Alethea dragged a finger over the metal rail of her bed. The gentle grinding of carbyne steel on aluminum was an odd sound, accented by the soft clinking where her claw bounced over the dented portions of it.
She was fairly sure the hospital wouldn’t be super pleased at the damage she had inadvertently caused to said railing, among other things. Her arms hadn’t seemed fully willing to obey her for awhile, nor her legs. She had once had a nightmare and kicked the end of the bed hard enough to snap it off and cause the whole bottom end to fall forward causing quite the crash and half launching her into a twisted pile of not fully calibrated metal. The various tubes she had been hooked up to got yanked in the process and the noise of the clatter, not to mention the resulting alarm of various monitors, had brought a small army of nurses running.
They were clearly annoyed at more damage being caused by the twisted robot freak they were caring for. They even took quite awhile to get her back into a new bed. It did make some sense they were hesitant to touch her after what she had just did, or maybe they just thought she was disgusting. She was a patchwork mess of stitched flesh and metal. What was left of her actual skin was closer to something a twisted mad scientist would stitch together than a person and….
She shut her eyes and took a breath, a long deep breath. She had to tell her self that that wasn’t true. She was just projecting. Noone had said anything like that to her, or within earshot of her, and ‘earshot’ did seem to be quite a bit longer recently than it used to be. She took her hand off the rail to brush her ear back, hearing the telltale clink again before bringing her arm down to look at it. The bluish grey metal gleamed and pulses of blue energy would be seen through the cracks. Almost on their own accord her eyes zoomed into micron detail. Showing her every tiny grain of dust on the part of her hand she was looking at. The sudden zoom gave her mind a moment of vertigo and she just closed her eyes and flopped back
“What even am I?”
She voiced her thoughts to the ceiling, and herself. How much of her still was her? How much had been replaced after what happened? And did she really control it, or was it autonomous? Systems acting of their own accord while playacting as parts of her body.
Her sister had explained that that really wasn’t different from how bio limbs worked. After all, when you reach out for something you don’t have to solve the reverse kinematics equations to figure out the angle each joint needs to extend to in order to place your hand on the target object. You just ‘reach out’ and all the calculations just kinda happen. Same thing with vision. When one looks at a rose they don’t have to manually cross reference every component from the red petals to the green stem to the thorns and the leaves in order to conclude that they are in fact looking at a rose, that just kinda happens. Sure, said cross referencing IS happening, but it’s being done by less than conscious parts of your mind. The result is you just KNOW what you are looking at.
Even knowing that there were large amounts of things her body, even her mind, did that she didn’t really have direct control over, didn’t help too much in how disconnected she was feeling from the new body she had. She could tell herself over and over that she needed to ‘get used to it’ and that she, and the system, would ‘compensate’ for eachother, but it didn’t really help, at least thus far. And what would her parents think when they saw her like this? Her boyfriend? As if summoned from the gates of Mordor, er, Holy Terra?, whatever; as if summoned from somewhere nerdy a soft but masculine Lapine voice spoke. “You’re the beautiful, fun and goofy, if a little scary, girl that I fell in love with.”
Alethea was sitting bolt upright in a second, well far less than a second. The room swam as the sudden motion turned her vision into a kaleidoscope of colors for a fraction of a second as servos sat her up hard and fast enough to cause the whole bed to shake and complain under her. Sure enough there was Skyler. The brown furred bomb tech rabbit she had met back when the world started to goto hell. Her mind reeled putting his presence in context. How had she not noticed him. What was he talking about? No, he was responding to the question she had asked the ceiling. Was he standing there that long? How long was it?
She shook her head and managed to squeak out a reply, “Uh… h-hi…” before sliding the covers up to hide herself as much as possible.
Skyler looked a little shocked at her sitting up like gunshot, and then his expression shifted to one more pained as she slid back under the covers. He came over and sat beside her. “No need for that.” He said smiling warmly down at her.
Alethea found herself reddening at the sweet warm glow of his smile, his firm jaw, his muscular chest and…. Damn it why’d he have to be so hot? Her blush couldn’t’ even be hidden since she barely had any fur on her face anymore. Sure it was growing back, but it was patchy and, gross and …
Her thoughts fell away as he gently stroked the skin of her cheek, petting the bare, and still healing skin and the patchy regrowing fur in equal measure. She blinked off some tears and looked up at him, “You don’t have to pretend I’m not hideous”
“But you aren’t ‘hideous’ babe. Far from it.”
“Seriously. My fur is gone. I’m a ... burned up corpse or something… I…”
He shut her up with a hard boop on her nose, “I don’t know if you looked like that when you first got brought in, but you are not some ‘burned corpse’ just a little patchy, and its fine.”
“R-really. And what about this huh” She pushed her covers down then grabbed her hospital gown and yanked it up, giving her man a full flash as she wasn’t wearing anything under it.
She had expected some sort of revulsion, some flinching back, something. She was a patchwork of stich lines and flesh panels sewn back together after all. What she got was a red-faced nerdjock of a bunny. That gave her pause.
“Baby” He said at long last after composing himself and dragging his eyes off her exposed bust and back to her face, “You are still beautiful. Even if you don’t see it yet.”
She just blinked and stared at him.
“Now you should be healthy enough to leave from what I’m told, so let’s get you out of that bed.”
His arms were soon behind her legs and back and she found herself lifted into a princess carry. She was stunned silent for a moment as she was pressed against her man’s warm chest.
“H-how… I… With the metal I should…”
“Oh you are NOT light” He chuckled, “but Basic is still basic and all…”
Alethea found herself chuckling as well, “leave it to the military to turn a nerd into a wall of muscle.”
Skyler really couldn’t hold her for too long though so once they were done chuckling she was set down on her feet, her gown falling back down into its proper place covering her while she leaned on him. Walking would still be a bit of a challenge, but she could figure it out, she supposed. Just one foot in front of the other, try not to kick holes in any walls and lean on her man for every step. Out the door. Down the hall. To the elevator… inch by inch she moved along, as the pair got her checked out and she wobbled to his car.
As she settled in it finally occurred to her just how much she really wanted to be out of that damn hospital, and as the car started to move she rested her head on her man’s shoulder and slide back into a much less angst filled sleep.
