Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

A gifted mechanic is called in to service a pilot. As The Mechanic begins to head towards her station to work on the pilot, she can’t help but ruminate on her feelings about pilots. She honestly doesn’t like them.

It’s not a personal thing, she’s sure that they were great people at one point, but it’s hard to see them like that anymore. She finds the whole thing creepy and off-putting. She see’s what they do to pilots, knows how they’re made. She probably understands the process more than anybody on the base. She’s a prodigy in mecha suit engineering, which also includes pilot systems.

It makes her uncomfortable. The pilots are treated like objects, tools of war. That’s what they are too, what they’re made to be. Their skulls are full of tech that hooks them straight into their mechs, their brains fried with dopamine and other kinds of chemical soup to reward them when they shoot targets into slag. They even end up sharing the space in their head with the onboard ai’s of their mechs. They’re locked into the mechanical nerves and metal muscles of the mech. It makes them amazing killing machines, but their minds are practically crippled outside of the suits, raw and untethered, ungrounded.

The weirdest thing to her is they seem so happy. It doesn’t even look like it’s just the chemicals, it can’t be. They like it, whatever fucked up experience they’re having, it’s making them happy as can be. They want to get back into the suits, they want to push more. They like getting bossed around like dogs by their handlers. They love their ai’s almost like some weird fusion of a lover, a sibling, and a reflection. They can barely even articulate how they feel, most don’t bother, but The Mechanic has worked in this business long enough to learn anyways.

She gets to her workshop. It’s honestly kind of pathetic, barely worthy of the name. She knows that the pilots are treated as tools, but mechanics aren’t treated much better. Human but still not really worthy of respect. They work her and the other mechanics like slaves, cramping them into the crawl spaces where stuff needs fixing. Even with her advanced position all they afford her is this broom closet from hell. The room is cramped and humid, like a small metal sauna. It’s still marginally better than the communal workshop. Even with the bigger and more open room it still somehow manages to be claustrophobic and hot.

The Pilot is already there, sitting on her workbench, completely naked. The Mechanic isn’t surprised, but her face still burns with heat as she blushes when seeing The Pilot’s bare ass resting on the same giant hunk of tungsten-steel alloy she uses to fix delicate parts and machinery. The Pilot’s augs are invasive and take up a good portion of its body. Its arms, its legs, and a good portion of its back are more machine than human at this point. Normally the jumpsuits account for this, but those would get in the way of repairs. Normal clothes would too, and developing some kind of modesty cover for them is more trouble than it’s worth for the higher ups. They don’t have to deal with the nudity, and it’s not like the pilots even care.

The Mechanic wipes the sweat from her brow and crosses the room. She doesn’t actually acknowledge The Pilot aside from the blushing, but The Pilot’s gaze follows her as she makes her way over to a box of tools. She sets the box down next to The pilots thigh and pulls over the ratty stool she uses for a chair.

She starts servicing The Pilot. She pulls out delicate tools and with ingrained precision she begins opening up The Pilot’s augs, starting with the legs and going up. She hooks its systems up to an old box of a diagnostics unit and begins manually inspecting the parts. She pulls wires aside with tiny fractions of force and checks on the tiny sensors and servos that are no bigger than her fingernail, cleaning them with tiny swabs and lubricating them with drops of oil.

The entire time she keeps hearing weird noises. Soft whines and sounds of scraping play at the edge of her attention, distracting her just the tiniest amount. The Mechanic can’t tell where the noises are coming from, and it’s bothering the shit out of her. When she takes a step back to unfocus and wipe the sweat from her forehead, she sees where it’s coming from.

It’s the pilot. It’s breathing heavily, like it’s exhausted. Its face is almost as flushed as The Mechanic’s when she walked in. The metal tips of its fingers scratch at the polished surface of her workbench. Jesus fucking christ, was The Pilot turned on right now? With the face it was making it had to be.

Fuck, now The Mechanic was thrown way off. It was already hard enough to try and pretend this was just normal machine servicing when all of the machinery was attached to a sweaty, naked girl, it was impossible to do it when she knew it was getting off to her poking around in its augments.

The Mechanic just couldn’t get back into the same groove she had before. Every stifled moan disrupted her concentration. Every squirm messed up her precise motions. Everything just kept bringing her back into the moment, where her face was inches away from the pilot’s crotch.

The Mechanic slogged through the rest of the grueling work, doing her best to try and travel into that little place in the back of her mind where she could just stop thinking and do what she was good at. She finished with the legs and then told the pilot directly to lay down so she could begin on her arms.

The Pilot laid down like it was told. The Mechanic scooted her stool forward and raised the seat for a better vantage. In the end the new position wasn’t all that much better than the old. The Pilot’s left arm was cradled on The Mechanic’s lap while she popped it open and began working on it.

