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archester-creations · 2 years

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bruised circuits

My second (and final) @rwbyrarepairexchange fic for @leanmeansaltinemachine featuring robot Pyrrha, inventor Yang, injuries, and greekfire (also a little Nora!)

“Are you sure about this?”

“Of course I am! Since when are you the worried one, Nora?”

Nora shrugged her shoulders. “I figured we took turns, Yang.”

“Fair enough,” Yang said. One of them had to be responsible and, well, since it was just the two of them it could really go either way.

The two stood together, shoulder to shoulder– or, not quite shoulder to shoulder. more like shoulder to midsection–, facing Yang’s latest creation. It wasn’t finished quite yet. She wasn’t finished quite yet. But with Nora’s touch she would be. The touch of life. Frankenstein’s creature coming to fruition, Galatea having life breathed into her. Except Yang wasn’t going to abandon the robot the second it breathed. Nor was she in love or going to fall in love with it. The classical references still felt fitting, though, given the circumstances. Creator and creation. Unlife to life. Yang felt like she would vibrate out of her boots with her excitement. In her twenty six years she’d made plenty of things, but this is the first time she’d made a human being .

“Just touch her. Please?” Yang said.

Nora raised an eyebrow, though she was smiling. “I need you to know how dirty that sounds.”

Yang wiggled her eyebrows back at her with a smirk.

“Alright, fine,” Nora sighed. A token protest, Yang knew. Her friend loved her too much to deny her anything. Though it kinda went both ways. Two years ago Yang made Nora her own robot dog, a veritable monster that stood taller than Nora did while on his hind legs and could chew through steel. Nora named him Pancake and he was probably the friendliest dog Yang had ever known.

Nora stepped up to the robot and placed her hand on the robot’s arm. There was a spark of pink and it raced along the metal outside for a split second, like lightning shooting across the sky, before it disappeared into the tiny nooks and crannies that would allow it to move. A second passed. Yang held her breath.

Green eyes opened with a blink and looked down at them. “... hello?”

Yang lit up like a forest fire. “Hiya! I’m Yang and this is Nora. You’re Pyrrha.”

“Pyrrha…?” The robot, Pyrrha, tilted her head.

“Pyrrha Nikos is your name,” Yang said. She jabbed Nora with her elbow and quietly added. “‘Cause she’s made partly with nickel.” Nora snorted.

Pyrrha smiled at them. Her eyes went all bright when she did, like Nora’s lightning was still lighting her from the inside. “Hello again.” She gave a small wave.

“Hiya,” Yang repeated, responding with her own half wave, her chest feeling warm.

She'd done it. With Nora’s magic, she'd created life.

A troublesome life. Yang gave a huff of a laugh. Here she'd thought Ruby was a pain when they were kids. Somehow Pyrrha seemed to find more trouble than her kid sister ever did. Or maybe she attracted the trouble? It was hard to tell. She pushed her goggles back up her forehead as she put her tools back in… well, probably not their exact places, but close enough for her. After all, she was normally the only one who worked in here.

“So what happened?” Yang asked over her shoulder, feeling like that question was starting to become her catchphrase.

“It got… run over by a car,” Pyrrha said.

“You what ?” Yang turned suddenly to look over at her, though the damage was no longer there. The leg had already been replaced. In all honesty the answer shouldn’t even surprise her. The damage was clearly done by something running it over, the way the plates were smashed and the wires hung out. But it was one thing to look at it and guess. It was another thing to be told. Pyrrha wouldn’t meet her eyes. The leg Yang had replaced was hidden behind her other leg in a move Yang wasn’t sure was conscious or not. Yang took a breath.

“There was a kid, they didn't see the car,” Pyrrha said, eyes on her knees. “I did and I moved before I could think. I'm sorry, Yang.”

Yeah, Yang couldn't exactly say she wouldn't have done the same thing. And she was definitely glad Pyrrha had done it instead of doing nothing. “And the kid?”

Pyrrha looked up. “Just a small scrape from our landing, but nothing more.” One of her hands clenched against her knee in a way that would’ve had Yang worried about her metal bending, if Yang hadn’t been the one who built her. Her head tilted. “Yang?”

“I’m not going to be mad at you for saving a kid,” Yang said.

Big, green eyes blinked at her. “Really.”

“Of course not,” Yang said. “I'm glad you did. Though if you do it again, I’d like you to try not to get damaged. Or warn me so I can get the parts ready,” she joked. Pyrrha smiled. It was a pretty smile. Clearing her throat, Yang waved Pyrrha out of her workshop.

