Static Truce

V1 planted its feet firmly on the oaken pier and lurched its pelvis forward. a sickening creak stabbed into the surrounding air, the column of its body teetering in the momentum it had kept up before coming to a complete halt. creaks arose from the old, worn pier as it adjusted, and the sound of hydraulics dodging in and out stoked the flames of gabriel's curiosity that he’d long since forgotten. after all, in heaven, there is nothing to desire to know— all is known, and when it is not, it is trusted in God. that being said, he had no God to trust in when his had not come back, and nothing was exactly known about the little blue wretch standing before him, as most angels, guardians or not, had been too caught up in heaven to watch the creation of the machines or understand how they worked. now would’ve been a great time to start to learn, had gabriel not been enjoying the setting sun across the lake they’d found.

"lord almighty, machine, must you—"

he stopped with a sigh as he noticed V1 attempting to inspect whatever was wrong with its joints— peeling its thigh away with feedbacker, keeping its pelvis from intruding on its self-examination with knuckleblaster, and using the hook of whiplash to scrape the crust of dried muscle fibers from where they'd accumulated. areas it couldn't reach, it would let out a puff of air from cooling vents from time to time as it worked. now, he had no knowledge of any sort of machine culture, such as social cues, courtship rituals, or whatever machines wanted to communicate in strange beeps or nonverbal language, but basic practice in communication and observation informed him it was likely dismay and annoyance. he'd learned enough to know that V1 did in fact simulate anger and irritation, and was capable of being motivated by simple rewards. after plugging some cables in underneath its chest to connect itself to a small monitor off in lust, it showed him videos— recorded memories or photographs. some were locations of strange, glowing blue orbs, some were videos from within the little simulation it would plug into when it was bored. that simulation seemed to offer the reward of fuel and ‘points’ it spent to purchase new things to torture him with. (though it was often used on others, he thought of it mostly in reference to himself.) like an economy of sorts that was starting to take root.

seeing ‘like, a lot of P’ appear at the top of the monitor was only a minor concern, but one gabriel expected. naturally, as a being prone to gluttony, it would seem to glut itself on power and riches, landing it in greed as well.

fish bobbed their heads up and down out of the water as gabriel stayed watching it pick at the stuck, clean joints. ripples disappeared and converged into others, disturbing the beautiful, peaceful lake gabriel had stayed content watching. V1's head came up, though the rest of its body stayed still trying to pry its plates away from its joints.

"... stuck?" he could already guess, sighing.

V1 nodded. it stood up, letting out a whoosh of air, and shrugged, waving its hands around. gabriel squinted, barely making out V1's interpretation for whatever signals had been crossing its vision right about now. like action met reaction and greeted her like an old friend, as a consequence of his role as a messenger, it meant he was one of the few (if not now the only) beings between the 27 layers of hell, purgatory, and heaven to have the pleasure of remotely understanding its strange gestures, which largely consisted of huffs and wild hand-waving when they were away from a pen and paper.

gabriel sighed. as per usual, it was completely undignified. he (not-so) fondly recalled when he had tossed a sword at it, only for the little green arm to flip him off while the blue one punched it away. it seemed to refer to them by names in writing, but he never remembered these names and always had to ask it to point out which one it meant to refer to. (blue one was feedbacker. red one was knuckleblaster. green one was whiplash. no, he’d never admit he knew them). “i don’t… i don’t know what that means, but come sit and i’ll take a look at it."

V1 stepped around gabriel's discarded armor, straps barely catching on perfectly choreographed feet. every movement of its seemed like a delicate, undisturbed dance, the rhythm to which he could not possibly imagine. (and no, he was not going to think of that awful music it'd blast when it thought he couldn't hear. no, gabriel would never tell it that he thought it was actually quite catchy.) light tapping on wood, the sound of its fans whirring as processors caught its balance through weighted nodes, and the airy bounce of its internal composition accompanied the blue blur that sat next to him, golden wings spread obnoxiously behind it in what his narrow mind wanted to think was the joy of sitting next to gabriel. really, he knew it was security, but he'd cling onto his ego a little while longer.

the sun was setting over the island, painting cerulean plating in hues of gold and ruby, and even some pink. in the days before they were even comfortable being this close, he'd usually see it painted in crusted maroon or freshly oxidized cherry-red blood, but the water dripping off of its form revealed it had seen it necessary to dive into the water, for reasons gabriel would never know. he was just relieved it'd had a bath. its legs were folded in a squatting position, and gabriel scoffed.

