Recharge and Reequip

"I can just leave."

I stated it as a question, and she just kept that little knowing smile. Twenty-Six even gestured at the door, "I'm not stopping you."

I squint at her suspiciously. She'd been pretty upfront with me, but this isn't how it always went.

"That's not always how it was here." I said with a bit of heat in my voice. After she...wounded me like she did, I was locked in this little room, for what were apparently months.

Twenty-Six gave me a crooked look, "Did you really think you were going to go wander off in the wastelands in the shape you were in? That was for your own good."

Okay, that one pissed me off. I stood up, scrambling to express myself. It didn't work out too well, but I tried to yell at her. "Was this for my own good too?" I gesture to what used to be my left arm, now a mere stub with a metal cap on the end of it.  "Who the fuck gave you the right to just decide what I get to do?"

She didn't say anything, she didn't rise to my anger. She was also kinda sorta right in the second half of that deal.

I was delirious, emotionally reeling, and atrophied. Stepping outside was a death sentence. I probably couldn't have made it down the ever spiraling stairs.

I just fumed though, and she was nonplussed by it all, though she kept her eyes on me. I could've probably said more, but being enraged was just so draining.

"Did you know what she was going to do?"

Twenty-Six gave me that mysterious gaze beneath what I could only assume what eye shadow or something, the hood didn't help her, but her words felt earnest.  I felt I had learned a bit more about intuition of late.

She replied softly, "She likes to fix broken things."

"And I was broken."

She nodded, "That's all she wants to do. Fix things, improve things."

I raised my stump, "THIS is an improvement?"

She caught her mistake and raised a hand pacifyingly, "I thought maybe she'd fix your arm, not...that."

It took forever for me to continue, but eventually the moments passed.

"What is she?"

I got a shrug in response, "What's anything out here?"

"A Fear?" I questioned.  She shrugged again.

"Is she like the."

I paused.  God, it took me back. It took me back eight years.  How long ago was all that?  How much has happened in the world since all that?

Since the night I looked out my window and saw something unnatural, for the very first time.

"The Wretched Man?" I answered finally.

Memories just poured back into me. All the people I had met, all the community we had built. People just wanting to survive together.

We shared our stories, we hoped that we could learn something from each other. We tried to convince each other that we could survive.

Not many of us survived.  I can barely remember their names. Chester and Vieve...I think they made it. But how do you know?  I think it was Vieve who said that she felt like a cloud finally moved out from over her, and that she felt free. Is it so easy?

Twenty-Six looked at me as I processed some things that happened a hundred thousand years ago, but those memories came up fresher than I had ever recalled.

I looked at Twenty-Six, and wondered if she was one of our number once, but she'd always been so elusive on her own past.

"I don't think so.  She's inscrutable, and weird, but overall, she's not malevo.." She paused and raised a hand, knowing I was about to yell.  "She's not malevolent. She did it to help. Its just that she doesn't seem to get things like pain or trauma. She just fixes everything to what she thinks is right."

It sure felt like torture.

Yet, I was alive, I had survived a harrowing experience. The loss of my arm was a trauma from which I'll never recover. But I could learn to adjust to it, since I have no other choice.

She responded finally, "She just forgets what she's doing, and goes back to experimenting." I caught a look in her eye that told me measures.

Twenty-Six was one of those experiments.

"So why do you stay?"

With a bit of pain, she simply tells me 'don't.'  I don't push it.

She seems to relent that I'm leaving. I want to see my own world again.  I need to get back into contact with people, real people.  My investigation was a bust, and holy fuck my shadow's out there still.

God dammit. Maybe it doesn't come over here.

Alright, whatever, I'll see where that goes if it doesn't kill me.

She kinda just points at the corner near me.

I see a piece of shit sword in the scabbard against the wall. Its got some coloring to it, weird colors, purple and black, in the hilt.

I look back.  Twenty-Six says almost bored, "I gave her something to do."

I said off-handed, "This thing's supposed to be magic."

"Wouldn't be surprised." She said flatly.

"It....used to be a katana."

"Weeaboo." She snarks at me.

I looked at her, "This is the same weapon though? She reforged it?"

Twenty-Six says in her thick accent, "She does things. I don't ask why."

I drew it, and the piece of shit blade I've had for 100,008 years felt good in my hand. It was straight now, not a ninja-to. I think honest to god short sword. I only remember sword types from the old D&D groups, but it made me think more European than anything.  It had a crossguard she added. Thank god. It was tough as shit to parry with a freaking replica katana. The middle of that crossguard, made with some sort of dark metal, had a little hole in it.

As I stared at it, I saw little motes of energy cross through it.

"I'm going to regret this...but tell her thanks, I guess."

She started to say it, a smirk on her face.

We say it together.

"And all it cost you was an arm and a leg."