Work Text:
“There is no room for love in the work we do.”
Your fist trembled and you were under no illusion he didn’t hear your heartbeat. You were practically vibrating after your admission to him in the quiet solitude of his office, upon receiving feedback from your latest written report regarding the Aranara experiments.
In the grandiosity of his ambitions and plans for humanity, love mattered little when thrown in contrast to the bigger picture and the scope of what had yet to be achieved. You were better off anywhere else; your mind produced wonderful ideas that were better suited to another role in any other nation but Snezhnaya. So many others said the same and yet you chose to align yourself with the visionaries and the daring, the ones who willingly accepted their roles as villains to put the betterment of humanity ahead of all.
You stared at him, red eyes boring back into yours with the same intensity given to those who interrupted him mid-sentence. Disdain you could handle. Something else mingled, small and pinching, a needle prodding your finger from a poorly angled stitch. You dared not name it.
“If you stay, you will be sorely disappointed. And that is a promise.”
You nodded numbly, shoving your welling reaction and desire to grab him by the shirt collar down, down, down, as you left his office until all that was left was a vague sense of confusion. No other work would satisfy you. A decade of ennui led you to the Fatui and no other sub-faction would challenge you or your worldview as much as Dottore’s did. Those who left his research facilities were typically those not cut out for academia long term to begin with. But your time at the Fontaine Research Institute was an appealing point on your resume as was your particular focus on the study of time.
Squaring your shoulders, you returned to your workspace, staring at your equipment. The variables needed refinement and no one else understood this particular experiment the way you did. Might as well finish what you started.
The Segments usually had little to no interaction with other laboratory staff, at least here. Acting as their own agents, they oversaw their whims and thirst for knowledge themselves, occasionally with a small team in tow.
Yet you stared the youngest in the face one morning as he sat on your stool. He usually curled up under one of the work tables and stayed there for a few hours when he visited you, although you never quite understood why. It was his space long before you arrived but the ritual held and you never dared ask him to leave.
Without a word, the boy turned and began examining the Aranara. This one was green and a little chunkier than the rest; its fur was soft and smelled faintly of Padisarahs.
“Prime can’t,” young Zandik said, small fingers lifting a paw. “What you told him, he’s not capable of it in return.”
The young Segment hopped down from the stool expertly and dusted off his shorts.
“He’s sparing you the rest,” were his parting words.
A few days later, his older self was next, the Akademiya student with dark circles and a need to be right. He corrected your equations and you felt his breath tickle your scalp on more than one occasion that it was no longer coincidence.
Once in a while, he offered a treat stolen from the kitchen, acknowledging your lack of a break.
“He would be livid if he knew. Just don’t eat it here,” he hissed.
You never got to clarify whether he meant Prime would be upset at him for bringing it or you for not taking breaks. Maybe both. Somehow he always managed to find a fault or shortcoming (and that was what you found endearing, that he dared not hide his thoughts.)
His voice tightened when you leaned in and turned your head unexpectedly, lips brushing. The air seemed to expand as you felt an unmistakable hardness at your hip that he had been trying to keep to himself.
You didn’t pull away but instead allowed him to guide your hand over his tented pants. His kiss was sloppy, all trembling lips and slippery tongue; he jerked his hips against your palm in the dead silence of the laboratory and tears glistened as he spasmed, a dark stain forming beneath your touch.
He came back, this time asking for your opinion as he slid fingers beneath your skirt and along your wet entrance, prodding and rubbing. You came, empty, as you listened to him muse about the mechanical creations of the Dahri and you pretended you didn’t hear a different name on his lips.
His older counterpart, more boisterous than the rest, interrupted both of you when it suited him, a large grin ripping itself from his mouth as the student scampered away. This one had spent time in the desert, learned what it meant to be transactional with purpose, and had no qualms overtaking personal space.
His kisses left little cuts in your lips, his teeth sharpened for the sake of illusion. A monster in all but title, he proclaimed, and he had to remedy that if he was to usurp the fate that awaited him. This one marked you, interrupted your work so frequently that you did, in fact, contemplate putting in your resignation. You’d never get work done like this, bent over your desk and seemingly high on sexual release for several hours a day.
And even when he dragged you out of the lab, you could hardly consider the time productive by any standard. At least for your own projects.
His, however, flourished under your hands. New specimens of flora and fauna, brought back from fossils dug up from who knew where. Green and pink and blue and purple, their shades never before seen on the surface, you were certain. For every bite both verbal and physical, you were given gentle touches and praise, your knees pressed to your chest as you quaked and watched crimson agates bloom as he followed suit.
Upon your return to the lab and a normal routine, you felt Omega more than you saw him. The Segment who dragged you out to the steppes and plains outside Nod Krai was never quite within eyesight again, certainly not when the one so close to Prime himself lingered. You had a feeling, however, that this was not the first time Omega had watched, observed, noted the Segments and their engagement with you. Only now, he was making himself known, like the Rishboland Tiger you read about from the same nation as the Aranara; he was simultaneously beloved and feared for being pragmatic and seeing actions through to all consequences. The very things so many loved about Prime without the weight of an existence numb to everything but progress.