“I have a commission I need to finish,” Yang explained when Pyrrha gave her a questioning look.

It becomes clear very quickly that Pyrrha has no self preservation. Anyone else might scoff at that. Say that she's a robot and can just be rebuilt, so it didn't matter. Yang was not anyone else.

“You're not a shield, you know,” Yang said in a way that might have been conversational, if it was anybody else. But even older she didn't do great at hiding her emotions, them coming out in thinly veiled tones when she attempted, and the bits of worry belied any casualness. Pyrrha bit her lip. If she was human it'd be bleeding. Yang instinctively reached out to gently save Pyrrha’s lip from the abuse. It was warm, even through her thick leather gloves. Though that was likely just optical illusion. Pyrrha took long enough to answer that Yang started to feel concerned. Then Pyrrha blinked a few times like she was rebooting. (Fittingly enough.)

“But I'm… not real?” Pyrrha asked.

“What?”

“I’m not real,” Pyrrha repeated, this time with out the questioning inflection. “So I can be rebuilt.”

It suddenly occurred to Yang that ‘anyone else’ might include Pyrrha . Any attempt at casualness is pretty gone from Yang’s voice after that thought. “So what?” Yang asks, and at least she is able to keep the snap from her voice. “You can be rebuilt, whoop-de-do. So can a lot of people.” She pushed up the sleeve on her right arm to show the prosthetic her uncle made for her years ago. “Just because you can be repaired doesn't make the damage any less real nor does it erase the worry I'm gonna feel fixing it. Or Nora's when she hears about it.

“And you are real, by the way. I didn't build you and Nora didn't use her magic to bring you to life for anyone to say you aren't . And that includes you. You're as real as I am,” Yang said.

Pyrrha looked at her like she was something unreal, eyes bright again like some of the lightning from Nora’s magic was still in them, just under the surface. “... But wasn’t I built to protect people?”

“To be honest with you,” Yang rubbed the back of her head, causing her ponytail to bounce. “I didn’t build you with any purpose in mind. So you can just do what you want.”

Her eyes wandered back to her lap. There was silence, for a long time. Or maybe it just felt like that to Yang. It was hard to tell sometimes. “I want to protect people,” Pyrrha eventually said.

“Alright,” Yang said.

After Yang finished fixing the circuits the bullet damaged in Pyrrha’s arm- which weren't many, thankfully- she asked Nora what she thought about teaching Pyrrha magic. Neither of them actually knew if Pyrrha even could do magic. But if she could, Nora would have to teach her. Yang didn't actually have magic.

Of course, Nora agreed. She liked the idea of the challenge and also thought Pyrrha could use something to defend herself more. Along with it, Nora actually suggested Yang teach Pyrrha boxing, which Yang agreed to.

When they told her, Pyrrha agreed to try to learn both. It didn't change the amount of danger Pyrrha found herself in. But it made Nora and Yang feel a bit better about it.

Pyrrha doesn’t come over just when she needs repairs. For one, she actually lives with Yang. With Yang and Nora, who Yang has lived with since they graduated from their separate colleges and who Yang was still trying to get to confess to her little sister. It was an ongoing process that started Nora and Ruby’s junior year and her senior year of high school. One of these days it would work.

For a roommate, Pyrrha was quiet. Ren-quiet. It didn’t exactly balance Yang and Nora out, nor did they balance her out, but none of them really cared about that. Yang didn’t spend much time at their place. Or in her bed. Her life was busy and fast paced and didn’t leave a lot of room for sleep. She liked it that way. It's been like that since about middle school. It was comfortable. So Yang didn’t actually take many breaks, despite what people probably thought.

“You look tired,” Pyrrha half slurred, finally awake and loopy with it.

“I'm tired of you always coming to my workshop damaged,” Yang replied.

“I wasn't damaged this time,” Pyrrha said. Her inflection just barely remained pouting instead of questioning, a frown on her face and red eyebrows deeply furrowed. It was hard to tell whether or not Pyrrha was actually confused.

“You got tazed and passed out from the electricity overload,” Yang said. “Nora carried you in.”

“Noraaaa?” Pyrrha asked.

Yang nodded. “Nora found you on her way home.”

“Oh, that's nice of her,” Pyrrha said. “She's nice.” Her body swayed a little too far to one side and Yang caught her and resteaded her before she could tumble off the stool.