It was more of the same. Nothing wrong but basic cleanup, which meant The Mechanic wouldn’t be busy enough to zone out. She could see its face clearly now. It looked so human, so lively. When she pressed a sensor its hand tensed and squirmed, pushing against her stomach a bit. A tugged wire elicited a slight yip of surprise. It felt so carnal, to dig into this things innards and just mess around.

Seeing it like this, The Mechanic couldn’t help but wonder about the difference between the two. Right now it looked just as human as she was, so she couldn’t apply the same cold business mentality she usually did with her work. She felt like they were almost one in the same. I mean, look at it, being a pilot can’t be so bad, right?

The Mechanic’s thoughts ground to a halt. Her surprise was so sudden it caused her to tweak a wire hard enough to get The Pilot to let out a proper yelp. Neither could tell if it was a yelp of pleasure or pain.

What had she just thought? Seriously, what the hell was that? Was she serious? Of course being a pilot is bad, being treated like a mindless dog, worked like a machine, and used like a toy. The Mechanic barely knew where that thought had even come from. I mean, it and her were nothing alike.

The Mechanic stewed in those thoughts, trying to reassure herself that she was nothing like it. She wasn’t an it. The Mechanic was a person, and it was just a pilot. The Mechanic tried her best to just focus on the work, but she couldn’t. The thoughts bothered her so much, and she really couldn’t dismiss them.

Because they were alike, very much alike. Not in the sense that The Pilot was a person. In the sense that The Mechanic wasn’t.
The Mechanic couldn’t help but feel it. She was a cog in a much larger machine, a tiny piece. She was treated almost the same as The Pilot

The Mechanic was worked like a dog. She was given shit conditions and forced to do shittier things. She was expendable, one in a million. You could point to almost any outward aspect of the two of them and they would match up.

The thing that frustrated The Mechanic even more was how they were the same on the inside too.

The Mechanic knew what it felt like to become something bigger. Working in the engineering wing was like being in a hive mind. You’re practically shoulder to shoulder with the people next to you. You become parts of the same whole, you work together, you sweat together, you create together. She can’t even remember how many times she had needed something, a part, a tool, a towel, anything, and a mechanic next to her had just known, and given it to her. She knew she had done the same for others all the time.

She could admit to feeling like an it sometimes. Stripped of your identity, down to everything but your use. She didn’t know The Pilot’s name, and The Pilot probably didn’t know her’s. She was a mechanic. She was nothing but the job she did. A function, not a person.

Her head pounded as she adjusted her grip on The Pilot’s arm. Her head buzzed and it felt like her brain was melting in the heat of the room. She could imagine the wires burning up and melting their rubber casings. The copper and metal fusing together into a frenzied mess as her thoughts jumbled into each other.

She shook her head violently. God she was losing it! Her brain wasn’t made of wires, it was made of meat! She wasn’t overheating, she was just getting some kind of headache. She closed up the first arm, not even sure if she was really done, and told the pilot to swap sides through gritted teeth.

She wanted things to be simpler. She wanted to stop thinking. She just wanted to do her job. The Mechanic missed the engineering floor. She missed the absent thrum as she worked alongside her fellow workers, their thoughts synchronizing into a beautiful and productive symphony. She wanted to be a part of that, of it. She just wanted to be a Mechanic, that was so much easier than all of this.

Is that why pilot’s are so happy? Are they so content because that’s what it feels like? The Mechanic thought about it in her own terms. Would she give up her body to work more efficiently? Would she open up her mind, just to be even closer with the other mechanics? Would she shed all of the cumbersome weight that thinking like a person had, and just become a simple and unbothered it?

The answer was yes. The Mechanic wanted that. The simple, pure existence of it. The Mechanic wanted to be that, and nothing more. When it realized that, it had a much easier time working on The Pilot’s arm.

It finished up The Pilot’s back in no time too. Without all of the messy thoughts clogging up its head, the whole thing went smoothly. The Pilot was sent on her way, on wobbly legs and with shaky breath. The Mechanic might have messed with it a bit more than necessary, but it liked to consider that a reward, for good behavior.

The Mechanic had actually ended up feeling pretty good by the end of it. It left the steamy confines of Its workshop and took a deep breath as it cooled off on the relatively chilly deck. It was reminded of the feeling of synchronicity that it now missed. The Mechanic wanted to feel that again, that sense of completeness. It knew just where it could go for such a feeling.

When it arrived at the engineering wing, The Mechanic was met by the confused stares of its peers. Most of the others knew that with the promotion to Senior Mechanic came a small private workshop, and it was rare for any Seniors to actually work at the wing without extenuating circumstances. The Mechanic still beamed a smile at its fellow workers and asked if there was anything it could do to help out.

