The rain had been going for hours, hard enough to blur the fence outside into a trembling gray smear. It struck the roof of the Mantis with a hollow metallic percussion that Zoey usually liked. Tonight it only made the inside feel smaller.
She had turned off most of the lights. The instrument panels still gave off their muted green and amber glow, enough to catch the edges of the things packed around her: ammunition cans under the bench, two rifles locked against the wall, a half-disassembled prosthetic elbow on the work surface, dirty clothes shoved behind the driver's seat, empty food packaging, a bottle with two fingers of something clear left at the bottom. Everything she owned seemed to have accumulated inward until there was barely enough room left for her.
Zoey sat on the floor between the bunks with her knees pulled loosely toward her chest. Her tail curled through the narrow aisle because there was nowhere else for it to go. One prosthetic hand rested against the opposite wall. The other was in her lap.
She had been sitting there long enough that her legs had gone numb.
There wasn't anything visibly wrong with her.
That was the problem.
No blood. No broken hardware. No bullet holes. No fresh burns. No reason to call anyone. Nothing she could point at and say, there, that's why.
Earlier that evening she had gone into Sigma City because she needed hydraulic fittings and ammunition. She had gotten both. She had eaten something on the walk back. She had even laughed at somebody's joke outside the parts counter. The cashier had flirted with her, apparently sincerely, and Zoey had flirted back because that was what Zoey did.
Then she'd come home.
Something had quietly stopped working.
She stared at the toes of her boots.
There were days when she hated her body. Those were understandable. Hatred was something she could fight. Hatred had edges. You could insult yourself in the mirror, put on armor, swallow something, turn the music louder and go find work dangerous enough that survival occupied every available part of your mind.
This was worse.
Tonight she didn't hate herself.
Tonight she simply couldn't find herself.
Her horns were there when she touched them. The scaled tail was there behind her. Her tongue felt strange against her teeth. The weight of her breasts beneath her shirt was familiar. The prosthetics answered every command instantly, powerful machines pretending so successfully to be arms that sometimes she forgot where flesh ended.
All of it belonged to somebody called Zoey.
She knew that academically.
She couldn't understand why that meant it belonged to her.
The bottle was within reach.
She stared at it.
"No."
Her voice sounded embarrassing inside the little armored compartment.
She picked it up anyway.
For a few seconds she held it between two metal fingers. Then she put it back without drinking.
That somehow made everything worse.
Zoey took out her phone.
There were people she could call. Very few who would come, fewer who could come without asking questions she couldn't answer, and perhaps one who would understand that sometimes being helped meant not being investigated.
Her thumb hovered.
Then she called.
When the knock came twenty-eight minutes later, Zoey almost didn't answer it.
She stayed on the floor and watched the rear hatch like whoever was outside might eventually decide she wasn't worth the trouble.
Another knock.
"Zoey?"
She closed her eyes.
"Open."
The hatch released.
Cold rain smell entered first. Then boots on metal. The hatch closed again, sealing the weather outside.
They didn't ask why she was sitting on the floor.
That was why she'd called them.
They removed their wet coat and found somewhere impossible to put it, eventually hanging it from a rifle rack with the rifle still in it. Then they sat on the floor across from her.
Zoey gave a faint smile.
"Luxury accommodations."
"I've seen worse."
"Fuck you."
"Sure."
Usually that would have earned something from her. A grin. A crude comeback. A deliberate escalation until the entire conversation became filthy enough to bury whatever had originally been wrong.
Instead Zoey looked away.
The silence became long.
"You want me to ask?" they said eventually.
"No."
"Okay."
Another minute passed.
Rain hammered the roof.
Zoey rubbed her thumb repeatedly over the seam of one artificial finger.
"I don't know what's happening."
They waited.
"I know where I am." She swallowed. "I'm not hallucinating. I'm not fucking psychotic. I know this is my truck. I know it's raining. I know what day it is."
"Okay."
"I know you're real."
"Okay."
She became irritated.
"Stop saying okay."
"What do you want me to say?"
"I don't fucking know."
"Then I'm not going to guess."
Zoey looked at them.
There was no judgment there. Worse, there wasn't pity either. She had prepared herself to reject pity.
She had no defense against patience.
Her mouth tightened.
"I keep looking at my hands."
They glanced toward her prosthetics.
"And?"
"And they're mine."
Zoey's voice cracked on the last word.
She stopped.
Her jaw worked silently for several seconds.
"They're mine," she repeated. "I know they're mine. Obviously they're fucking mine. But I look at them and it's like somebody handed me photographs and explained who the person in them is."
She reached up and touched one horn.
"This too."
Her fingers moved down her face.
"This."
Then her chest.
"This."
Then she gripped her thigh hard enough to leave marks through the fabric.
"All of it."
They didn't interrupt.
