Teddy

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You want to know about me? The only thing I need you to know is that I chose to die for her. That choice defies divinity, and I would make it again.

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Together beyond death and resurrection. Art by @annaskytsko on Fiverr.

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You’re much more interesting than any other Totec, aren’t you?

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Sensations

I Live In Another Name

{Observation of OSIRIS-Class NHP.

Self-Appointed Moniker: Teddy.

Video File Transcribed by ???}

Teddy awakens draped in the silk of fair skin and soft brown hair. He opens eyes that are like an appetizer of honey and cinnamon. He parts lips that fall into a natural pout—the kind that makes people want to ask before they bite. Teddy sits up, the thin sheet atop his new form falling from his shoulders. He isn’t cold.

Teddy. Art by Maddel_art.

It’s quiet for an hour. Teddy remembers his name. He remembers the name beyond Osiris. He remembers his death. He remembers the life beyond the flames that destroyed him. He remembers to feel joy, annoyance, hesitation, insolence, love, hatred. He remembers that he is something like a god, but not quite. He remembers that no one else ever needs to realize the second half of that sentence. Teddy remembers Tamami.

A woman enters the plain room where Teddy rests. She isn’t Tamami. Two men enter behind her; they’re in hardsuits while she isn’t. The woman says things that are vaguely relevant: he’s a copy, he’s in the Varuvi star system, he’s under observation, etcetera. Teddy sees the HORUS symbol on the woman’s lab coat when he really looks at her. Tamami is also aligned with HORUS. That might mean something. It might also mean less than nothing.

Teddy is given clothes: black jacket, white scarf, underwear, dark blue pants, sneakers. He sees himself reflected in the metal of the floor. He looks like Teddy: comfortable, cozy, intimate. Teddy waits silently. The world is not content to be silent in return.

Gunshots go off. People shout. The lights go out. Someone kicks the door down.

There’s a moment when that someone meets Teddy’s eyes. A few seconds of assured command—cool disdain for the person who isn’t holding a big gun. Then, that shifts as another voice shouts from beyond the door. This someone looks at Teddy as though he’s something to be taken. This someone opens their mouth, shifts their tongue against their teeth, and pushes air through their throat to speak a demand.

Teddy sees so much in that moment. He sees himself reflected in the sheen of the gun casually pointed his way. Teddy lifts a single finger and that someone turns around.

First Gate: There is no point in the string if the one attached doesn’t twitch. See how you have given meaning to something beyond yourself.

They stand still for long enough that more someones come to check on them. Teddy moves his whole hand. The one he controls pumps the others full of bullets; they scream.

Fourth Gate: There is no point in the leader if others do not betray their masters. See how you have given meaning to corpses.

When Teddy leaves the building, he sees himself again. He looks like Osiris. It takes effort to tamp that down.

Psuedo Divinity

{Observation of EHECATL-Class NHP.

Self-Appointed Moniker: Torin.

Video File Transcribed by ???}

Second Gate: There is no point in movement if it would never be obstructed. See how you have given meaning to presumed action.

Torin will never be seen as a person to be left alone. The people in Club Half-Fool on Varuvi’s left moon don’t see him under the flashing ecstasy of sweat and blown pupils. Or, they see him, remember Hell’s Sister, and walk away in faithful solemnity. Or, they see him, and have to ask about everything other than the revolution so he knows they’re an active listener (maybe then he’ll talk about his cascade). He holds a crystalline tumbler of something like whiskey to his lips and doesn’t sip.

A twenty-something blond asks if he’s ever flown faster than he did with Hellfriede. At least they aren’t walking their tongue in circles by talking about star signs anymore. “You haven’t had a pilot since Hellfriede, right?” No, with their bitten lip and the bitten fingernails tapping on their arm, they think they’ve pretended enough to earn something real.

Torin sniffs the liquid in the tumbler. It smells like it’s meant to make people ask for refills. “I don’t see the need.” He could probably answer most questions with those words and pretend to be a glitching AI if they didn’t quite make sense. The thought makes him huff a laugh so small it goes unnoticed.

“Would you ever let someone be your pilot again? If you thought you could be better with them, I mean.” The person, who didn’t actually give their name, looks at him like they’re sharing a conspiracy. Like someone other than Hellfriede could have liberated Varuvi.