At least this time was funny. Pyrrha seemed like she was drunk or maybe sleep deprived, though Yang would bank on the former. It was kinda cute. Pyrrha smiled at her, small and soft even as her entire body tilted to the side again. Thankfully not as far.

“Yang,” Pyrrha said, her voice less slurred now. “I think I like you.”

“Aw, I like you too!” Yang smiled back at her.

“O- oh.” Pyrrha looked down. Somehow Yang got the feeling she'd said the wrong thing. When Pyrrha looked back up, her smile had changed. She looked a lot more sober than she had five seconds ago. The electricity must've finally reached equilibrium again.

“You should sleep,” Pyrrha said.

“I don’t need to,” Yang sighed. She pushed herself away from Pyrrha, the stool she was on wheeling backwards. A kick of her heel against the floor and she spun back to face the workbench again. What she was working on is still there, not actually started but still in the blueprint stage. Her words were a lie, she's tired and she can feel it a little more since Pyrrha mentioned it. But she's happy. To her, that's always been more important than a good sleep schedule.

Later, she wakes up with a blanket over her and she knows Pyrrha was the one who put it there. She smiles and snuggles into it a little and flicks on the small desk light so she can continue to work.

An explosion. It was small and everything turned out okay, but that did not change that Pyrrha came to her with charred metal and shrapnel stuck painfully deep in her legs and back. A table had to be cleared so Pyrrha could lie on her stomach and Yang could get all the many pieces out. Getting sharp, jagged pieces of metal out of even bigger jagged pieces of metal that made up a friend was not fun. At least Yang was able to turn off Pyrrha’s already pretty shot pain receptors. That didn't change how careful Yang was, of course.

“I thought I said you’re not a shield,” Yang said.

“You also said I can protect people,” Pyrrha said.

Yang clicked her tongue against her teeth, because she had said that. And that agreement wasn’t something she would take back. The thought of telling anyone they couldn’t take their talents and use them or to not protect people sat bitter in her mouth and poked up and down her skin like thorns. “I did. But you could’ve found a safer way for yourself.” Already this felt like an old argument between them. It made her feel like her dad. She wondered when it would fade into more joking territory without her having to force it.

“It would’ve taken too much time,” Pyrrha said.

Yang shook her head but didn’t vocally respond. Instead she focused on Pyrrha’s wires and making sure they were all connected correctly. It wouldn’t be good if she fixed her only to miss a crossed wire. That could cause more damage than Pyrrha could on her own.

… that wasn’t fair. Pyrrha only did what she knew was right and while she was impulsive and still showed no preservation, she helped people and always made it home. Yang picked at a wire. That luck couldn’t hold forever, though. One of these days Pyrrha just throwing herself at things would bite her in the worst way. And she wouldn’t come back.

“Just please be careful,” Yang said.

“Why…” There was a shifting of Pyrrha’s shoulders and Yang knew she must've been playing with her hands. Or maybe she'd clenched them into the sides of the table. “Why are you so concerned for me? Is it because you made me?”

“I'm concerned about all my friends,” Yang said. Because that felt important to establish. Pyrrha was a friend. And an important one at that. Not that all her friends weren't important, but there was something special about Pyrrha that Yang just… hadn't figured out yet. Something that made her feel a little bit more accomplished when Pyrrha laughed at even her stupidest jokes or settled nice and warm in her when Pyrrha smiled early in the morning with the sunrise in her hair. “I don't want you to get hurt- or worse-, not because I made you but because you're one of my friends. You're important to me, Pyrrha.”

“Oh,” Pyrrha said.

“Did you… not think you were important to me?” Yang frowned.

“No!” Pyrrha was quick to reassure. Though her next words were mumbled partly into the table. “I mean… not fully? I can do a lot of good and that’s important but…”

Yang smacked the back of Pyrrha’s thigh. “But nothing. You’re not just important because you can and do do good. You’re important because you’re Pyrrha. Because you smile and you laugh and you cry. Because you are you and no one else. Because you’re my friend.”

Slowly Pyrrha lifted herself enough to look back at Yang. The green of her eyes was bright again. When she blinked, Yang saw the brightness was highlighted by a shine of tears. Yang frowned lightly and reached out to wipe under her eye, where some of them had spilled.

“I don’t know why you constantly think this is all you’re good for, but it’s not,” Yang said.

“I’m strong enough to do it, so no one else has to,” Pyrrha said quietly.

“And you help a lot of people,” Yang said.

