But the small group of dolls were not so lucky or invulnerable. Six became more and more obsessed with drawing unfinished symbols from his mind and wanting to find whatever his ink splatters were supposed to represent. One enforced the rule of how no one was to leave, which only seemed to spur Six into wanting to find his “source” more, and neither Two nor the twins had ever seen what it was he was looking for. Three and Four appeared unfazed by the noise outside of their shelter, and skittered around every office and spare room of the place looking for books and paper to keep for themselves. While they still communicated with the rest of the group, they slowly drifted apart from others and spent every minute by each other’s side.
One and Seven caused the most trouble, acting as if they couldn’t set foot in the same room together without fighting. It always started the same way: Seven would say something about him keeping them prisoners, and then One would go on about how dangerous it was, using Five as an example. Then Seven started accusing One of being a coward and abandoning his comrades when they most needed them. From there they would insult each other with anything they felt hadn’t been said before, until Seven either left the area or was thrown out by Eight, who could lift her as if she weighed nothing. Luckily the only thing hurt from these removals was Seven’s pride, but she was always in a foul mood for the rest of the day, Oftentimes she would sneak out to practise using the weapon she’d found weeks ago, which annoyed One, and the cycle would start over again.
And poor Five, already naturally nervous, had no idea how to handle arguments he was sure he was the cause of. Two had been nearby setting up a medical ward when Five had once apologized to Seven for causing so much trouble, but she wouldn’t allow him to finish speaking.
“You need to stand up for yourself!” she told him, causing him to flinch at her sudden volume. “I know you could be brave if you tried, but instead you just let people walk all over you.”
Five looked down at his hands, fidgeting as Seven stared him down. “Well, it’s just... uh... I--”
“Oh, forget it. I’m going outside. Don’t tell anyone where I am, okay?”
Then, with a quick smile to reassure him she wasn’t as mad as she sounded, she ran off and left. Five stared after her for a moment before sighing and looking at his hands
Two didn’t like seeing the boy so down, so he called out cheerfully, “It should be easy enough to keep her location a secret since we don’t know where she’s going.”
Five’s head snapped up, his shoulders tensed until realized it was only Two.
“Y..yes, I guess so.”
Silence filled the sanctuary again, and Two made another attempt to cheer Five up. He figured the best option was to try and get his younger companion talking, no matter how long that took.
“I was wondering if you’d like to help me. It’s a lot to set up by myself.”
Five hesitated, as if unsure if the invitation had really been given, but then came over and after being told what to do by Two he began to organize the odds and ends into thimbles. When one was filled, he would set it against the wall, and start again. He still stayed quiet, and Two tried to start small talk again.
“I haven’t seen much of you these days. How have you been doing?”
“I’ve been all right.”
“Done anything of interest?”
“Not really.”
Clearly this wasn’t going to work so easily.
“Well, almost everyone has something that they do to pass the time.” Two began untangling a long string of small lights he’d found among ruined houses as he talked. “Three and Four like to read anything they find, and even One and Eight have their own hobbies and duties to take care of. If you don’t want to get bored, I suppose you could join Seven in her escapades, or--”
Five immediately shook his head. “I’m not interested in fighting.”
Two looked over at Five and saw his hands shaking, his remaining optic rapidly shuttering open and closed. He crossed the gap between them, ignoring his previous task, and put a hand on the younger’s shoulder. “What’s wrong?” Five didn’t answer, instead looked away from him. “Tell me what has you so scared.”
Five opened his mouth to speak, but his voice caught on the beginning of the word “Everything.”
Now it was Two’s turn to be silent. He wanted to move in front of Five, put his hands on both shoulders and tell him that he had no reason to be scared anymore. But he knew that wouldn’t work, and felt it would just make Five more anxious, despite how Two had to be the least intimidating of the group.
He spotted the other pair to the roller-skates he had found, this one cleaned off for some other use he planned to find later.
“Here, we can sit down.” Two moved to take Five’s hand in his own, gently pulling him in the direction of the skate. Two sat first, Five following the hand that lead him soon after.
Now side by side, Five folded his hands in front of him, and kept talking. “I’m not interested in anything, to be honest. I’ve tried, and Six sometimes asks me to draw with him, but I just can’t.” Now all the words Five had kept within him came tumbling out, landing threadbare on the floor. “Whenever I sit still, I start feeling like I have to get moving again before something catches me. And I can’t get any rest either. I keep remembering, but it’s never quite the same. For some reason the memories are warped in my head and come out differently, but I still can’t sleep when they’re gone.”
Two mulled over these confessions, carefully picking up and examining each sentence. He was a patient man, and knew fixing things took time, and thought. He keeps remembering, Two said to himself. But remembering what? And how could it change if it’s his memory? Unless...
“Dreams, then. You have dreams about what happened to you?”
