Work Text:
“Alright! Try it now?”
“Hello,” Ramattra tries to say, but the only thing that comes out is static crackles and garbled hisses. He watches the soft curves of Hana’s face twist into a frown.
“Hm, that’s weird,” she says, and leans forward again to peer into his chest cavity, gazing at the voice box she's been working on delicately nestled inside. “It looks like it should be working?”
Is that not what you have said the last three attempts? Ramattra wants to say, but obviously does not. He settles for a simple crackle, certain that his displeasure is conveyed if the way Hana looks up at him and frowns even more means anything. He knows that repairing his voice box would likely have been faster on his own, but Hana had insisted, thinking that she was doing him some sort of kindness—as humans always do. He had been a fool to relent to her whims.
Regardless, he can do nothing but suffer the consequences of his own actions. Ramattra sits on a simple bench pressed into the corner of the workshop, Hana perched between his legs. Her mech rests, deactivated, in the center of the room—still awaiting repairs from the last battle. Upon seeing its sorry state, Ramattra flexes the joints of his rebuilt fingers, testing them although he knows there’s little need for it.
Hana picks up a screwdriver from the empty space on the bench, squinting with a little hum before inserting it to fiddle with the voice box. It would be faster, Ramattra thinks, if she simply extracted the part to fix it, instead of doing it like this, close as they are. With the little space between them, he sees more of Hana's backside than her face, namely the gentle curve of her exposed back from where her tank top has begun to ride up her hips.
There is a scar there, barely visible. A simple line that curves around her hip and disappears beneath the seam of her shorts. A bullet that had grazed by, perhaps, or enemy claws that had come too close for comfort.
He turns his gaze away, choosing to stare resolutely at Hana’s damaged mech. Upon inspection, the repairs that will need to be made are fairly simple. Nothing that has not been done before.
Hana pats the arm of the hand resting upon his knee, leaning back finally, saying, “Okay! Take… uh… five? Four? Go for it.”
“Testing,” Ramattra says, and this time a voice does come out. Though it is decidedly not his. It’s too high pitched; squeaky. Hana bursts out into giggles, her hand going up in a poor attempt to cover her grin. Only Ramattra’s hand on her back and his thigh are enough to stop her from completely falling over in her bout of laughter.
“You sound like—you're from Alvin and the Chipmunks!” she exclaims between breaths, clutching her stomach, her smile still visible through the spaces between her fingers.
“I do not know what you are referring to, but I am irritated nonetheless,” Ramattra deadpans.
Hana gasps, says something like, “You’ve never seen Alvin and the Chipmunks?” And Ramattra regrets replying at all, because now he knows for certain that she is going to force him to watch whatever she was referring to later. A silly movie, he’s sure, just like the one with the rat and the chef.
Humans, he thinks with bone deep exhaustion. Then quickly corrects the thought to: No, just Hana Song.
“Let us please return to the task at hand,” Ramattra says.
Hana grins lopsidedly. “Y’know, it’s hard to take you seriously when you sound like that.”
Nonetheless, she picks up her tools and nudges his arm aside so she can plop herself down on his thigh without asking. Ramattra does not splutter, but he does tense briefly out of surprise, his fingers curling into a half-fist before he relaxes. If this position is what lets her work most comfortably, then so be it.
She continues to fiddle with his voice box, trying to adjust the pitch. They are silent as Hana works aside from her occasional humming—it’s a tune that Ramattra has heard playing from her phone various times before, probably a favorite of hers. She asked, once, if he ever listened to music; said something about how he’d probably be nicer if he did, holding up the other end of her earbud. Then, she had ventured to ask whether he was capable of playing music on his own. Like some sort of glorified radio.
He’d never tried it before and really had no desire to, and had (irritably) said as much. She stuck her tongue out at him and called him lame.
“Try it again,” Hana says after a bit. Her tongue pokes out of the corner of her mouth as she leans back to look him in the eyes.
“Hello,” Ramattra says, and it’s better, but still not him. Too deep, too gravelly. Hana huffs under her breath, bangs falling slightly over her eyes as she tilts her chin downwards and leans in again.
Ramattra can feel every scrape of her tools against the insides of his chest cavity, as careful and gentle as possible. If she were to look a bit to the left, she would see delicate bundles of wire and tech, usually protected behind the metal slats that make up his midsection. She could tear it apart easily before he could even think to stop her. Realistically, it is a foolish thing—this decision to let her peer into his insides, whole as he is, and fiddle with the most important parts of him.
They repeat the process a few times, Hana asking him to speak, frowning, then making more adjustments. It is a while before he deems it acceptable, and when she leans back this time she seems relieved and triumphant.
“Told you I could do it,” she tells him.
Ramattra has no need to breathe, but he makes a sound like sighing if only to convey his exasperation. “I never said anything that implied elsewise.”
Hana just smiles, bright and joyous. She pats his cheek once before slipping off his leg and onto the ground, taking a few steps back. Automatically, his chest closes itself back up, and the voice box and all his other parts disappear from sight.
“I’m glad that’s over!” she chirps as she stretches, raising her arms over her head and leaning slightly back with a noise of effort. “Should’ve fixed it first, honestly… hehe, well, at least you’re all patched up now!”
“Fixing it first would have had no effect on the rest of the repairs,” Ramattra says. “If anything, I would rather have my hands and legs back before my voice.”
Hana shrugs. “Yeah, fair. But I kinda missed hearing you talk, even if you are a little grumpy sometimes.” She smiles at him then, sickeningly sweet. “And as funny as the other voices are, I like your natural one the best. Y'know?”
Ramattra does not quite know what to say to that, so he remains silent. He can hear the quiet, subtle sound of his fans beginning to whir faster. It is a lucky thing that she cannot.
Hana sets about putting her tools away, mumbling about not realizing how late it was and wanting to get some sleep. It has been a long few days for her, Ramattra knows, and both of them for that matter.
Omnics don't require sleep in the same fashion as humans do, and when Hana suggests that he, too, spend the night resting, he tells her as much.
“I would like to conduct some last tests, simply to make sure I am functioning optimally,” he says.
Hana looks at him for a moment before shrugging and sighing. “Alright, if you say so.”
She waves goodnight, gives him one last smile before heading out the door. He watches it slide shut and listens to her footsteps fade, and feels the ghost of her hand against his cheek.
Only when he's certain she's gone does he move. His excuse for not resting had been a half truth; the part about not technically needing to sleep was true, but he didn't really need to conduct any last tests. He had already calibrated and adjusted everything as needed.
In another corner of the room are boxes of spare parts kept specifically for the rebuilding of the deactivated mech sitting in the center of the room. Since Ramattra had already analyzed it beforehand, he has a general idea of what is needed.
He takes the toolbox Hana had just put away, sets it in front of the mech, and begins to scrounge up the things he needs. He knows, of course, that Hana does not need his assistance with the repairs. But she had insisted on helping him with his own for no reason other than that she wanted to make things easier for him, and for that act of kindness, he can return it in one of the best ways he knows how.
If he works efficiently, he will have everything complete by the time she wakes in the morning, and if he is fortunate, there will be a few extra improvements along with it.