“You help me in return,” Pyrrha said.

“I help you because I want to,” Yang said. Then she smirked and bounced her eyebrows. “Besides, no one else is cool enough to do all the stuff I can.” It got the intended reaction. Pyrrha snorted into her shoulder. Without prompting, Pyrrha moved back into a better position so Yang could finish up. It only took a few more minutes to finish her inspection of Pyrrha’s wires and other internal parts to find nothing inside had been badly injured, to her relief. If it had she would've had to put Pyrrha on what would basically be bedrest for a few days as she fixed everything and Pyrrha didn't really stay still well. They were very similar like that. All she had to do now was weld the broken pieces of her back and legs back together. She spun away from Pyrrha and the table to do just that.

“You're right, though,” Pyrrha said.

“What?” Yang asked, not looking back as she concentrated on the metal in front of her.

“You're very cool, Yang,” Pyrrha said. The piece of metal Yang had in her hand slipped just a little. Warmth flooded her chest, much more than it did when strangers told her the same. More, even, than when other friends told her that. Yang turned the welding machine on as her cheeks burned the same.

“Thanks, Pyrrha,” Yang said, instead of the joke that was on her tongue.

Often when Pyrrha came in to be repaired, it was because she was shot. Yang did her best to make Pyrrha as sturdy as possible, but she could only do so much. All she was was an inventor. She didn’t have magic or anything else like Nora did. Though she was damn good without it. This was new. Certainly it shouldn't be as bad as being skewered by shrapnel from an explosion, but somehow it was.

“I tried to be more careful this time,” Pyrrha joked, though her smile was sincere for all that it was pained. It was almost funny how a fall affected her pain receptors when so many other things hadn’t.

Twenty stories… Pyrrha was lucky she was a robot and lucky Yang had built her so sturdy. The reality of what could've happened had the building been just a bit taller, had Pyrrha not caught a flagpole halfway down and slowed her fall, had Yang chosen an even slightly less durable metal, seemed to choke Yang. It'd been so close. She swallowed heavily.

“I’m glad you tried,” Yang said after two tries. It didn’t come out with as much humour as Yang wanted it to. If it did at all. Pyrrha stretched her fingers toward Yang. A wire sparked in Pyrrha’s wrist, but Yang wasn’t worried about feeling any electricity when she took Pyrrha’s hand. She was wearing her gloves, anyway.

“I figured you would want me to,” Pyrrha said quietly. That got a laugh out of Yang.

“Fuck yeah I would,” Yang said.

She took extra care in fixing Pyrrha’s wires, after she turned off Pyrrha’s pain receptors. Her mind kept wandering back to what she’d been told. Twenty stories. It was hard not to think about it, with the evidence in front of her. Smashed metal, wires sticking out everywhere. A leg would need to be replaced again. Some of the metal was torn, like when a can was crushed and pieces stuck out until they were broken and jagged. Too much more damage and Yang wouldn’t be fixing Pyrrha. She’d be recreating her. The thought twisted in her stomach. It felt like she’d fallen, not Pyrrha.

“Yang…?” Pyrrha’s voice was quiet and gentle. It wasn’t even a little slurred, but the words that followed before came anyway. ‘ I think I like you .’

Oh. Yang blinked down at the mess of wires before her, that made up the nerves of Pyrrha’s arm. The arm that was attached to the hand Yang still held. That was what Pyrrha meant. Not friendship. But… She squeezed the hand in hers just a little and Pyrrha squeezed back, the wires in her wrist sparking again.

“I think I like you, too,” Yang said, without really thinking about it. The words felt true.

“You… do?” Pyrrha asked. Her eyes were wide and sparkling with that electricity again, like when Nora brought her to life. It sent a shock of relief through Yang that she hadn’t known she needed. She breathed and her lungs filled easier than they had been.

“Yeah,” Yang said.

Pyrrha smiled at her. When Pyrrha leaned in, it felt easy for Yang to simply fall into her and let her press that smile to her lips. Brightness sparked in Yang’s chest. It had nothing to do with the sparks from the exposed wires at Pyrrha’s collarbones. But it had everything to do with Pyrrha.

Apparently she’d been wrong, in the beginning, because she did fall in love with Galatea. That was okay, though. Yang could admit she was wrong sometimes. The taste and shape of Pyrrha’s smile was worth it.

#rwby #pyrrha nikos #yang xiao long #greekfire #greekfire rwby #yang x pyrrha #rwby rarepair exchange #writings

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