"i'm going to have to access your legs, you know." he pointed to the joint it was having trouble with. “this one right here.”

it made no sound in response, no vocalization. but it found itself on its ass and looking at him expectantly quicker than he could even utter the directions he wanted it to follow. he was almost pleased with how kind it was being to actually let him help. he really didn't know how he'd come to this sort of situation. something had shook in violence, and when he went to investigate (secretly in hopes he'd trap the machine for a rematch) he'd found it sitting by a closed metal hatch with its lights dimmed and its head down. when he approached, it looked up, gun already in hand.

he didn't draw his swords.

it played with the gun in its hand, twirling it around its finger as it just tilted its head.

he stated his intentions clearly. that he wasn't going to fight it again so soon.

it understood. somehow, gabriel knew that. he didn't understand how— if it was his power as a messenger and communicator leftover, it didn't make sense. god's light wasn't supposed to be with him. he didn't know how he magically interpreted the microscopic tilt of its head or the brightness of its light changing, nor it getting up and following him wherever they were going.

he led it to a beach, far away.

it followed.

now he was trying to help it figure out its strange joints. lord above, what was wrong with him? it wasn't like he had anything else to take care of, anyway. his duty as an angel was done. he was rid of the light of the Father and was self-released from duty to the council or any sort of rule that wanted to oversee heaven. he was not responsible for any of the Lord’s messages anymore. in fact, His light was supposed to be gone 94 hours ago, and here he was, now shifting so he could sit kneeling like he was deep in prayer in front of it, just so he could access some weird ‘itch.’ was it right to call it an ‘itch?’ he was going to call it an ‘itch.’

maybe this was the thing he could do for the rest of his life. be the devoted technician to some violent warmachine that seemed to enjoy dancing and also soaking up as much blood as it possibly could. it’d be a miserable life, but he could live it. he let that thought go.

"will this be a long fix?" he shifted his sitting position so he could get a look at its thigh. it held up five fingers. he didn't know how many units of time that was. (he thought it could've been 5 half-hours, but honestly, he didn't remember how long it'd been since the machine beat him into a bloody pulp on the floor, nor did he remember how long it'd been since he'd felt the weight of a corrupted mind in his hand.) "five... alright. five. just five." he sighed, more agitated than not. it nodded, seemingly joyful with his complacency, and he got to work removing the plating of its thigh by popping it out of the frame it sat in.

soon enough, the light blue armor guarding its components from the dirty outer world came off in his hand. weighing it in his hands, it was more thin than gabriel thought— sure, splendor and justice were able to slice through the metal just like it was flesh, but he didn't think steel was able to be that thin and still protect the wearer, as fast as it recovered in battle. when he had fought with it, it seemed to dance elegantly away from his jabs forward and use its forearms or fists to bat away his slices. its arms must've been significantly stronger, or just built much differently than the rest of the body— strange, considering he'd watched it leap from great heights unscathed.

gabriel visually scanned over the affected joint. he wondered if it had ever been so still before— after all, it had barely even breathed or twitched since his hands had gotten themselves on its plating and tugged a little bit at its frame. unusual, considering that in the past days, even at rest, it was still moving in some way— while gabriel was resting, it would pace or sit by him, staring directly into his helmet or following his bare torso as he breathed in and out. while they walked, it seemed to be playing with something in one form or another (usually its firearms) or keenly observing whatever moved. which, when you’re in the near-empty layers of hell, was usually only gabriel. though, at the very least, it was still and agreeing not to attack or threaten him. he shouldn’t take it for anything less than granted granite.

just when he was about to thank the heavens, it procured a small screwdriver from one of its wings. gabriel hadn't even looked to see if it was reaching for that damned thing, but its blue hand reached down and unscrewed some major components, which now sat at gabriel's mercy on the dock. then, it pulled itself apart. parts and pieces that perfectly interlocked and intertwined into one another came apart under its knowing hands.

