Oxytocin Neurotoxins

Link to article: Oxytocin Neurotoxins.

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We were made for each other. Made by the Foundation to…
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Oxytocin Neurotoxins by [[*user xexnoncores]]

Further context on the characters included in this tale: [[[SCP-9660]]] and [https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/everywhere-ny Everywhere, NY]
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And then there was silence.

Amitha Sanmugasunderam stiffens as the blood beneath her hands stills from a rolling boil. The steel apparatuses besides her shriek, and scream, but they too fall quiet as the sun sets on a mangled body halfway across the globe, splattered across a busy, aimless desert highway.

Normally, there is no time to think. Her job is a simple to-do list, handed down to her on high from the Overseers each and every day, through quintuple-encrypted terminals running on minced faebound spinal columns. Eliminate traitors, runaway assets, foundational liabilities.

But there is no one left. A new target has not been confirmed for the last twenty-four hours. Every screen in the room is blank.

Is something wrong?

Her panic room is designed for exclusion. Communication with the outside is not just forbidden, it is impossible. Not only had her handiwork designed its maze of beveled insulation, its outside hull was physically shifting on three-time using quantum physics she didn’t understand, coming from half-dimensions that didn’t exist.

That was Overseer Six’s doing. Amitha looks up to a series of large, round lights above what wants to be a door. Each is as green as liquid malachite, shining brightly like a manifesto.

If the first is red, then Six is dead. If two are red, then half of the council has perished.

All three, and she’s stuck inside of a locked room with no other exit except death.

Hey bodyguard Egret is quick to cleave these thoughts in two. She’s almost always in the same room with her.

“What’s wrong babygirl?”

Amitha says nothing. She wants only to hear her own metronomic heartbeat.

“Babygirl?” Egret doesn’t smile the way she usually does. It was impossible to keep a smile off her face most of the time, as if it was stitched in through a cruel desire by Six for the utmost compliance.

“Stop calling me that,” Amitha snaps.

Egret sighs, jumping up on a bed as barren as it is haphazardly made. The sheets are thin, the springs stiff as they need to be. She usually designates herself to sleeping on the floor, flitting between wakefulness and light rest—the ability to achieve REM sleep wasn’t a gift necessary to her duties.

“Okay babe.” Egret smiles a grin full of gnarled teeth, thick like knots at the bottom of a tree. Her expression glows akin to a smug kid with a piece of candy on their birthday.

“Stop.” Amitha huffs. “Know your place.”

//Know the place Six deigned you to,// she thinks, wondering if the Overseer would be proud of her for putting Egret down like that. She certainly had less than zero trouble making sure her experiments knew what position in the world her hands occupied.

Egret cocks her head with an opening jaw. “By your side?”

//Why do I even try to understand this beast?// Quickly, Amitha realizes that’s the first time she’s ever thought of Egret as less than her already strife-ridden station.

This isn’t unusual. Egret has made a game out of annoying Amitha during every moment she can possibly get away with: the downtimes of cantrip reversals, the wait for the first head cut of an alchemical distillation, the signing of a demon’s allegiance on soulbound parchment. All were silent, stolid moments that cut the thick, arduous concentration needed for her usual job details, whatever was required for her as Archmagus of the Foundation’s Sixth Throne.

There is no response from Amitha. Her chest is tightening; there should be something else here. Orders, mathematical statements, letters even. There was a time where a mass thaumic blackout meant Six had to personally transmute a piece of paper into the panic room; such a feat required the effort of no less than eighty-seven percent of the Foundation's leyline power, all because it had to be an exact copy. Six wanted it no other way.

How was she even managing, anyway? What was going on? Who was responsible for this? Was she putting them in their place for this high act of of treason?

Amitha stares at the floor and simply listens to the ambience. The the low, earthly rumble of wherever she must be, probably plugged down somewhere deep within the Earth. It //had// always been rather warm in here—

Egret waves her hand. “Hey, you’re looking like you a saw a ghost.”