To his credit, of all the Segments, Omega flattered your skills and knowledge first. He was prideful but not above accepting that he had the minds of those who dedicated themselves to one particular topic, and therefore would prove useful when the time came. His attention was different, more focused, constructive, but by now, you caught on that there was more to all of this and you were thankful when he took you from behind. At least you could pretend he might be Prime this time; with the others, their personalities were not yet honed and their movements left much to desire, too overcome with immediate lust and a need to experience it. With Omega, you could close your eyes and consider that, with only a few striking differences, he was one and the same as Prime.
Everything you dreamed about, ever since you met him.
The mirage was shattered when you boldly plucked his mask from his face and stared at two deep set kameras, their apertures whirring in response. Between them, a red star, spinning on an axis of infinity. You could not determine if you were mad at Dottore himself for allowing his Segments to keep up this farce or yourself because it kept happening. Part of you just needed a reminder, to be grounded, lest you be lost at sea like driftwood.
The grin that split the Segment’s mouth was nothing close to joy. It sent chills down your spine and you stumbled back, catching yourself just in time. Torn between running and wondering what, exactly, he would do, you froze instead only to end up bent over your workstation. He exposed your ass and as soon as the chilled air hit your skin, you were met with the slapping sting of his palm, the crack echoing in the empty workshop. He soothed your skin with his bare hand after ten strokes, each harder than the last.
“He does not even love himself,” Omega growled, fist buried in your hair and pulling as he pumped into you. With every thrust, the edge of the table knocked the wind out of you. “His emotions are so stifled that we are left to channel them in such stunted ways. Pathetic, that you stayed at all. You will not survive what he will do to you.”
You were left with nothing but the faintest hints of pleasure, an orgasm rode out so harshly you had to second-guess it even happened. The others at least made you seem presentable. But Omega left you bare and sticky and on display for all to see, for Prime to see. Disappointment did not even slim the surface, barely scraped fresh snow off the iceberg that now made up your heart.
He had been right. Of course. When was he ever wrong?
Part of you screamed to stand and make yourself at least presentable. You had more dignity than this. But you couldn’t. Too much effort. Who cared? Your colleagues kept clear of you now. Your research would never quite finish under these conditions and by now, you were too far behind. You stared off, counting thirty flagstones in the floor before you heard a familiar set of footsteps.
Gloved hands, cold and calculating, inspected your exposed flesh. Your skin burned as one pressed against the tender redness from Omega, a faint huff of air the only response of recognition. Fingers grabbed a fistful of your hair, pulled, and exposed your neck only long enough for you to feel a sharp prick. Ice bloomed in your veins, searing as it went. Your eyelids grew heavy from the pain, your brain trying to protect itself from the overload.
You tried to speak but your tongue refused to obey, practically frozen to the roof of your mouth. Vision flickering, the last thing you saw was Prime’s face, properly, scar tissue glistening as his wide eyes watched in fascination.
“You didn’t listen,” he hissed. “They never do.“
Prime fixed your clothes and lifted you, draping you over his shoulder as if you were little more than a slaughtered lamb.
They were quicker this time. More impatient. The neural pathways had already been connected and he had far less time than anticipated. But no matter. Thankfully there was always a spare.
He passed through three sets of doors, each biometric scanner more specific than before. They required signs of organic life, preventing any Segments from intruding on this little haven.
Love. Little more than a chemical reaction. Utterly irrational, illogical, and yet humans treated it as if it were little more than air, absolutely necessary for existence. Every attempt to quantify it left more questions, which required more subjects. One might have called him mad, or say he was overthinking such a simple part of human nature. He chuckled at the prospect.
He would figure it out one day. The Tsaritsa asked him to return her sense of love, properly, and he would succeed. If he could manufacture godhood and faith with a mere Akasha and a puppet, what chance did love stand against his knowledge?
Dottore discarded you in one of the numerous small chambers lining the hall, his breath curling like a dragon’s beneath his nose. Your face was still frozen in abject terror, a deer caught in a hunter’s line of sight. A side-effect of the agent. Your face muscles would ache the next time he saw you properly but nothing the thawing process wouldn’t take care of, come a few decades down the line.
Your perspective and dedication to every part of him was fascinating. Most rejected one in favor of another, but you?
He tucked away a loose strand of hair and dared allow himself to kiss your forehead.
You were an absolute treasure of a subject.
He closed the metal lid and sealed the chamber, eyes lingering on your face in the single window. With another push of a level, the chamber’s pneumatics kicked in and pulled the container away, back towards the wall among the other vertical displays.
Dottore counted down one side, and then another. He would need to make more room sooner rather than later, sacrifice one subject to preserve another. But not today.
He pressed a hand to your chamber and then turned, the doors shutting behind him with a fateful hiss of pressure.