Five shrugged, eye still to the floor. “I’m not sure. I think that describes it best, but dreaming is something humans do, and we’re not human.”
“Most have theorized that people- anyone who lives and thinks for themselves, not just humans- dream because their mind never stops, and dreams are a medley of their thoughts and emotions from the day.” He stopped for a moment to look at Five, leaning over to see his face. “You must think about that day a lot, then.”
And in one word, one simple syllable, Five was able to fill it with all the doubts he had in himself. “Yes.”
Two decided to go with the first thing that came to mind. It may have been stupid, but it was instinct, and Two trusted it.
“I know that this sounds painfully obvious, and probably doesn’t help much, but that day is over. The machines are dying off, and they’re not going to find you here. You’re safe now.”
Five made a small “hm” noise deep within himself, but said nothing. Whether he was trying to find some truth in Two’s words, or thinking of how useless they were, Two had no idea.
The silence was broken as Five slid off the skate, saying they should get back to work. As they continued to organize, Two would chat about anything that crossed his mind, and Five would acknowledge that he’d heard, but Two knew that the time for confessions had passed.
It only took a few minutes for them to finish, and Five said he was going to see if Seven had returned. He was almost past the cloth that served as a door before he turned back.
“I forgot to properly thank you. For before and everything.”
“For the eyepatch? There isn’t a need to thank me, since I couldn’t actually fix anything”
“No, I didn’t mean that. Thank you.”
And then the cloth fell from Five’s receding hand, and he disappeared from view. Listening to Five’s fading footsteps, Two still felt the need to do something, and looked around the beginnings of his workshop for inspiration of any kind. Then an idea struck him, and he began to pull objects from their place and pile them up on the empty skate.
===
He entered the office taken by Three and Four, knocking on the door frame to announce his presence. Two identical heads popped up from behind a stack of books at the back of the room. Three was the first to rush over to him, Four still seemed reluctant to leave their project alone just yet.
Two said hello to both of them, and they shook his hands enthusiastically in return. Now with their undivided attention on him, Two began, “I have an idea for a project, but I need references to make it work properly. I was wondering if you two had anything?”
They both cocked their heads to the side- Three’s to right, Four’s to the left- and after Two described his plan to them, they grinned and set to pulling books out of the lines they’d organized. Soon they had given Two more than he had expected, and from the way they pointed from the pages to themselves, Two understood that they wanted to help him. As the three of them began planning, Two couldn’t help but smile to himself. This small band of people he’d come to know as his family and friends wasn’t to drift apart so easily after all. Not if he had anything to say about it, at least.
===
Two found Five on the second floor of the chapel and brought him back to the workshop, saying he had something to show him. As soon as he parted the curtain entrance, Three and Four enthusiastically held out the gift to him, holding it between themselves as best they could. This was somewhat difficult, as the gift was made for only one person, and they were trying to share it. Five stared at it bemused, before saying, “I don’t understand. It’s a key, but what are all those things on it?”
Two answered him as Four pushed the modified wind-up key into Five’s hands. “It’s a crossbow for you. These two helped a lot in making it, I only had the materials before they showed me a book on weapons.” At this, the twins shook their heads and pointed to their elder, putting all the credit back on him. “We’ll show you how to use it of course. It’s not really that hard, I think. The humans would use the body to aim with, close an eye to focus and then fire.” The twins nodded, and Five continued to look over his gift.
“How did you make this?”
“It was easier than I thought, since we had an example in front of us, but it’s still hard to explain without wasting too much of your time.”
“No, no I have time! Could you make other things like this too?”
“With some work, yes.”
“Can you show me?”
===
The nightmares didn’t go away quickly. Life wasn’t as simple as a fairy tale, where one thing helped rid a person of their prejudices and fears. But whenever Five woke from a shock, he would grip the crossbow, and tell himself he had a weapon, he was not defenseless. Two had made this just for him, to protect him if he ever found himself alone. And with those thoughts in his head, he would lay back down, thinking of how he’d learned to load the bow in a flash and he was getting better and better at hitting his targets in practise. Stray noises through the air still startled him, but he could handle them now. Even if it was inadvertently, he knew someone cared about him as he was now, and would be there to protect him.
Word count: 2,235
Focus: 2 and 5 (implied pairing, but nothing that can't be read as friendship)
Summary: 5 is afraid of every shadow, thinking that a machine has found him. 2 is worried that the group is drifting apart, leaving everyone alone. But it is possible that these two can work through their fears together.
Notes: This was written in a gift exchange, which I was ridiculously late for. My secret buddy was Socks-And-Notebooks, and she since 2x5 is her OTP, I decided to write up some fluff for her gift. Despite the fact that this was nearly two months late (I also have a vid to make as an extra gift) Socks seemed happy with it, which made me happy in return.