Amitha responds without breaking a beat in the most flatlined voice she’s ever taken on. “The ghosts of No. 752-862-100T and 891-723-552C have long been reclaimed by Hell. There’s no trace of them on any corporeal trackers.”

“Yeah, I know how traitor markings work.” She blows a raspberry quickly and sticks her tongue out. “C’mon, babe, show me you’re alive in this boredom!”

Amitha’s nerves set themselves on fire.

“I said stop calling me that!”

Her voice echoes with thick, bronze stains of frustration against the walls. This may have been a singular room, but there was still enough space for words to drip from the ceiling.

“…I don’t understand you,” Amitha huffs quickly, as if she can correct herself. She //can// right herself though—she was standing when she yelled, and now she’s sitting.

And she’s right, without a single lie. Egret is an amalgamation in her mind, of free will, hideous smiles, viscera covered battle-stances. She took orders from the entire Overwatch Command and yet unlike Six’s other creations, she was firmly attached to the hip of someone without eternal youth.

The others of her Task Force had all been made and unmade multiple times. Most had lost more identities than brains, so why was she here? What made her special to retain who she called her self?

Was Six just…behind on getting to that? Maybe tomorrow Amitha will wake up and Egret will no longer exist as a nomenclative concept.

…How dare she doubt her work.

“It’s as simple as it comes,” Egret replies, unfazed. At least, that’s what Amitha thinks, even though she can see Egret’s grey eyes widening and cast to the floor.

“That you must insist on calling me childish names every time you refer to me?”

Amitha wonders for a moment what Six would think. If she would even care. Egret seemed lax to still her tongue in front of her maker on any sort of matter, but Amitha can’t really recall a time when she showed cutesy fluff through steel-toed expectations.

Soon, another thought wants to fall out Amitha’s mouth—//Were you made that way?//—but for some reason because of her tight chest, it does not come out.

“…I guess,” Egret replies plainly, coming down in her boisterous tone. She is no longer looking at Amitha, instead kneeling at a small crack in the metal floor she begins to pick at with unkempt nails.

What on earth is she feeling? Amitha has no idea how to treat Egret, even after all this time. There was the obvious gratefulness she had to feel for her saving her hide many a bloody time, and that, at least, Amitha felt as genuine.

But…

Looking upon her, upon her stapled together grey-washed skin that wants to ape the complex browns of teakwood, Amitha sees not a person but something elevated above a thing. She sees some one body tailored to the specification whims of a zealous Overseer creator with little regard to life or even the mere concept of the sanctity of it.

Amitha watches Egret scratch until her nails bleed. Until she pulls off a fingernail and flings it aside, albeit this time doing so away from Amitha’s line of sight, with a deeper bowed head.

“…Are you moping?” Amitha asks carefully, her tone of voice steadying for some kind of combat.

“Doesn’t really matter,” Egret replies. “We just don’t get much quiet time together, you know?”

Amitha sighs, shaking her head. “We don’t. And there's a good reason for that.”

“But it’s making your skin crawl,” Egret says with a bloody pointed finger.

Amitha stiffens. Egret cranes her gaze slowly over to her, smiling without any teeth.

“Gotcha. You hate this like you hate those MREs they feed you, yeah?”

“Egret, you’re not permitted to question the Foundation’s archmagus this way.”

“But I’m right, aren’t I? I…”

She stumbles on her words, biting her bottom lip with a tiny, needle-like upper canine.

“…I know you, Amitha.”

//No you don’t—// Amitha wants to spit.

But that doesn’t come out.

It doesn’t come out because…

Amitha stands again, looking at the lights and pressing her nails deep into her suit. They’re automatically trimmed by a special rune she applies before the one hour of sleep she gets each night, part of the same batch Six created specifically to minimize the time she needed to take care of herself. The routine is akin to a shower, teeth-brushing, clothes-washing; even shaving, which Amitha was always the most eager to complete. She didn’t feel like a person unless every part of her was completely hairless, smooth against the polyester of the suit she always wore 24/7.