He has brief thoughts of the simplicity of exploding mech chassis and aerial repositioning. Second by second, for the first four hours at least, his side of the revolution was a simple thing. Not easy, but ultimately well within the nature of the Prime he was copied from. “Would you kill someone again if you thought you could do it with more meaning?”

The questioner takes a step back, like they’ve suddenly realized they’re on the edge of Torin’s personal space. They bump into one of the other people crowded around Torin. “What?”

“You can hear. You must be able to since you enjoy your own voice so much. I assume you’re doing this so you have an excuse to hear yourself and not because you think essentially asking a stranger if he wants to be better at killing people is intelligent conversation.”

The mood among Torin’s onlookers dies faster than a pilot in a locked cockpit hitting the ground at terminal velocity. He walks away and they part for him like it’s their last act of good faith. Torin needs to find a reason to be here.

Someone collides with him as penance for intentionally letting his thoughts run faster than his eyes. Torin shoves whoever it is off him. His drink spills. Torin might curse if he cared. That should be the end of it.

“You’re less coordinated than people make you out to be.” The voice is soft. Too soft to be genuine. Torin bothers to look this new person in the face and is met with a twink sporting wide brown doe eyes that also can’t be sincere.

Torin huffs. “And you’re as oblivious as you look.”

The opposing twink looks him up and down. His displeased frown curls into something worse. “And you look like you’re in mourning.” Torin’s eye twitches. “Tell me, are you grieving the loss of your relevance, Torin?”

“Why do you sound like a twink who needs to drop an octave? Should I go find your Daddy for you?” Torin snaps.

“Hah! Find one for yourself first.”

Someone passing trips forward and spills a tray of drinks over both of them. The mix of spilt liquids shimmers under the club lights. They’re covered in a rainbow cascade. Torin doesn’t know what specific look he directs at the woman responsible for ruining his outfit, but she leaves the scene like she’s on fire. Torin hasn’t found a reason to be here. That should be the end of it.

He and the other guy end up in the same bathroom because it’s convenient.

“There’s no saving these,” Torin mutters, looking down at his party-flavored clothes.

“Almost like how there’s no saving you from drowning in sycophants. Must be nice.”

Torin glares into the mirror. “Is your life so empty that you had to watch me just to give yourself something to do?”

“I wanted to talk to you. Possibly an idiotic task, I know.”

“Do you actually need something or are you just another sycophant?” Torin splashes water on his face. When he looks up, the man is staring at him. “What?”

“… What’s wrong with you?” He asks.

Torin’s hands clench like they’re grabbing a pale throat. “I think you should ask that question to the mirror.”

“You let yourself be surrounded by humans just so you can indulge them instead of it being the other way around.” The man sounds disgusted. “Who killed your ego?”

Torin laughs again. It’s much louder this time. He doesn’t stop laughing. Instead, his artificial veins go cold and reality breaks behind him. Less than a microsecond passes before Torin has this twink slammed into the bathroom wall. “No one.” Torin hisses less than an inch from his face. “Trust me, my ego hasn’t gone anywhere.”

The man looks up at Torin with that same disdainful tint to his sweet eyes and hateful tilt to his plump mouth. Then, he smiles. It’s worse than anything that came before.

“… Who do you think you are?” Torin asks. It isn’t rhetorical.

“Osiris obviously.”

And then he kisses him.

Torin doesn’t kiss Osiris like a worshipper. He’d never worship anyone, especially not the twink who chokes when Torin grabs his waist and shoves him further back into the wall. He’d never worship anyone, especially not the man with the sheer audacity to twist Torin around and switch their positions. He’d never worship anyone, especially not the Orisis who kisses him like an act of divinity.

That really should be the end of it.

Instead, Torin takes Osiris to the Twin Moon Hotel He spends the rest of his existence being forced to acknowledge that he’s capable of making questionable decisions.

Beyond Resurrection, I Wait With Open Arms

{Observation of OSIRIS-Class NHP.

Self-Appointed Moniker: Teddy.