The noises of war had quieted considerably over the time Two and his kind spent in the cathedral. They had occasionally seen humans taking shelter within the building’s walls, but the people soon left again to continue fighting. The humans never noticed the group of dolls watching them from the shadows and aside from the memories of these watchers, they left virtually no clues of their presence.
It was funny, in a sort of sad way, how Two noticed the explosions and other sounds the less they came, as if he’d become used to the horror and blocked it out, only to be reminded anew of it whenever he thought it had finished. Now, whenever there was a sound Two would look up from his work and to the windows, but of course he couldn’t see anything. The cathedral windows were too high to show the fighting on the ground, and the sky forever remained untouched by all that happened below it.
But the small group of dolls were not so lucky or invulnerable. Six became more and more obsessed with drawing unfinished symbols from his mind and wanting to find whatever his ink splatters were supposed to represent. One enforced the rule of how no one was to leave, which only seemed to spur Six into wanting to find his “source” more, and neither Two nor the twins had ever seen what it was he was looking for. Three and Four appeared unfazed by the noise outside of their shelter, and skittered around every office and spare room of the place looking for books and paper to keep for themselves. While they still communicated with the rest of the group, they slowly drifted apart from others and spent every minute by each other’s side.
One and Seven caused the most trouble, acting as if they couldn’t set foot in the same room together without fighting. It always started the same way: Seven would say something about him keeping them prisoners, and then One would go on about how dangerous it was, using Five as an example. Then Seven started accusing One of being a coward and abandoning his comrades when they most needed them. From there they would insult each other with anything they felt hadn’t been said before, until Seven either left the area or was thrown out by Eight, who could lift her as if she weighed nothing. Luckily the only thing hurt from these removals was Seven’s pride, but she was always in a foul mood for the rest of the day, Oftentimes she would sneak out to practise using the weapon she’d found weeks ago, which annoyed One, and the cycle would start over again.
And poor Five, already naturally nervous, had no idea how to handle arguments he was sure he was the cause of. Two had been nearby setting up a medical ward when Five had once apologized to Seven for causing so much trouble, but she wouldn’t allow him to finish speaking.
“You need to stand up for yourself!” she told him, causing him to flinch at her sudden volume. “I know you could be brave if you tried, but instead you just let people walk all over you.”
Five looked down at his hands, fidgeting as Seven stared him down. “Well, it’s just... uh... I--”
“Oh, forget it. I’m going outside. Don’t tell anyone where I am, okay?”
Then, with a quick smile to reassure him she wasn’t as mad as she sounded, she ran off and left. Five stared after her for a moment before sighing and looking at his hands
Two didn’t like seeing the boy so down, so he called out cheerfully, “It should be easy enough to keep her location a secret since we don’t know where she’s going.”
Five’s head snapped up, his shoulders tensed until realized it was only Two.
“Y..yes, I guess so.”
Silence filled the sanctuary again, and Two made another attempt to cheer Five up. He figured the best option was to try and get his younger companion talking, no matter how long that took.
“I was wondering if you’d like to help me. It’s a lot to set up by myself.”
Five hesitated, as if unsure if the invitation had really been given, but then came over and after being told what to do by Two he began to organize the odds and ends into thimbles. When one was filled, he would set it against the wall, and start again. He still stayed quiet, and Two tried to start small talk again.
“I haven’t seen much of you these days. How have you been doing?”
“I’ve been all right.”
“Done anything of interest?”
“Not really.”
Clearly this wasn’t going to work so easily.
“Well, almost everyone has something that they do to pass the time.” Two began untangling a long string of small lights he’d found among ruined houses as he talked. “Three and Four like to read anything they find, and even One and Eight have their own hobbies and duties to take care of. If you don’t want to get bored, I suppose you could join Seven in her escapades, or--”
Five immediately shook his head. “I’m not interested in fighting.”
Two looked over at Five and saw his hands shaking, his remaining optic rapidly shuttering open and closed. He crossed the gap between them, ignoring his previous task, and put a hand on the younger’s shoulder. “What’s wrong?” Five didn’t answer, instead looked away from him. “Tell me what has you so scared.”
Five opened his mouth to speak, but his voice caught on the beginning of the word “Everything.”
Now it was Two’s turn to be silent. He wanted to move in front of Five, put his hands on both shoulders and tell him that he had no reason to be scared anymore. But he knew that wouldn’t work, and felt it would just make Five more anxious, despite how Two had to be the least intimidating of the group.
He spotted the other pair to the roller-skates he had found, this one cleaned off for some other use he planned to find later.
“Here, we can sit down.” Two moved to take Five’s hand in his own, gently pulling him in the direction of the skate. Two sat first, Five following the hand that lead him soon after.