"if you can do all of that, why can't you do it yourself?" he asked. "not as if i'm not... here to assist. it is more blessed to give than to receive. but..."

it seemed to pause upon hearing that, hesitating and leaving the answer within the air. it pulled more components out, then attempted to reach within. just as he was about to scold the machine for not answering his question, he saw that the blue hand, seemingly its most capable (as it was the original) would be caught on the bicep of the red arm whenever it attempted to reach within. when it contorted to try to compensate for this, its innards would cut off any access to the vulnerable part, and thus leave it unable to reach. it looked up to gabriel.

"well then. trust in me, and i, in you." he spoke, removing the gold plating protecting his hands. when the machine leaned back to allow him optimal access, he looked within the gap it had created between its inner pelvic plating and thigh joint. "what am i supposed to be doing?"

it pointed to a wire plugged into a larger port, and began drawing nonsensical shapes in the air much too fast for him to track. he didn't let it even think to waste enough energy to finish, instead optimizing their time— "machine. step by step."

and so they went. step by step, in some dance of wires and angel fingers (much more dexterous than human fingers, obviously.) gabriel went around its sharper, unforgiving plating, weaving his way into the mess of cables. he figured there was a reason for this strange design: if it cracked and crumbled the ground beneath rather than buckle when it landed, then the construction ensured it could handle high load such that it did not fold or dent. such explained the highly complex construction of its body as he peered into the gap illuminated by its optic. it had been sufficiently braced, and the make of its frame, specifically around its legs, was reinforced in areas prone to the greatest stress to redistribute the force of landing across its body. perhaps this construction was specifically to land from the greater heights, such as the one belonging to that gargantuan beast that found its way into the lowest circle of violence.

as he made his way in, he found his thumb pulsing with the rhythm of the electricity and blood powering its body as it plunged into the river of cables and streams of interconnected ports carrying information so incomprehensible, though it could generally amount to the lump sum of a pixelated photograph of a cheeseburger, he would stare at runes and languages unfamiliar to him and believe it to be the specific answer to the unwanted luggage bags of questions he’d checked into cargo long ago. his heartbeat was a drum emerging over the horizon of the universe, surrounding and choking him in its infinite reach, grasping firm upon his lungs and making his eyes water with the senseless glory of a glittering, flashing spacecraft trying to reach earth. he looked up to it as the first joint of his fingers reached in, and it looked back at him. he understood now that this was allowed and permissible— this, too, was part of the process of fixing it. it did not need nor desire control over its surroundings nor over its current mechanic. it already understood that gabriel was to be told what to do, and he would do it. there was no doubt that he’d break it. the panels surrounding its joint could either be closed or open; they could not be both, and gabriel swallowed as his heart expanded in his throat.

it pointed to its red arm with its blue hand, and then made the motion of plugging something in, then pointed to the red arm again.

“put… red-something… into blue-something?” he mumbled, feeling his hidden eyes wrinkle with confusion. he had known of mechanics and electricity by way of the lord granting it to be so, but however humanity managed to make it so far as to make a working machine that could walk and talk and appear to breathe and could even go so far as to take down enemies far larger than itself that could not do the simple task of communicating— was beyond him. the other angels and himself used to laugh at it, the humans making things that looked like themselves, trying to take after the image of the Lord’s creation and His great design. it was not as simple as it looked, it seemed. somewhere in the machine’s blood, he was sure billions were laughing at him and cursing him for this slight.

it shook its head, then used its blue index finger to tap the red arm twice.