Zoey's breathing became uneven.
"I spent so much fucking time trying to make it mine."
Now the words were coming faster.
"I fought for it. I rebuilt shit. I regrew shit. I replaced shit. I survived shit. I figured out what I wanted to look like and then half the time I hated it anyway, but it was mine, and tonight I can't—"
Her breath caught.
"I can't fucking get inside."
Something in her expression collapsed.
She lowered her head.
"I feel like I'm standing behind my own eyes."
The person across from her moved slightly.
Zoey recoiled.
Not violently. Barely an inch.
It was enough.
They stopped immediately.
"I'm not touching you."
Zoey stared at the floor.
"I know."
"Do you want me to?"
"I don't know."
"Then I won't."
She nodded.
Five minutes passed that way.
Maybe ten.
Zoey eventually stretched her legs out. Pins and needles burned through her calves. She welcomed it. Physical sensation was uncomplicated.
"Talk to me," she said.
"About what?"
"Anything."
So they talked.
Nothing important.
A busted transmission. Somebody's awful haircut. A restaurant that had somehow managed to ruin fried potatoes. An SCDF clerk who had accidentally submitted the same requisition eleven times and caused eleven pallets of toilet paper to appear at a checkpoint.
Zoey listened.
Gradually, she moved closer.
Not consciously at first.
An inch.
Then another.
Eventually her knee touched theirs.
She froze.
They kept talking.
Zoey left it there.
After another minute she leaned sideways until her shoulder rested against them.
The conversation continued without acknowledgment.
Her head followed.
Then one arm.
Eventually she was pressed against another warm body, awkwardly folded into the cramped aisle of an armored vehicle while rain drummed above them.
Zoey whispered, "Touch me."
A hand rested carefully against her back.
She shuddered.
"More."
The arm around her tightened.
Zoey breathed into their shirt.
There.
Pressure.
Warmth.
Weight.
Something external defining the boundary of her body when she couldn't.
She grabbed the front of their shirt.
"Harder."
They held her tighter.
For several seconds that was enough.
Then Zoey kissed them.
It wasn't graceful. Their teeth bumped. Zoey nearly caught one of them with a horn when she shifted position. Normally she would have laughed.
She didn't.
She kissed them again.
Then again.
Faster.
Her hands began searching, tugging, trying to turn comfort into something else before either of them could name what was happening.
They caught one wrist gently.
Zoey stopped.
Her face changed immediately.
"Don't."
"I'm not rejecting you."
"Then don't fucking stop me."
"I'm not going anywhere."
"I didn't say you were."
"Zoey."
She pulled her wrist free.
"Don't fucking therapist me."
"I'm not."
"Then fuck me."
Silence.
Her eyes hardened.
"What?"
They studied her face.
"Is that what you want?"
Zoey laughed once, ugly and humorless.
"What, you need a signed fucking form?"
"No."
"Then yes."
"Zoey."
"What?"
"Is that what you want?"
She opened her mouth.
Nothing came out.
For several seconds she looked almost frightened by the question. Then her fingers tightened in their shirt and she dragged herself closer until there was nowhere left between them.
"I want something strong enough that I can't think around it."
Her voice dropped.
"Fuck me till i feel like a person again."
The words sat there, raw and humiliating.
This time, they didn't pull away.
Their hand came up to the side of her face, not gentle enough to disappear into the background, not rough enough to frighten her. Just firm. Present.
"Tell me if you want me to stop."
Zoey swallowed.
"I will."
"Promise."
"I fucking promise."
They kissed her.
Hard.
Zoey answered immediately.
There was nothing romantic about the first few seconds. She wasn't looking for romance. She wanted collision. Weight. Heat. Something louder than the strange hollow distance inside her skull.
She shoved them back against the bunk and followed, clumsy in the narrow interior of the Mantis. One of her horns struck the overhead compartment with a metallic crack.
"Ow. Fuck."
"You okay?"
"Yes."
A breathless, startled laugh escaped her.
The sound seemed to surprise her more than the impact had.
"Again," she said.
"What?"
"Don't fucking stop."
So they didn't.
The cramped vehicle became an advantage. There was nowhere to retreat, nowhere for Zoey's awareness to drift without immediately encountering something physical: cold wall against her shoulder, mattress under her knee, fingers digging into her side, the awkward pressure of her tail trapped between them until she yanked it free with an irritated curse.
Everything was sensation.
Everything had location.
Here.
Here.
Here.
Zoey demanded intensity and got it. Not cruelty. Not disregard. Every time her breathing changed strangely, every time her body suddenly went rigid instead of responsive, they checked her eyes and waited for the tiny nod that meant continue.
She hated the pauses.
She needed them anyway.
"Harder."
They obliged.
Zoey shut her eyes.
"No."
They stopped instantly.
