Chapter Text
“So, uh. W-what’s going to happen to your job?” Rabbit asked once the tearful hugging had finished. The three of them were now sitting around the table in Iris’ room and had been joined by The Spine, along with several cups of hot tea. “You said your b-boss didn’t like you leavin’ much.”
“Yes, well.” Iris looked down at her tea. “I was given leave to go and visit Mr. Becile, at first, and then once I was approached by Matter Master David, my employer was kind enough to give me another week’s leave to come and see you. She isn’t expecting me back for several days yet, dear, so I wouldn’t worry too much about it right now.”
The Jon’s hand clutched Rabbit’s in a show of support beneath the table.
“Oh-okay.” Rabbit was quiet for a moment. “So… what’d you wanna do while you were here?”
“Well…” Iris glanced over at The Jon tentatively. “Your friends have told me that you’ll be putting on a concert in a few days’ time. I’d love to come see it, if that’s all right with you.”
Rabbit flinched.
“I m-m-might not be any good, Ma,” she protested. “I still d-don’t know how to sing.”
“Oh?” Iris frowned. “The Jon was explaining to me only yesterday how he’d been teaching you music.”
“Rabbit’s still a little shy,” The Jon piped up, “but she’s so good at playin’ the accordion, Miss Iris! She’s even writing a song with it!”
“Oh, isn’t that lovely.” Iris smiled warmly at Rabbit, who was steadfastly avoiding the gaze of everyone at the table. “I’m sure it’ll be wonderful, dear, even if someone else has to sing it at first. You’ll pick up the skill in no time, I’m sure.”
“Mm… maybe,” Rabbit hedged. Why did everyone have to assume that singing was just something she was automatically going to be good at? She had shown absolutely no indication of any prowess related to singing, ever, no matter that she ran on Blue Matter, and that certainly wasn’t going to change in the four days left before the concert.
Rabbit pulled her hand out of The Jon’s, suddenly feeling cold.
“H-hey,” she suggested quickly, before anyone could comment further on her or her embarrassing lack of musicality, “w-w-would you wanna sit in on our practice today, Ma? You can hear Jon and The Spine play, they’re re-really good!”
Iris beamed. “I would love to, darling! When do you all tend to play?”
“We’ll likely be practicing several times each day, Miss Iris,” The Spine replied, eyeing Rabbit speculatively, “since the concert is happening so soon. But our first practice will be shortly after lunch today, once the main crowd has cleared from the saloon. Does that sound acceptable to you?”
“Perfectly.” Iris smiled at The Spine, charmed like most other humans tended to be at his impeccable manners. “Miss Moreau had planned on showing me around a little bit more this morning, so it would be lovely to sit and relax with you all afterwards. Shall I wait in my room to be collected?”
“Whatever you prefer,” The Spine said smoothly. “We could also come perform for you in your room, if you’d like.”
“Splendid. I’ll expect you all directly after lunch, then.” Iris leaned towards Rabbit as if to kiss her cheek, but caught herself before she’d gone forward more than a couple of inches. There was an awkward pause, and then she offered a small, painful smile.
“I’ll see you after lunch, darling,” she said quietly.
Everyone looked at Rabbit. The air in the room felt suddenly close and still, as if all of the beings present were holding their collective breaths, waiting to see how she would react.
Rabbit didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t bring herself to kiss Iris, or to let Iris kiss her, like they had so often before. Not yet. But she also couldn’t leave Iris with nothing.
Not this time.
Hesitantly, the motion slow and embarrassingly jerky, Rabbit stretched out a hand. It took a few false starts and was almost aborted halfway through as a wave of inexplicable fear washed over her, but at last her long, copper fingers lay gently atop the pale, slender ones of her mother, and the sensation of them through her new fingertips, coupled with the wide-eyed expression Iris fixed on her tightened a fist like a power surge around her core.
“After lunch,” she agreed, voice soft. The Jon let out a cheerful chirp, and the feeling surged through her again, tight and painful and pleasurable and full of longing. For a moment Rabbit was afraid that the sensation had shown on her face, but Iris was already looking towards The Jon, eyes and mouth crinkled into a fond smile.
Oh, how she loved them both, Rabbit thought, the truth penetrating through her systems as potent as an electric shock. And how interesting it was how her love for them could feel so similar, and so similarly painful, despite the differences between them. How strange that, despite everything that had happened between herself and Iris, despite all of the lies and broken trust they’d had to wade through, her love for her mother still burned inside of her as fiercely as it had the day she’d first been left behind.