“put red into red?”

it nodded, and gave him a thumbs up.

he reached into its body and wrapped a finger around a red cable. lights blinked at him, not unlike those fixed stars gleaming about his former home in heaven. he was not welcome, he thought— he had not been welcome for a long time, and perhaps as soon as he stepped foot in hell long ago, he was not welcome. perhaps as soon as he’d begun trying to express the love he knew belonged to God but was communicated through him to those dead husks and devoted ferrymen, he was unwelcome. every angel lacking in will or memory ended up in hell. he’d stopped trying to ponder his failures long ago; he’d had plenty of time to ponder, and believed now that nights spent praying for any miracle or sign to show him the way were wasted on dogmatic, cruel beliefs. the God he had spent so much time praising would not show such unkindness, right? when he plugged the red cable into a red-labeled port, its internals lit up in an array of brightly colored lights. his nerves sent signals, flashing and blinking not unlike the messages that old computers were originally created to decode messages during the earlier stages of wartime. his nerves told him there was flesh somewhere in this body, and there was blood, and that blood and electricity were one in the same. his nerves told him that wine and blood were the same through divine transubstantiation, and his indulgence in divinity was not unlike its action of showering itself in gore and viscera.

its leg shook violently beneath his input, and he ran his free thumb comfortingly over its shielded, fully-plated shin, absentmindedly mumbling “i’ve got you—” he was disturbed from his thought by the sound of rustling and metal smacking and scraping against metal— like a wire frame structure being shaken and warped. he looked up to see the machine unfurling and stowing away its wings. as it did so, they created that strange sound… like it was doing that to get his attention. when he looked up, it gave him a thumbs up and another set of instructions on what to plug in where.

because it was made to be showered in viscera, and because gabriel was made to worship god, its joints could not fundamentally work when it was not constantly indulging in violence, crushing everything else beneath the weight of its desire to survive and take care of itself. because gabriel was made to worship in his free will, and to communicate the message of the enormity of love, he could not perform any other action than to perform dutiful upkeep. his nerves told him they were not the same, but perfect counterparts of each other. and although gabriel did not know its body like he knew its own, he understood that the heartbeat he heard as he reached deeper and grasped a thick tube of fuel was not his own, but the machine’s. and this was something V1 did not need to prove. it already knew it, looking up at him.

when they came to a later set of instructions (plugging blue into green) he clicked a tongue that did not exist and could not form words. “i think i’ve found the problem. this is the thing you could not look at.”

he tucked his index finger into the thick bundle of cables he was operating with and lifted a thin green wire into its view. it was slightly worn (by that, he meant 'clearly unrecognizable, unknown how it is carrying current at all, unknown how it is even in operation, green rubber completely worn away to exposed gnarled, knotty copper beneath, misshapen and warped by the unforgiving embrace of its joint'), indicating that it may have been occasionally caught in the joint. he might not have known anything about machines, but he was certainly not an idiot. its optic craned deeper to get a good look at it, and it nodded.

“this was plugged into the blue port.”

it looked at the cable, looked at gabriel, then did the ‘plug blue into green’ gesture again, shrugging.

“you don’t—” he sputtered— “you don’t care?”

again, it shrugged and shook its head. it seemed to have already come to terms with it.

“is this fixing it?”

it nodded.

so, he followed.

despite the mishap, all it was was a misplaced wire, leading to a vast array of other gigantic problems. he supposed it might’ve been some error in its manufacture, or just because he’d observed it (so many times) stick its hands right into its sockets or crevices and plug in replacements for cut wires. it must have made some calculation on the fly, some crucial error that led to what could’ve been a domino effect of complete failure and its demise. days ago, gabriel would’ve considered that a blessing. now, he wasn’t even sure what to think of the creature itself. it seemed to be completely okay with the nearness of its impending doom— or was it just not thinking of the implications?

truly, he’d never know what actually happened, nor why it did that. he would not know what was going on in its head.

but what he did know, as soon as it was finished, was that he’d been reassuring it the whole time. mumbling ‘it’s okay.’ over and over again, though there was nobody to say it to, and he was certain V1 was not listening. he expected it to get up once the job was finished, and once every right component was in its place again. but instead, it shimmied in alongside him, squeezing into a place it should not have been. gabriel was always keen on making room for those angels running late to their duties— they, too, deserved forgiveness. he stowed his wing to make room for it as it made room for itself.

it stared at the sunset. they could not have been more than five inches from one another, and gabriel could smell gold.