This was met with even more confusion. They knew that having the kind of prowess that was necessary for a higher position in Engineering also came with a fair bit of eccentricity, but The Mechanic calling itself an “it” was still pretty bizarre. They had only ever really heard Pilots do the whole “it” thing, and they acted almost religious about it.

The Mechanic answered their confused stares and awkward questions by saying it simply wanted to try things out. It wanted a new perspective, after getting bogged down by the monotony of work. The other mechanics knew that all too well. Most of them had done some odd thing to alleviate boredom, so when it was put like that they had all the answers they wanted.

The Mechanic was directed to an empty bench and was briefed on the basics of what tasks were being handled. It was a senior officer here, so they didn’t have to explain much before it got the gist and began working.

The Mechanic felt alive again. It hadn’t felt a spark like this since it had first discovered its love for machinery. The way everyone worked silently, since there was no need for words when pure and simple understanding was already there. The Mechanic felt so connected, so whole, so free. In that moment it felt like it had really found its calling. It loved this feeling. The Mechanic wished that it could be here forever, experiencing this forever. The Mechanic wanted to fully immerse itself into this feeling.

With this realization, The Mechanic decided it could use a change in careers, in roles. It knew just how great being a mechanic could be, but it could only imagine how great it must be to be a pilot. To have the walls of flesh broken away and opened to allow connection to form. To devote itself to a sole purpose, so focused and intense that it swallowed it. To be able to feel that sense of completion in full, in its heart, its mind, its body and soul.

The Mechanic trotted off to Administration to apply for the pilot initiation program. It had been working in the Engineering wing for almost a month now, and it was sure that this was the role for it. It would miss the engineering floor, but there’s nothing saying it can’t service its own mech with some help from its old peers. It would be missed as well. Having a senior officer on the floor was a great help, but they were happy to see it get a real promotion.

As far as they were concerned, having a pilot with engineering experience would only be better. It was a win-win for everybody.

Chapter Text

As The Witch looks down at the people walking the roads and paths beneath her balcony she sips her tea. The tea is sour, the kind of sour that makes her mouth tingle and salivate. The Witch watched the pedestrians go about their business beneath her. The Witch saw other witches walking along, their dolls in tow. The Witch couldn’t stop the scowl from crawling onto her face.

She couldn’t help but despise them, the witches and even the dolls to a degree.
She saw the compassion they held for each other. To let yourself be so subservient to someone else, to offer them complete control. To take complete control of someone else, to have that power over someone. The thought made her sick, and the sight reminded The Witch of the absence of a doll of her own, which only added bitterness to the equation.

The Witch had never had a doll before. The Witch thought about it sometimes, of course. Witches and dolls were an iconic pair. You usually didn’t have one without the other. Dolls got their purpose from a witch, and witches were completed and complimented by their dolls.

The Witch had always felt uncomfortable with the idea of owning a doll, though. She hated the feeling of ordering others around, and having others do things she was more than capable of doing made The Witch feel lazy and almost infantile.

The Witch used to justify the absence by just saying it wasn’t for her. Today however, The Witch couldn’t shake that bitter feeling, so she made up her mind. She took another long drink from her sour cup of tea, focused on the tingling sensation in her mouth, and then got up and started getting ready to head out.

The Witch was heading to a local shelter for dolls without anyone to serve. While dolls could possibly take care of themselves just fine, it was a lot better for others to take care of them, in a sort of symbiosis. The Shelter was almost like a miniature apartment complex, affording each doll a small space for itself and several communal spaces for all of them to gather at.

The Witch made it to the shelter after a relatively short walk. She met an attendant at the counter and explained softly that she was looking to take in a doll. The attendant nodded and asked The Witch a few questions before leading her into the back where the rooms of the dolls were.

As the attendant led The Witch down the hall she tried her best not to look any of the dolls in their eyes. Most of the dolls didn’t fit the criteria The Witch had set her mind on. Most of the dolls looked at her with eager curiosity, rushing up to the doors and windows to get a look at the new witch. Some simply shied away, just as eager but also nervous and shy, a lot meeker than the others. The Witch did her best to be nice to them, smiling back with as genuinely as she could muster.

The Witch didn’t want an average doll, one that would be subservient for her. The Witch wasn’t comfortable with the kind of power dynamic they were after. She didn’t want complete control over her doll, and she knew well that most dolls here wouldn’t stop her from taking it. The Witch didn’t want to trust herself to not try.

The Witch ended up near the back of the large shelter, having not found a suitable doll yet. She stopped, finding a room she thought vacant. The Witch came closer to the window and saw that the room wasn’t empty at all, and instead housed a doll, sitting in the dark. The Doll had a look on its face, not eagerness or nervous curiosity, but annoyance.