Why, oh why hadn’t Pappy thought to tell her how much love would hurt while he still had the chance?
A quiet whistle caught her attention and she looked over towards The Spine. The silver robot smiled at her, his expression understanding.
“You’ve done well,” The Spine tweeted in a low whistle that Rabbit could almost have mistaken for distant birdsong. “They’re proud of you.”
Rabbit looked back at her mother and The Jon, both laughing at a joke she’d missed.
Proud of her? For what?
The Jon’s eyes opened and fixated on Rabbit’s own. The light behind his brilliantly blue photoreceptors seemed to shine even brighter, his smile impossibly wider, and the tension that had been so pronounced throughout Iris’ body when they’d first arrived was nowhere to be seen.
Had she done that?
“For loving them,” The Spine whistled again, even quieter than before. And then he was on his feet, offering Iris his hand and pardoning the three of them to let her get ready, and Iris was waving and calling Rabbit darling as they stepped back out into the hallway, and The Jon was hanging off Rabbit’s arm like a limpet, gushing about all of the songs he wanted to show Miss Iris during their practice later. The sheer amount of lovefamilyaffection surrounding her at that moment made Rabbit’s processor spin.
She had not felt this way, had not felt this surrounded by people who loved her wholly and completely and so explicitly since she’d left Walter Manor.
Proud of her? For loving them?
It seemed ridiculous. Absurd.
And yet…
Rabbit laced her fingers through those of The Jon, reveling in the warmth and contentment that settled in her chassis as she did so. She allowed herself to be pulled along the hallway, indulgent audience to The Jon’s exuberance and The Spine’s halfhearted attempts to corral it, and for the first time in a long time, allowed herself to cautiously open up to the possibility of more.
Of The Jon. Of Balboa. Of everything.
Perhaps… perhaps love did not have to be so full of pain.
Maybe someday it could be something she could be proud of herself for, too.
-
“Me and my baby love Saturday nights, Saturday ni-ights…”
“Saturday…”
…
“Yeah, me and my baby love Saturday nights, Saturday ni-ights…”
“Saturday…”
…
The Spine’s guitar paused. Rabbit and The Jon watched with baited breath as he slowly held his fingers to the bridge of his silver nose.
“Rabbit?”
“Y-y-yeah, buddy?”
“You’re not singing.”
Rabbit glowered at him. “Of course I am!”
“You’re speaking with pitch.”
“That’s what I told her,” The Jon said mournfully. Rabbit turned to glare at him too.
“W-w-what else’m I supposed to do, huh?” she demanded, mindful of Iris sitting five feet away and trying her best to modulate her tone. “This is the only way I can d-do it without stutterin’ all the time!”
“What about singing in Blue?” The Jon asked, looking to The Spine for permission. “She’s getting better at that.”
The Spine shook his head. “No, it’ll offend the other robots and confuse the humans. It has to be in English, or…” He blew frustrated steam from his lips. “I suppose you could merely hum or vocalize your parts without any words at all, but it’s certainly not ideal.”
Rabbit sighed, slumping over into a nearby chair without bothering to unstrap the accordion from her chest. They’d been at this for almost an hour, now—The Jon and The Spine patiently working their way through the setlist while Rabbit struggled along behind in her barely-musical monotone.
Iris had been very polite about the whole affair, but Rabbit’s boiler temperature had been steadily climbing the entire time as embarrassment and stress had taken their toll. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go; she wasn’t supposed to make a fool of herself in front of her mother by not being able to demonstrate an ounce of the music she’d supposedly learned since coming here.
What must Iris think of her?
What must she think Pappy would have thought of her?
“M-m-maybe you guys should just sing it without me,” she suggested, flicking dejectedly at the bright red buttons of the accordion. “There’s no way I’ll get it in time.”
The Jon’s mouth twisted to the side, and immediately Rabbit knew she would not like what was coming.
“You might be able to get it,” The Jon said, his tone uncharacteristically stubborn, “if you just try listening, like we told you.”
To hell with her mother being five feet away.
“Not that again!” Rabbit snapped, the stress and the fear and the overheating fraying her temper to the breaking point. “You all ke-ke-keep sayin’ that nonsense, but I keep tellin’ ya, it’s just a core! There’s n-n-nothing there!”
“Rabbit.” Iris’s voice brought her up short. “It’s not nonsense. Your father spoke of this often when he was alive—how Blue Matter is the physical manifestation of love and creativity in this universe, and how your core, everything you run on down to your circuitry, is powered by this substance.”