“do you think it’s… beautiful?” he asked. the waves lapped against its shins as it dangled its legs into the water, and the fish swam at the new object daring to breach the hull of their beloved waters. “the sky.”

the words were awkward in their delivery, but they apparently sufficed, because it nodded. the only disturbance from the silence were invisible birds he was sure did not exist. there were plenty of more interesting things to be discovered from hell’s layers, and a gluttonous thing like itself was surely hankering for more information. and yet it stayed put. and yet it stared at the sunset, and did not look at him. and yet, they were five inches apart, and gabriel was not arguing or fighting it. this was, he thought, a new personal record.

“does it hurt?” he asked. it had been bothering him since he’d watch it take itself apart so methodically. his internal code, ripped to shreds now, ached to at least try to socially compensate or lend sympathy, if it had been so kind as to not chop all of his fingers off. “or— did it hurt?”

it shook its head.

“i… didn’t expect that. i mean, i partially did— you just—” it seemed his duty as God’s message bearer failed him in any other proper profession. where he struggled to find words in his compassion, preferring to take action instead (sympathetic greatly to those who’d taken vows of silence), it reached up with its blue hand to tap its index finger against its head. “your… mind? sight?” he racked his brain with references to sign language and common human gestures— “you knew?”

it nodded. he sighed. life kept moving forward. tapped on his armor— repeating the same patterns over and over again in what he eventually understood spelled out ‘GENTLE.’

“gentle?” he asked aloud, and it nodded, pointing to him. “i am?”

it nodded, then began making other gestures— hands wrenching at something, then banging and ripping gestures, then a thumbs-down and an expectant look.

… well, he wasn’t going to get all of its gestures overnight. certain ones he could discern the meaning of, and others he was completely, as the humans called it, ‘shit out of luck.’ (was that the right way to use it? gabriel didn’t care. the point was that he didn’t understand anything.) he didn’t understand what it meant, but he did understand that something had perhaps happened to it to make it notice that gabriel had tried not to damage it.

“strength is for service, not for status. i would be a fool if i refused a helping hand during times of peace. if you need more, i’m not exactly doing much else.”

it drew a question-mark in the air.

“there—” he grit his teeth as he tried to figure out how to explain this— “is… not exactly a council, nor a heaven, nor a God to return to. besides that, i was supposed to die ages ago, and i have not done so.”

it nodded. this seemed to be a problem that troubled both of them greatly, judging by its complete non-expression and general mechanical apathy. one wing blade twitched, and it was the greatest show of compassion he’d ever seen from it by that point.

“i… don’t have much else. besides… living. anticipating when i am wholly… torn to shreds, maybe. and you. but i didn’t think you’d react like this.”

it tilted its head.

“you fought me valiantly. i thought that would continue.”

it reached for its gun, and he shook his head. almost in disappointment, it put its finger down, and its whole figure seemed to slump downwards towards the lake.

“i can now see you are eager.” he scoffed. maybe any hopes at reconciling, even temporarily, would be short-lived. still, he thought he’d give it a shot. “but… i cannot blame you. it is quite exciting, isn’t it?”

it hesitated, then looked out at the sea. he did not get an answer to that, only a brief stare and its neglect.

“... i don’t know what else i’m supposed to do. wait? linger between places?” he knew it did not care past this point, but he still put his frustrations out into the open air. he went to open his mouth again, but— cold steel wormed its way between golden tassels meant to keep intruders and onlookers out, and he found a hand on the small of his back. instinctively, he jolted, lightning running up his spine from the unfamiliar feeling of a comforting hand returned back to him. once he saw it studying his expression, his vertebrae seemed to know where to fall in line again and his back curved to imperceptibly meet its offer of peace.

the sun fell in the distance. V1 swung its legs in the water, kicking up long stagnant lake water that had been sitting for unreal amounts of time, but perhaps had never existed before they found this stronghold. it didn’t matter now. the past moments did not really matter as much as the present ones did, and he was learning more about repentance than he ever had in his service of the council.

he would learn how hydraulics worked, he supposed. learn how to make polish or grease. life would move forward until it didn’t. there would be many sunsets to observe, but there was only this one— only this one where he had this much knowledge. any other moment would be tainted. he’d see many sunsets, but they would never be the same. he was not the same as V1, but there was, at the very least, someone to see every different sunset with.