A smile crept onto The Witch’s face, a satisfied smirk that tugged at her lips in a truly genuine way. The Witch asked the attendant if she could enter the room and the attendant agreed absent-mindedly, not yet realizing which door The Witch had meant.

Upon entering the dark room The Witch saw The Doll better in the light of the hallway. The Doll looked particularly menacing, brooding in the corner with a mean scowl that was aimed right at The Witch. It stood and to The Witch’s surprise it was even taller than she was, which didn’t happen often for her.

The Witch greeted The Doll but it remained silent. The Witch tried asking it about itself but was again met with silence and a mean look. Reluctantly, The Witch turned to the attendant and asked them about The Doll. The attendant said it was a retired combat doll, discharged from service due to violent tendencies. It was clear that the attendant was nervous about the situation. They hovered by the door, a worried expression on their face as they spoke. They even took occasional glances at The Doll, as if worried it would attack them or The Witch.

The Witch nodded in understanding, and turned back to The Doll. The Witch asked The Doll if it would like to come home with her. The attendant visibly jolted in shock, and quickly began rambling to The Witch about how The Doll had been returned several times due to violent outbursts and attacking witches. The attendant even offered The Witch a discount on the fees if she chose another doll.

The Witch just held a hand up to the attendant, silencing them. She turned back to the doll and looked at it with as honest of a look as she could. The Witch said that she wanted the doll to come home with her. The Witch knew that it had probably had several bad experiences with its previous witches, and that she understood her stand-offishness. The Witch couldn’t automatically make The Doll trust her, and she didn’t want that.

The Witch assured The Doll that she wanted what was best for it. The Doll could come if it wanted, but if it said no, right here and now, The Witch would leave, it had her word.

The Doll contemplated this. Seeming to take a long time to think. After a few minutes it got up and trudged over to The Witch, offering nothing but a nod.

The Witch smirked once more. A grin that split her face wide and made her eyes squint. The Witch and The Doll walked back to the front, following behind the frankly terrified attendant. The other dolls gave their noises of awe as they saw The Doll pass, and to its credit it actually managed to keep its cool. It wanted things to be different this time. It liked The Witch, It trusted her.

They got to the front desk and The Witch filled out more dull paperwork. At the end the attendant even tried handing her a coupon for a 30 day return policy with full refund. The Witch vehemently denied taking it, as she was sure she had made the right decision.

The Witch’s hopes were confirmed, when that same night The Doll almost killed her.

They had returned to The Witch’s home and The Witch began preparing a late dinner. The Witch had idly mentioned needing something from her bedroom. The Doll had gotten up to retrieve it, but The Witch rushed over, Trying to assure The Doll could just sit down and relax. The Witch had a knife in her hands from chopping vegetables, and when she grabbed The Doll’s hand to stop it from leaving, reflex and fear took control of The Doll before it could even think.

In a moment The Doll had slammed The Witch into the hardwood floor and pinned her there, one hand grabbing her shoulder and pressing it down, hard. Its other hand had grabbed the knife and turned it on The Witch, holding it up to her throat.

The Witch initially just looked shocked, obviously startled and dazed by the impact. The Doll was shocked too, but now also angry. It had acted on impulse, but that impulse had been right, she was so close to it, with a knife, what else could have happened next.

When The Witch got a hold of her senses again and saw the kitchen knife’s blade dangling an inch away from her throat, The Doll’s livid stare behind it, she smiled widely.

The Doll looked confused at that. She was happy? Why was The Witch happy? It was currently threatening her life, was she stupid or something?

The Witch spoke. She said how she really was hoping for this. That she was glad she made the right choice. The Doll just looked down at her confusedly and demanded she explain.

The Witch sighed and looked up at The Doll. She said she was happy that The Doll was willing to fight back. She wanted an angry doll, one with a backbone. She wanted someone who she knew for certain was strong enough to put The Witch in place. The Doll was still a bit confused, but it sort of saw what The Witch meant.

The Witch apologized to The Doll. She now realized how that must have looked from The Doll’s perspective. The Witch asked to be let up, and The Doll obliged. It was calmer now and knew both parties were somewhat at fault.
It apologized for its reaction, but The Witch assured it that she wasn’t mad.

The two continued the night in peaceful silence. The Witch would sometimes ask if it was ok with doing something for her, and The Doll would always oblige. The Doll would sometimes ask if there was something it could help with, and The Witch would give it a task to help her.

They spoke very few words, but by the end they had formed a unique bond. They felt like they had both finally found someone who could understand them. They ate the dinner they had prepared together and when night truly fell they both slept.

Both knowing that someone else was there in the house with them helped both sleep more soundly than either had in a very long time.