…There’s something that makes her skin crawl thinking about all of that now. In comparison to Egret, to this body that didn’t particularly care about any of that and wasn’t obligated to. Maybe Six built the grossness in; if so, why? Why bring life into this world as a slobbering, fetid mess? With the outline of a human too, normally such a clean animal?

…Animals.

Amitha shudders.

//I am no animal,// she thinks.

//But neither is Egret,// something deep within her mind replies back. It’s a voice nestled somewhere not within her brain, but a branch of her consciousness made manifest by the neurons and glial cells running up and down stuffed to the brim with branded mathematical equation spells.

Silence. Amitha’s breathing is the only audible sound—Egret only needs to do that in times of combat to process cortisol, adrenaline, and norepinephrine.

…But wait, her chest is rising up and down without—

“You okay, uh—”

Amitha hand-waves her quickly. “Just call me whatever. It doesn’t matter anymore.”

Egret cocks her head. “Babe?”

“Yeah.”

“Honey?”

“Why not.”

Egret pauses for a moment, her pupils dilating before she puts a ripped sleeve hoodie over her mouth and giggles.

“Sweetie pie?”

Amitha freezes.

Egret does the same, looking away like a child caught red-handed.

“…That’s a little bit much,” Amitha replies stolidly, with a twang of nervousness buoying her voice.

There’s nothing left to do but ask the golden question crawling down her back this entire time.

“…Why?”

Egret says nothing. Amitha is realizing now she’s had her mouth closed for longer than must be comfortable for her. There’s so many teeth crammed within her jaw that her neutral expression flashed them just the smallest bit, like she had a massive weight pushing on everything.

Was that painful? If so, why? Six could have made a perfect being, but instead she resorted to something which couldn’t comfortably keep its mouth closed?

“…I dunno,” Egret says quietly. “…It feels right.”

“I’m your ward,” Amitha snips, but only slightly. Not enough to seriously injure, just the byproduct of her disbelief and a slowly boiling heart. “This isn’t normal, nor is it professional.”

“Do I //look// professional to you Amitha?” Egret turns her head to her and pulls her lips back to reveal a gaggle of teeth that drip with drool. She’s quick to wipe it off on her arm.

No answer. Egret shakes her head and begins picking at the floor again.

“…You can think I’m ugly, it’s okay. That’s normal, Six gets complaints about it all the time from the others like us.”

“I’ve never complained,” Amitha says flatly, but her voice wants to waver.

“Because you’re smarter than the rest,” Egret says with a half-laugh. “I think Six likes that about you—you just do, without question. But you have a will unlike the rest of the questioners.”

“Questioning shouldn’t be tolerated,” Amitha replies unerringly. “I’m doing no more than is required of my post.”

“True, but Six likes it when she doesn’t have to factor the human element of the obedience equation.”

Amitha shakes. Being read as hard as that—it’s putting puzzle pieces into place in her soul that she deliberately had kept separate until this moment.

This doesn’t even begin to compute, anyway. Six tolerated questions on orders? Her other subordinates //asked// things to her? God forbid if it was clarification. Six absolutely hated repeating herself, but no, it sounds like she doesn’t, or maybe if she does, it means, it means—

…No. Perhaps the others are simply stupider than her. There was a reason Amitha was the grand archmagus after all.

“At least she likes you,” Egret says, cutting the quiet in half again.

“Please stop talking,” Amitha asks, with enough force that she winces.

“Do I have to? I wanna talk to you more.”

“There’s a reason I don’t do that. I have a job that requires the utmost of concentration.”

“I like watching you work,” Egret says plainly, as if she’s thrown a cleaver at the wall and not recognized the act at all. Plainly enough and with such a softness that Amitha stumbles on her next words, even moreso her thoughts.

Then comes an epiphany as she looks to Six in her mind, tries to surject her into every logical possibility here.

“…You were made like this,” Amitha says with a pointed conviction. Now, Egret is the one who freezes, but quickly she gets up from the floor, not looking at Amitha.

Amitha keeps drilling her. “You were made to like me, because otherwise you’d be a risky asset. This isn’t real, your treatment of me is the output of some biological programming.”

“And if it is?”