Now side by side, Five folded his hands in front of him, and kept talking. “I’m not interested in anything, to be honest. I’ve tried, and Six sometimes asks me to draw with him, but I just can’t.” Now all the words Five had kept within him came tumbling out, landing threadbare on the floor. “Whenever I sit still, I start feeling like I have to get moving again before something catches me. And I can’t get any rest either. I keep remembering, but it’s never quite the same. For some reason the memories are warped in my head and come out differently, but I still can’t sleep when they’re gone.”
Two mulled over these confessions, carefully picking up and examining each sentence. He was a patient man, and knew fixing things took time, and thought. He keeps remembering, Two said to himself. But remembering what? And how could it change if it’s his memory? Unless...
“Dreams, then. You have dreams about what happened to you?”
Five shrugged, eye still to the floor. “I’m not sure. I think that describes it best, but dreaming is something humans do, and we’re not human.”
“Most have theorized that people- anyone who lives and thinks for themselves, not just humans- dream because their mind never stops, and dreams are a medley of their thoughts and emotions from the day.” He stopped for a moment to look at Five, leaning over to see his face. “You must think about that day a lot, then.”
And in one word, one simple syllable, Five was able to fill it with all the doubts he had in himself. “Yes.”
Two decided to go with the first thing that came to mind. It may have been stupid, but it was instinct, and Two trusted it.
“I know that this sounds painfully obvious, and probably doesn’t help much, but that day is over. The machines are dying off, and they’re not going to find you here. You’re safe now.”
Five made a small “hm” noise deep within himself, but said nothing. Whether he was trying to find some truth in Two’s words, or thinking of how useless they were, Two had no idea.
The silence was broken as Five slid off the skate, saying they should get back to work. As they continued to organize, Two would chat about anything that crossed his mind, and Five would acknowledge that he’d heard, but Two knew that the time for confessions had passed.
It only took a few minutes for them to finish, and Five said he was going to see if Seven had returned. He was almost past the cloth that served as a door before he turned back.
“I forgot to properly thank you. For before and everything.”
“For the eyepatch? There isn’t a need to thank me, since I couldn’t actually fix anything”
“No, I didn’t mean that. Thank you.”
And then the cloth fell from Five’s receding hand, and he disappeared from view. Listening to Five’s fading footsteps, Two still felt the need to do something, and looked around the beginnings of his workshop for inspiration of any kind. Then an idea struck him, and he began to pull objects from their place and pile them up on the empty skate.
===
He entered the office taken by Three and Four, knocking on the door frame to announce his presence. Two identical heads popped up from behind a stack of books at the back of the room. Three was the first to rush over to him, Four still seemed reluctant to leave their project alone just yet.
Two said hello to both of them, and they shook his hands enthusiastically in return. Now with their undivided attention on him, Two began, “I have an idea for a project, but I need references to make it work properly. I was wondering if you two had anything?”
They both cocked their heads to the side- Three’s to right, Four’s to the left- and after Two described his plan to them, they grinned and set to pulling books out of the lines they’d organized. Soon they had given Two more than he had expected, and from the way they pointed from the pages to themselves, Two understood that they wanted to help him. As the three of them began planning, Two couldn’t help but smile to himself. This small band of people he’d come to know as his family and friends wasn’t to drift apart so easily after all. Not if he had anything to say about it, at least.
===
Two found Five on the second floor of the chapel and brought him back to the workshop, saying he had something to show him. As soon as he parted the curtain entrance, Three and Four enthusiastically held out the gift to him, holding it between themselves as best they could. This was somewhat difficult, as the gift was made for only one person, and they were trying to share it. Five stared at it bemused, before saying, “I don’t understand. It’s a key, but what are all those things on it?”
Two answered him as Four pushed the modified wind-up key into Five’s hands. “It’s a crossbow for you. These two helped a lot in making it, I only had the materials before they showed me a book on weapons.” At this, the twins shook their heads and pointed to their elder, putting all the credit back on him. “We’ll show you how to use it of course. It’s not really that hard, I think. The humans would use the body to aim with, close an eye to focus and then fire.” The twins nodded, and Five continued to look over his gift.
“How did you make this?”
“It was easier than I thought, since we had an example in front of us, but it’s still hard to explain without wasting too much of your time.”
“No, no I have time! Could you make other things like this too?”
“With some work, yes.”
“Can you show me?”
===
The nightmares didn’t go away quickly. Life wasn’t as simple as a fairy tale, where one thing helped rid a person of their prejudices and fears. But whenever Five woke from a shock, he would grip the crossbow, and tell himself he had a weapon, he was not defenseless. Two had made this just for him, to protect him if he ever found himself alone. And with those thoughts in his head, he would lay back down, thinking of how he’d learned to load the bow in a flash and he was getting better and better at hitting his targets in practise. Stray noises through the air still startled him, but he could handle them now. Even if it was inadvertently, he knew someone cared about him as he was now, and would be there to protect him.
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