[url=https://www.bungie.net/en/Forums/Post/197415283?page=0&sort=0&showBanned=0&path=1]Catalogue of Art, Profiles, and Fics related to Fireteam Daybreak[/url] [i][b]Characters[/b]: Cayde (pre-conversion), Laila (post-conversion) [b]Words[/b]: 2,273[/i] [i]Part 1--- [url=https://www.bungie.net/en/Forums/Post/211065569]Thanatonaut: The Deep Stone Crypt (Prologue)[/url] Part 2 --- [url=https://www.bungie.net/en/Forums/Post/219825893]Thanatonaut: The Deep Stone Crypt (Memory 1)[/url] Part 3 --- [url=https://www.bungie.net/en/Forums/Post/227373339?page=0&sort=0&showBanned=0&path=1]Thanatonaut: The Deep Stone Crypt (Memory 1.5)[/url] Part 4 --- [url=https://www.bungie.net/en/Forums/Post/227633976]Thanatonaut: The Deep Stone Crypt (Sideshow 1)[/url] Part 5 --- [url=https://www.bungie.net/en/Forums/Post/229905165]Thanatonaut: The Deep Stone Crypt (Memory 2, part 1)[/url] Part 6 --- currently reading[/i] -------- The air in the lab was frigid. Cayde shifted the hospital gown and pulled it out of the pile that had gathered in the crack of his ass; he huffed as he hunched his shoulders over his knees and leaned forward to drum his fingers idly against the cold edge of the steel examination table. A month already he’d spent on Mars preparing for his new life, his days full of psychoanalysis, strangers asking questions and dredging up memories he hadn’t thought about in years, physicals… but, all in good company, so there was that. Today he’d been sitting there for three hours without much to keep him occupied, other than staring out the window and making faces at anyone who glanced in at him as they walked by, and that had gotten boring after the fourth scientist had had no reaction. And then there was Laila, who had been just so goddamn quiet today, not that she had ever been particularly chatty, but at least when she was smiling he knew he’d never be bored; this was different though. It was a solemn, uncomfortable silence he wasn’t sure he should prod at. His head turned to the Exo to his left – the first of her kind, the only one in existence to possess the complexity of a completely human mind – as her mechanical fingers tapped at a keyboard and eyes diligently scanned the data being fed to the computer before her from the electrodes pasted all over his body from head to toe (yes toes, fingers too), and he grinned. “Am I really so interesting that you haven’t even bothered to touch your coffee yet today?” Laila stopped typing as her eyes unfocused, and she blinked a few times, shook her head and turned to him. “Wh- what?” He popped his brows to motion toward the still full paper coffee cup on the countertop beside her, and her head followed, accompanied by a low mechanical whirring in her chest and lowered eyelids. “Oh…” her voice trailed off as her gaze fell to the floor, the lights in her cheeks went out completely and she turned back to the computer desk. “Yeah… it just, hasn’t quite been the same since the conversion,” she noted with a sadness in her eyes that was hard to miss. Cayde’s demeanor was soon to follow as he sat up straight and leaned back on his hands, looked off to the side in thought for a moment. “Yeah, I suppose it wouldn’t…” he started as he mulled over whether or not he should ask any more questions. It wasn’t like he hadn’t noticed the absence of little love notes, or that the ring she’d worn on a chain around her neck had stayed with the “other her”, or that Merric had stopped acknowledging her when he passed her in the halls. Those things had stayed with her true self- no, her human self, the self that had given her independent life, separate from what she’d remembered (or perhaps known, he was still trying to sort that out for himself). The signs were hard to miss, when those were the things he’d been afraid of since the day he’d agreed to Clovis Bray’s offer. “Suppose a lot of things would be different,” he mumbled without thinking, at which her cheeks, brow plates, and lips contorted, and she looked away for a brief moment she was almost able to hide. Laila’s shoulders dropped after an extended silence and her fans whirred a sigh. “Yeah… you could say that,” she replied. “I mean, can you even still taste food? Do you need to eat or is it just a habit? Where does it all go? Do you have to like, you know… “empty the tank” once in a while? Do you get hot or cold? If you stub your toe does it hurt so bad it makes you wanna-” The Exo woman’s hands slammed down on the countertop in a way that