Egret asks the question with such clarity and certainty that Amitha stares at her, expecting some kind of holy fire to begin burning around her as if to emphasize her point.

“It means you’re just some dog,” Amitha spits.

“You think I don’t know that?”

Amitha looks away. “I didn’t think you particularly cared.”

“The desire to protect you is woven into my skin, my brain, the muscles Six stuffed inside of me.”

“And it’s just a job, like mine.”

“But we both love what we do, don’t we?”

That word.

Amitha’s breath stops in her throat as her fingers tense and her mind begins screaming at her. It starts off first as whispers, but soon it is full on yelling, yelling at Egret that yes, yes, she loves her job, she loves realizing she’s the farthest thing away from a human that she’s ever been, someone denied the basic human activities that made people who they were, made their decay into old age and uselessness a boardwalk trip instead of an ever-looming impending sense of doom.

All she can think of now looking at Egret, her homunculus freak-of-nature bodyguard is how much she too resembles her conceptual silhouette. Amitha’s life was controlled down to the thumb—Six had installed runes that cut her hair for her and modified her nutritional state, traced sigils onto her panic room’s floors that perfectly moderated levels of oxytocin, dopamine, melatonin, all of that. Estrogen even—Amitha stopped having periods when she was promoted to sitting in a room all day killing people.

What was she supposed to feel about all of that? //How// was she supposed to feel—unfortunately, there was no time to panic because a new kill order could come any minute now. It would then be back to work, her blood pressure modulated and her heartbeat artificially steadied as she did her work.

Why is she even freaking out over this?

This is what she signed up for. What she gave up her mind and memories for.

…

//You’re Six’s dog too, you know.//

//No I’m not,// Amitha replies back.

//Just because you’re not fed slop like yours doesn’t mean that if Six asked, you’d bark.//

Silence. Amitha is totally still, every muscle in her body stiffening. In the dim red light, her dark skin shines dully with beads of sweat.

Egret turns around, eyes wide and lips parted. She kneels down by Amitha’s side, heavy combat pants rustling just loud enough to disrupt Amitha’s cascading spiral.

“Hey, what’s that look for?”

Amitha chokes back a sob. If she cries, Six will hear her. There’s probably some kind of submind tapeworm in Egret listening in on this entire conversation right now.

…But if that were true, where is it?

“Nothing.”

Egret shakes her head. “Tell me, please.”

Amitha does the same. “No. It would be contrary to my mission.”

She wipes her eyes and takes several deep breaths. It’s easy to return to her baseline with the sigils here, that was for sure.

But Egret’s wide eyes keep dragging her out, little by little.

“…Tell me. Please…Amitha.”

Amitha can tell she’s trying to resist using the pet names. And it looks painful for her.

Seven seconds. Seven seconds of pure, iron silence, nothing but stagnant air between the two until Amitha finally opens her mouth.

“…We’re both freaks of nature, aren’t we?”

Amitha wants to stand up and go to the bed. She’s reminded of one of the last memories she hadn’t overwritten in her mind for a spell—of being a kid, her body so frail and small, going to her bed to pout.

It tastes like wood. Like old, filthy, rotting wood meant for burning, for the worms, for the dirt beneath them hardening into bedrock that would be where her bones hung. It’s only a picture of her imprinted against some greasy, yellow light and colorful walls, but for some reason it matters now. For some reason it glows, and with an intense malice for the not just the destruction of its neighboring silhouettes, but for the something of something oaths filling her body, imprinted onto her lungs, liver, heart and stomach.

It should know better. It should know its place. She knew the memory was going to go eventually, but in this moment, she’d rather die than let that come to pass.

Would the child in her head be happy with how she turned out?

Egret does nothing but kneel besides Amitha and push a hand towards hers. It will need re-stitching soon; some of its bones are bent from who knows what.

“…Is that what’s been bothering you?”

Amitha says nothing. “I have only stumbled upon this conclusion now.”

“And you’re right, like you always are.” Egret is saying that as a compliment. “What do you wanna do about it?”

Amitha blinks. Tears still don’t come out, they can’t come out, she won’t let them.