Her eyes snapped open.
"No, not stop. I mean—"
She grabbed their face.
"Make me keep my eyes open."
Understanding passed between them.
They kissed her again.
Zoey stared past their shoulder at first. Then at them.
The world narrowed.
The rain disappeared.
The clutter disappeared.
The city disappeared.
There was another person looking directly at her, touching her as though her body were solid and undeniable.
Zoey.
Not the prosthetics.
Not the horns.
Not the history.
Not the list of things that had been done to her or the list of things she'd done afterward.
Her.
Her breathing became ragged.
"Say my name."
"Zoey."
"Again."
"Zoey."
Something inside her lurched.
"Again."
They said it until she stopped asking.
The intensity finally overwhelmed thought exactly as she'd wanted. Her mind couldn't maintain that awful detached observation when her body demanded all of its attention at once. Muscles strained. Her pulse hammered. Skin became skin again. Her prosthetics stopped feeling like foreign machines because she was using them, gripping, pulling, holding on.
For several minutes she wasn't remembering herself.
She was experiencing herself.
That difference was enormous.
When it was over, Zoey lay completely still.
Not asleep.
Not dissociated.
Just emptied out.
Rain ticked softly against the roof.
Her breathing gradually slowed.
The other person remained beside her, one hand resting on her stomach.
Zoey stared upward.
"Hey."
"Yeah?"
She flexed her fingers.
Looked at them.
Then moved one hand across her own ribs, stomach, hip, almost experimentally.
Her expression changed.
"I'm back."
It wasn't relief in her voice.
Not entirely.
There was something devastating about discovering that the stupid desperate idea had worked.
They turned toward her.
Zoey immediately shook her head.
"Don't."
"Don't what?"
"Don't make that mean something."
"I wasn't going to."
"Good."
She swallowed.
Her eyes had begun watering.
"Because that's fucked up."
Nobody contradicted her.
Zoey wiped at her face angrily.
"I shouldn't need somebody to beat the static out of my fucking head with sex."
"No."
"But it worked."
"Yeah."
"That's worse."
Maybe it was.
If it hadn't worked, she could have dismissed the whole thing as desperation.
Instead her body felt unquestionably hers again.
Her legs were heavy. Her pulse was slowing. Her skin felt overheated. There were places that would ache tomorrow. Every sensation fit neatly inside the boundaries of one person.
Zoey.
She started crying.
Quietly this time.
No panic. No collapse.
Just tears slipping sideways toward her ears while she stared at the ceiling.
They reached for her hand.
Zoey caught theirs before they could.
For one strange moment she simply examined the difference between their fingers and hers.
Warm living skin.
Metal and synthetic covering.
Both real.
She interlocked them.
"I hate that you saw me like this."
"I know."
"I mean it."
"I know."
"If you tell anybody, I'll deny everything."
"I know."
"And probably shoot you."
"That one's less reassuring."
Zoey gave a wet, exhausted laugh.
There it was again.
A reaction that belonged to her.
She rolled onto her side and pressed herself against them, this time without urgency.
"Stay."
"Yeah."
"Don't make me ask twice."
They wrapped an arm around her.
Zoey put her forehead against their chest.
For a while neither spoke.
Eventually she said, "That wasn't me trying to hurt myself."
"I know."
"I needed..."
She struggled with the wording.
"Resistance."
Their hand moved slowly along her back.
"Something pushing back."
"Yeah."
"If I touch a wall, the wall pushes back."
Zoey closed her eyes.
"If somebody grabs me, I know where I end."
There it was.
The actual reason.
Intensity wasn't punishment.
It was geometry.
Pressure told her where her body was. Exertion told her which muscles belonged to her. Another person's weight told her she occupied space. Being wanted forced her to exist in somebody else's perception at the exact moment she couldn't maintain herself in her own.
It was not healthy in any clean or uncomplicated way.
But it wasn't meaningless either.
Zoey breathed slowly against their chest.
"Next time..."
They waited.
She grimaced.
"I hate that I'm saying next time."
"You don't have to."
"No. Fuck it."
She lifted her head.
"Next time I tell you I'm disappearing like that, don't assume I need to be handled like glass."
"Okay."
"I might need this."
"Okay."
"And sometimes I might just need you to sit there."
"Okay."
"And if I say stop, you stop."
"Immediately."
"And if I say harder—"
"I heard you the first twelve times."
Zoey actually smiled.
"Asshole."
"There she is."
She rested her head against them again.
The phrase should have annoyed her.
Instead it landed somewhere painfully tender.
There she is.
Zoey listened to another heartbeat beneath her ear and felt her own answering inside her chest.
She was bruised.
She was exhausted.
She was embarrassed beyond belief.
She was going to hate remembering half of tonight.
But she was inside herself again.
For now, that was enough.
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