made him jump and snap his head around to fixate on her standing there with her head hung, jaw frozen, and hands quivering, and Cayde swallowed hard but quiet. Books swayed and glass bottles rattled on the metal shelves as they settled back into place, and the repetition of the heart rate monitors’ beeping was broken as fear flooded thick into his chest and quickened the otherwise steady rhythm. It wasn’t the reaction itself that scared him as much as it was that Exos didn’t act like this (rash and emotional), and he wasn’t sure what came next. But after half a minute of silence, he heard a familiar sputtering in her chest that mimicked a muffled cry, and he sighed, quiet and heavy. “Laila… are you okay?” he asked hesitantly, his eyes looking toward the side of her head as she struggled to compose herself. After a few moments she shook her head, and his face softened as his heart sank and the playfulness left him. Even if humor made things easier for him, it wasn’t always the answer for others, and he could tell he may have crossed a line he wasn’t aware of. Normally she would just roll her eyes or scoff and shake her head, or hell sometimes she’d even laugh, but her good-natured vibe had become something dark and desperate to be left alone. Focusing on her work had gone from a light jog to a grueling marathon, and a usual lack of patience with him had been replaced by an alarming disdain for her own existence. Everything about her aura felt so wrong, he wasn’t sure he wanted to ask why; if he already had an idea of what the answer would be, it wasn’t particularly something he wanted to hear. And that was exactly why he persisted. One hand lifted off the table and ever so slightly reached toward her, but retracted almost as quickly as it moved, and he sat chewing on the inside of his lip for a moment more before he mustered up the strength to ask, “What’s bothering you?” She remained quiet, very clearly torn between wanting to confide in him and wanting to keep her anguish to herself as she always had. Her relationship was her business, but that was before Merric had denounced her as the woman he’d loved and written her off as nothing more than an AI with memories synthesized from the neural synapses of her human counterpart. This situation was new and uncomfortable. All she wanted was to talk to him and work things out the way they always had, but that wasn’t something he wanted so there was no closure or resolution- only the deep, vast abyss of despair she’d resigned herself to living in. The carbon fiber in her cheeks strained painfully, and she opened her mouth to say one thing but said the opposite. “I don’t think… that’s appropriate for me to discuss with you-” “You mean how devastating it’s been to be torn out of your life and live as a shadow, watching everything you’ve known and loved continue on as if you’d never left?” The pale and sickly look of a person’s facade shattering as their heart dropped into their stomach was unmistakable, even when their face lacked muscle and skin to express the agony; it was depressing, and he wished he had phrased it a little more delicately. “I may be consciously dismissive of things that make me uncomfortable,” he admitted with a somber chuckle as he waited for her to turn and look at him, “but I’m not stupid. Even a blind man could see what this is doing to you.” There was movement as she closed her eyes and shifted her posture, but she didn’t turn around. “Are you gonna talk to me or are you just gonna let me babble on like an idiot until I accidentally say something to piss you off again?” Laila’s shoulders relaxed and she turned just enough to glance over her shoulder at him. “Why do you care?” she asked, sadness in her voice. Cayde’s brows wrinkled and he forced a cheerless smile. “Other than the fact you’ve become my only semblance of a friend around here…” he hesitated as she glanced at the floor near his feet and took in a slow, shaky breath. “… I’m scared of what happens when it’s over, and you’re the only one who’s gone through this to know.” Confusion and anger flashed across her face as she turned around, but when she met his eyes his genuine grief took her by surprise. Laila softened as she took a few small steps toward him, but startled when a hand shot out to clasp at the arm of her lab coat. “Please,” his lower lip quivered as he begged, breathless and desperate and on the verge of tears. “I want to know what to expect.” ([i]Cont. in comments[/i])