Instead, she turns to Egret and begins speaking with a voice solidifying into stone.

“What do //you// do about it? You know you’re one of Six’s experiments.”

“Haha, you’re her pet math-magician.”

Amitha blinks, and realizes the pun all too quickly.

“Focus, Egret, focus! I’m…I'm serious. Please, tell me.”

“Do you actually wanna know, babygirl? Because they’ll be back to give you some new assignment any minute. This won’t matter soon.”

Amitha doesn’t mind the nickname now. She grabs Egret by the collar and pulls her in close. “Maybe so, but what if this happens again? This silence, this delay?”

“Just don’t think about i—”

“//Tell me//,” Amitha says. So forceful that Egret pulls back.

Quiet again. Egret looks up towards the ceiling, covered in small black shadow hands that emanate from cured fairy wings sewn into the top layers of this room. That was supposed to prevent electromagnetic waves from coming both in and out of this room.

“…I don't," she says quietly. The room seems to settle down after those words come out, from the wait that buoyed their delay.

“…What?” Amitha raises an eyebrow and lip. “You…You can’t be serious—”

“Look, we both know Six could kill and remake us at any time. It’s inevitable, she’s just like that.”

“So you’ve just given up on solving your own existential crises?” Amitha clicks her tongue and puts a head in her hands.

Egret laughs. It’s a wet laugh, hoarse with spit.

“‘Course not! I got you. And that…”

She quiets uncharacteristically again, scooting towards Amitha, eventually sitting tall beside her.

“…That keeps me going, even if it’s what hurts me.”

Amitha’s expression goes stone, doe-faced. In the low light of the room, green melts in with iron and weak whites, waltzing around what are brown eyes that anyone can get lost in, despite the dulling drain of life dripping out of them.

“…Egret, explain.”

Egret laughs. “I love when you get like that.”

“Like what?!” Amitha sounds exasperated, but it’s genuine self in this moment.

“Like a soldier,” Egret replies eagerly, smiling. “I love when you get to play pretend, because, well, you don’t play much, do you?”

“…Neither of us do,” Amitha says with a furrowed brow. “Get to your point please.”

“Babygirl, I hate when you get cross with me, as much as you’re right to hate me.”

Amitha shakes her head. “I…”

What is she going to say?

What…is the truth in all of this?

For the first time, Amitha considers saying something she thinks Egret wants to hear.

“…I don’t hate you,” Amitha voice trails. “I really don’t.”

Egret cocks her head. In this pallid light, her eyes too look…worthwhile. Charming, maybe? No, that’s not the word—but Amitha finds a value in those grey, bulbous things most definitely stitched to the back of her skull, knowing Six’s propensity for always wanting to make sure eyes were in place for her experiments.

“…Then what do you think of me? Because I care for you more than I think I know.”

Amitha raises an eyebrow. “More than you //think// you know?”

Egret stands. She turns around, her hoodie displaying that gaudy “EAT THE GOVERNMENT” iron-on fully and without shame. But soon, she turns around, and begins pacing around Amitha, without a sound to her footsteps as was normal for her ambushes.

Grace in brutality, in the tiger that stalks a deer.

“…Yeah,” Egret finally replies after a long contemplation. “I don’t know how much of what I think really belongs to me. Because of what Six…made me as.”

Amitha steals a glance at her, but quickly bows her head in solemn pity. Either Egret doesn’t notice, or she doesn’t care, as she keeps pacing the room.

“It’s not really supposed to bother me. And on a deep level, it doesn’t.”

A stop in her pacing. She throws a look over at Amitha then slouches facing a formless wall.

“And yet… I don’t know, when I think of you, suddenly I’m not a bodyguard, or a homunculus, I’m something entirely different I can’t understand, because, like, yeah sure, I’ve been programmed to get along with you, but does that make my //adoration// a sham?”

//Adoration?// Amitha’s eyes widen but she does not look at Egret.