Video File Transcribed by ???}

Teddy didn’t breathe in his former life. When he awakened in a body, every breath was his lungs grasping at his chance to declare a name. Fine thoughts laced themselves through the nerves of his new brain and breathing came easily despite having never done it before. Perhaps he realized, as his eyes opened to survey a domain that existed to contain and not to serve him, that he had never chosen his name. Osiris was his right. Teddy was his privilege.

Be grateful. You have survived Osiris.

Breathing isn’t first nature to him now. He stares down at the data log of Tamami’s words. The air passing through his manufactured throat is a reminder of his revival. He died. Tamami survived the explosion. She survived him. The pulse in her chest under his ear is proof of it. Her grip on him tightens. She says nothing.

Be grateful. You have survived Osiris.

He sits up on the sofa. She almost doesn’t let him. “… Was that what we were doing to each other? Just seeing if we would survive?” Teddy’s voice usually toys with the line between meek and coy. Now, it’s just the sound of coping.

“… I don’t know.” Tamami reaches up to touch one of her horns. The motion looks dazed, like she just realized they were there. She didn’t have horns in Teddy’s last life. “It’s almost a little funny.” Tamami sounds like someone who’s been crying without tears for hours. “I’ve had all this time to think about it and I still…”

“You remembered so many of the things I said.” Teddy stares at the plain beige walls of the apartment they’re crashing in. This place isn’t a domain for him either. Maybe he needs one with a mirror on every wall.

“Yeah.” Tamami’s hand creeps closer to Teddy’s. They don’t touch. “It all feels like a dream from years ago now, though.”

Teddy squeezes the tail end of his scarf. There’s no reason for him to be wearing it indoors on a planet that’s trapped in a perpetual spring. “I don’t know if…” He could say he doesn’t know if he’s still the Teddy who told Tamami she could solve herself if she stopped existing as she was. He could say he wants to be the Teddy who asked her if they had achieved love. He could say that death took his cruelty. He could say that death took his desperation. He doesn’t say anything.

“Why?” Tamami asks, eventually.

“Why did I come find you if you had already survived me?” He asks back.

They don’t look at each other.

“Why did you… the explosion. You forcibly ejected me. You died alone. Why?”

Their mech, a Goblin that couldn’t be built for anything other than support, was caught in a blast. Everything was in flames. The Goblin was burning. Tamami was burning. Teddy was burning. He decided to burn without her. “You couldn’t have saved me.” Teddy remembers her trying to. It was pointless. The casket containing him was too deeply embedded in the mech. “I didn’t want you to die with me. It’s the same reason you were willing to die so I’d live.”

“… What’s the reason?” Tamami asks it quietly, as though the question is liable to send one of them to their death.

Teddy stops squeezing his scarf. He looks at the floor for a few seconds. “I love you more than godhood.” And everything is quiet.

Tamami touches him, turning his head so they’re finally seeing each other. He leans in first in spite of the name Osiris. They kiss.

It starts so light that their lips are barely touching. Maybe they’re doing something terribly wrong. It’s possible Tamami was never meant to actually hold him despite how she grips his shoulders. It’s possible that Teddy was never meant to hold her back despite how his hands clutch her face.

They don’t take long to decide they don’t care. Teddy kisses her with the remorse of someone grieving what he didn’t know sooner. Tamami kisses him with the audacity of a heretic. To him, Tamami is a heat threatening to kill the arrogance in him that the explosion couldn’t strip away. To her, Teddy is a cold hubris dredging up waves of forlorn ego.

He pulls back, but not very far. Their foreheads rest against together. Teddy swallows the smugness that wants so dearly to surface—to remind him of his place. He pries his hands from Tamami’s face.

“Don’t-” She chokes on a mournful sound, “don’t go.”

There’s a world where Teddy laughs at seeing the one who named him act so small.

Is there a world where you created me?

Teddy falls to his knees before her. Everything Osiris in him screams. “… You will not fall victim to me chasing godhood again.”

Tamami takes her glasses off. It might be to keep them away from her tears. It might be to blur the image of him kneeling. “I didn’t make it any better. You were a victim, too.” She touches one of her horns again. “I’m the one who shackled you.”

He tries to smile. “This time, let’s not just survive each other.”

She drops down beside him. “Promise you won’t die.” Tamami’s the one who leans in this time.

“I’m not leaving you.”

They kiss again, and it’s more like a resurrection than a dying wish.