The Jon beamed at her, clearly pleased that someone else was corroborating this dubious piece of information. The Spine, in the corner, was nodding along sagely. Irritated, Rabbit huffed.
“Then w-w-why’s it been so darn hard?” she demanded. “If I’m made of—of—somethin’ that’s creativity itself, that lets me speak in this whole ‘nother language—” Iris’s brows rose in surprise— “then how come I’ve been havin’ a harder time learning how to sing than a fish learning to walk on dry land?”
“You might not have been engaging the software correctly,” Iris said. “Or you haven’t managed to tap into your Blue Matter the way these boys have. Oh…” Her eyes grew wistful. “Your father wanted to try so many experiments with you, dear. He was so keen to discover the limits of Blue Matter, to see just how human you would become. And you’ve made him so proud, never worry about that.” She leaned forward to lay a hand on Rabbit’s knee. “He would have been overjoyed to see you now—learning music, making friends… falling in love.” Rabbit looked at her sharply, but Iris only smiled.
“I think, my dear, that it might do you a bit of good to think about that special someone the next time you try to play, or sing. You might surprise yourself.”
A burst of steam escaped from Rabbit’s cheek vents in embarrassment, but despite herself she couldn’t help remembering the odd piercing note she’d heard in her core after The Jon had kissed her. Was that what she was meant to be listening for? Was that what it sounded like to The Jon and The Spine when they were playing?
“If it helps,” The Spine offered from his corner, “I frequently think of Brianna while I’m composing or singing. It gets the juices flowing, so to speak.”
“And then what happens?” Rabbit asked, still trying to hang on to a modicum of skepticism and righteous indignation. “D-do you gotta think about her the whole time? What if you gotta think real hard about the music you-you’re playing?”
The Spine shook his head. “She stays on my mind, certainly, but once I’ve gotten those subroutines going, things… sort of take care of themselves.” He sighed in an almost wistful way that seemed much more vulnerable than The Spine Rabbit had come to know. “The music melds with your processing and your core and it makes everything around you seem to sing with the happiness of just being alive.” There was a beat, and then a small puff of steam escaped from his neck as his face transitioned to a grimace of self-consciousness.
“Sorry to go on like that,” he apologized, straightening his tie. “But you get the idea.”
Did she? Rabbit tilted her head and studied The Jon pensively. She did frequently get a funny feeling in her boiler when she looked at or sat next to The Jon, as well as a lighter, more airy feeling around her core. And of course there was that note. If she focused hard enough, she could almost still hear it ringing deep inside herself, like a tuning fork that had been left to keep sounding and sounding on its own.
Tentatively, she fingered a note on the accordion, pleased to notice how it almost matched the tone resonating inside herself. Her fingers strayed, played a second and then a third note, and the harmony was pleasant. She wanted to sing, wanted to give voice to the something inside of her that swirled and danced where her heart might have been had she been human—
Everyone’s eyes were on her.
She couldn’t.
A wave of panic overtook her, and the music that had been all-consuming just a moment before abruptly stilled and then went silent.
Rabbit stilled the accordion, averting her eyes from the disappointment writ heavy across The Jon’s features, and masked more politely on Iris’ and The Spine’s.
“I’ll—I’ll think about it,” she said, before anyone else could comment. “But for r-right now… Can we just go back to practicin’ as a group? I’ll… I’ll just keep doin’ backup, cause that’s… That’s w-what I know how to do.”
“Of course,” The Spine replied smoothly, and reached for his guitar with a quelling glance directed at The Jon, who’d just opened his mouth to respond. The golden bot subsided with a pitiful look, but Rabbit kept her gaze firmly on her shoes as The Spine counted them in once more for Saturday Nights.
She’d failed, again. And yet… she had felt something that time. Something inside her core, something undeniably musical.
Maybe… Just possibly…
Rabbit was quiet for the rest of practice, even her sparse backup melodies subdued as she focused half of her attention on that hidden place inside of herself, determined to catch even the faintest trace of a song. The Spine kept glancing back at her every few minutes, appraising a note here, a musical phrasing there, but wisely chose to say nothing. The Jon, if a little unhappily, followed his brother’s lead.
Iris, meanwhile, made sure to applaud and offer encouraging comments whenever the two were required. She might not have been entirely sure of what was going on inside that copper head of Rabbit’s, but she had the sneaking suspicion that a quiet evolution was taking place inside of her child, and as mother it was her duty to encourage it as best she could.
They had three more days.