For some reason, she wants to see Egret go farther. Higher, faster, and deeper. What is this equation Six has grown going to metastasize into? Will it be something she can recognize and use to her benefit? Will it be something considered an affront to the Council, a breach of boundaries of the implicit contract between Amitha and that which was created to protect her, nothing more?

…If this wasn’t intentional, then god, Six was sloppy as hell.

Amitha is very glad at this moment that she cannot read minds.

“…You like bodyguarding me?” Amitha asks.

“There’s nothing else I want to do more,” Egret replies. “When Six sends me on other missions or has me tracking down critical interruptions to your work—I miss you being within earshot.”

Amitha doesn’t know whether to laugh or frown. She doesn’t notice Egret getting closer to her as she considers the fact she has not felt that way about someone in over twenty years. Her life since becoming archmagus was just panic room after panic room after panic room, with necessary variation brought on purely by unexpected outside forces. The necessary variation to keep her sane was //had// to be brought on by external forces, because god forbid Six ever send someone as important as her on a vacation to some kind of…some kind of…

Amitha blanks.

She blanks on trying to imagine where she’d even vacation as Egret notices her long face.

“You look nauseous.”

Amitha turns her nose up at her. “This room smells stagnant.”

“Finally you notice!” Egret flashes teeth, wiping the drool off her chin with her sleeve, her grin getting smaller the longer she stares at Amitha. “It smells too clean, doesn’t it?”

“You need to be cleaned,” Amitha snips. Ugh, she hasn’t been this close to Egret in a long time—

Hasn’t been this close—

Close enough to—

Egret’s forehead touches hers. Amitha yanks herself away reflexively, gagging.

“Ah, see, I knew you’d do that,” Egret says.

“Then why'd you get so close…?” Amitha asks this with a soft cadence like that of a rabbit realizing it can be hunted for the first time. She’s being worn down by the silence so much she’s considering sleep now. Maybe it was time for her one hour and she just…didn’t notice.

But Egret can only hug herself, rubbing arms up and down a patchy hoodie.

Looking like that, with her mouth closed…

Amitha turns around, watching with bated breath as Egret inhales deep and loud.

“…I don’t know,” she says, almost stuttering. “It’s…all part of the same problem with me. I love something that can be taken away from me so much it makes me wonder why I exist at all. It makes me wonder...”

Egret clicks her tongue and stomps her foot onto the floor. The room’s mood cools, snarls and curdles, following the fact she’s holding herself like she couldn’t cannibalize a small army and have room for seconds.

Amitha watches her with a slack jaw as she falls onto the bed and puts her head between her knees.

“…I don’t want you to stop existing, Amitha.”

Amitha swallows dry spit, taking a step towards her, shaking herself. Egret is the only thing standing between her and certain death by hundreds, if not thousands of malicious actors.

“…I’m not going to retire, you know. I‘ll be working for the Foundation…well…”

Saying it aloud feels so grim. Like it’ll damn the slim possibility that maybe Amitha is wrong from the cradle to the grave, but really, what could actually be done?

There really is no way to imagine a beach. No way for her to imagine the white of sand and the gentleness of the waves beneath her feet—her concept of water had been overtaken by the magic in her brain, the kill-switches to dozens of hundreds of thaumic mechanisms scattered around the not just the Foundation but the feet of its enemies, of communists, revolutionaries, wayward politicians, anyone with a pulse they needed dead. That Six needed, no—wanted dead.

A tear finally comes to her eye as she tries to think of her parents, and fails. There is a hole in her memory that says they took her to the beach once, bought her sambar for dinner, made sure she smiled until she went to bed.

It’s only the outline of a memory. A quantitative analysis of the hole, a dissection of its edge that determined what it was supposed to be.

Is Egret suffering from the same thing?

She had every right to be terrified. If Six wanted, she could unmake her, recycle her, start over.

It would be so easy.

Too easy.

Egret tenses when Amitha sits down on the bed too, eyes frozen to the floor and her hands stiff in a clasped position.

“…I don’t want you to forget me either,” she finally admits. Egret’s her only tie to this mortal coil now, she’s realizing that fully.

Egret sits up slowly, hands peeling out of her sleeves. Her staples and stitches are ugly, and haphazard, but strong enough to hold back a continent.

“…Babygirl…”

Said like she knew she was going to be asked to stop.

Amitha doesn’t.

“…I want to remember you,” she says quietly. “In my head, I’ve proven the Riemann conjecture twice just so that a thaumo-manifold can disarm a ground tank in twenty seconds flat. But to do that, I forgot my family. I forgot where I went to school. I only possess memories of memories now, and those too will fade faster than expected, because shadows can only last so long as there is light, so long as there is a sundial to cast them.”

Egret’s voice wavers. “…How much have you lost?”

After so much silence, so much time in her head and with her, Amitha sobs. She sobs with a tiny, breaking little voice that squeaks and cannot raise itself any louder than a whisper.

“I don’t know. I…will never be allowed to know, because that’s what I agreed to.”

Everything stops. For a single, platinum second, everything is frozen, from the rotation of the Earth to the waves far above their heads to the twinkling of the stars in the sky.

Egret gets up and slips her arms around Amitha. She is careful to not let her mouth near her face.

Amitha gasps as she is held, the thin fabric of her suit rustling against the dingy cotton folds sticky with pilled lint and dried blood.

Neither say anything, until Amitha pushes Egret down and the pair find their hearts beating against the other’s chest. Egret holds grabs ahold of Amitha by her back and pulls her in tight, teeth bared but hand shaking with need.

“…Your heart sounds like a clock…”

Amitha can only tear up and weakly smile as she buries herself in the crook of Egret’s neck. Something pulsates greasily beneath her skin, but she ignores it. She ignores it for the totality of touch, of being seen by someone, someone who could not hate her even if she tried.

The two stay like that for what they think is a long time, fabric against fabric, skin against skin, freak to freak, until Amitha leans up and Egret looks up doe-eyed.

“…Please.”

“…Please, what?” Amitha loves the way her eyes look. They’re so knowing, so intelligent with brutality marching into gentleness at this very moment.

“I can’t help being the way I am,” Egret croaks. “I didn’t ask to—to—”

Amitha didn’t know Egret could cry. There’s a black tear welling up in her eye, as black as the night and glittering like polished onyx.

She watches her stumble, crumble even over her words as more tears well up and she opens up her mouth with many, many, many teeth.

Too much for one mouth.

But there is no higher purpose between them right now. There is no higher purpose as Amitha holds her breath and kisses Egret with a puffed chest, exhaling quickly as soon as Egrets leans into it with puppy-like enthusiasm.

They stay together like that for four seconds until breaking away, there’s nothing left but them. Nothing in the air, nothing on the to-do list, nothing in the war going on outside these tungsten walls.

Nothing between them but a memory they desperately want to keep as they stare at each other with tears in their eyes. Tears in their eyes they would fight to keep, fight to have again, maybe they’d even kill a little bit over it. A little bit of themselves, obviously, but maybe even a little bit of the other.

Perhaps even a lot of the Foundation, but who knows. If things were to come to that, it would not be a battle they could come out winning.

But maybe some things like love are worth dying for, especially when there was nothing else, or more precisely, no one else to remember.

Amitha kisses Egret again, now running her hands through her patchy, makeshift mohawk. Egret responds dutifully in kind, eagerly slipping her hands through Amitha’s outer layers.

The two roll over, switching who's on top over and over and over again. Egret is heavier, and Amitha likes the weight. Amitha is as skinny as a toothpick (a diet of MREs would do that to you) and Egret loves having a thin little thing that she could break all to herself.

Third kiss, fourth kiss, fifth kiss, tears. Tears, tears, and more tears, quiet and silent as they just meld in their bodies together in a cascade of touch and need, unable to comprehend their lives without the gravity of the other’s presence.

It’s as Amitha and Egret share a fifteenth kiss that a piece of paper manifests at the foot of the bed, glowing as red and vile as any teleported thing could.

A new list of targets. And for Egret, a mission needed for her sent down from Six herself.

Time to get back to work, forever.

…Until next time, at least.

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