I saw birds for the first time.
They sang in the trees, flying from branch to branch, their wings spreading wide before coming to drink by the water. I had seen images, and even movies with them, but it felt so much better to be where they were, with all of their songs and rustling through the leaves.
V led me down to the pool and we washed our feet, arms, and even our faces of the dirt from the tunnel. It felt so good to feel the fresh water on my dusty, dry skin.
The coolness of the water wrapped around my ankles. Moss tickled under my toes, and I shuddered at the unfamiliar feeling. V splashed water at me in the same way I had seen Firinne and Kira do at Chaoxing's house. The memory of them, of the City, everything felt so far away now. Looking around, the horizon of golden dunes embracing us, it was hard to believe we were not on a different planet.
I kicked more water at V, and he immediately retorted, bringing his palms together in the pool.
We laughed, and squealed, and laughed even more. Breathless, we caught each other's hands when we had sprinkled enough water all over our damp clothes and wet hair.
"Thank you for bringing me here," I whispered under my breath.
"I knew you would like it."
Both our chests heaved up and down fast with the emotions, almost breaking the small distance between us. The sun had truly begun to set now, coloring every living thing in warm orange and rosy hues.
The shimmering gold of the water.
The pink dunes of sand.
V's soft skin.
Some drops of water rolled along the side of his face, from his ears, down to his jawline. Droplets sparkled on his lips, and for a split second, I thought of kissing them.
I wanted to. So much.
My hands came around his face, and I caressed the wet hair strands behind his ears. My thumbs stroked the perfect traits of the handsome man who had so generously opened his life and home to me.
The world he lived in seemed endless, and I wish I could spend my whole existence exploring it.
He remained immobile, his dark eyes looking down at me with so much care, so much patience. His lashes had stuck together with the water, making his gaze look even more vulnerable than he already was.
I watched the face I loved the most in the whole world and wondered how he could have ever thought he wasn't worthy of loving and being loved.
He had shortened his name in hopes of becoming his own self, but in the process, he had shrunk away from the whole world.
I got on the tip of my toes and placed a kiss on his forehead.
"You are loved."
Back on my heels, our stares met again, and I felt a wall collapse between us.
V blinked, his dark pupils narrowing on me.
The next second, his sad eyes looked down, a frown appearing between them.
I realized he didn't believe me.
My hands moved from his face, circling his neck and embracing him as tightly as I could. How could I convey to him the profound affection I felt?
He did accept my deep embrace, and more than that, he pressed his cheek against my ear, his lips kissing my hair, once, twice, and more. Goosebumps appeared all over my skin, and I wondered how it was so easy for him to make me feel his love. What was I missing?
His fingers tangled into the hair on my nape, stroking their way down.
"Come," he broke our embrace at some point. "I want to tell you why I brought you here."
We walked back up the small hill, getting closer to the shed and on higher ground. The view of the sunset light declining over the oasis was breathtaking. Every second seemed to paint a picture with new colors, making it impossible for me to get used, for even one second, to the splendid beauty of the place.
We used the scarves to create a blanket to sit on a small patch of weeds and sand, facing the beautiful sunset behind the dunes. V handed me the water bottle, and I took a sip as he opened a container of my favorite cookies for us to share.
"Do you see the tallest palm tree?" he said, pointing to the other side of the pool where the nature was denser. "There's a gigantic dune to the left, do you see it? It's further than it looks. Maybe a twenty, thirty-minute walk?"
I nodded, my eyes on the landscape he described, biting into a CocOatCookie.
"Behind it, there's a loop station. It's called Former Water Storage Facility. It's not a normal loop station. It's right outside the City. And actually... It's the last station before entering the City."
"Where does it come from?" I asked, already curious to learn more about the world around us.
"It comes and goes straight to the Free City of the West. On the other side of the continent. From there, you could go anywhere you want."
I nodded pensively, adding something else to look up on my library list.
But my jaws stopped munching.
Slowly, I turned to look at him.
His sad eyes had been on me all along.
"What do you mean... I could go anywhere?"
His stare was grave on me.
"You could walk there," he pointed again at the large dune, "To the station," he repeated, as if making sure I was following. "There's a train leaving the City every day and stopping at this station. It probably looks abandoned... No one uses it anymore, but the loop is an automatic circuit. It keeps stopping there. You can board the train, and in about four hours, you'll be in the Free City of the West... Free to go anywhere you want. Free to do anything you want," he added with a small but meaningful nod of his head.
My mind went completely blank.
My eyes blinked fast at him, then at the dune, and back at him.
I put the half-eaten cookie back in the box, brushing the crumbles off my fingers.
"Have you been there?"
"No. I never left the City."
"How are you so sure it's there, then?"
"That's what I went to research when I left this morning."
"You didn't go to work?"
"No, Sade... Today is Saturday," he smiled tenderly, knowing I still had a hard time understanding the idea of days without work. "But I did go to my office. I needed to access confidential files to get information about this station. I knew of the oasis and the tunnels... I was confident there had to be something more around... Something useful for the City."
I remembered his cold attitude when he came back home this morning. I thought asking for forgiveness and promising it won't happen again would be enough.
"Is it because of what I did yesterday?" I asked, my voice trembling already.
I looked down at the backpack, the water bottle, the snacks... How long had he been planning this for? I was so sure my mistake from last night wouldn't be enough for him to send me away, but I guess I was wrong, terribly wrong.
"No. No, Sade!" he caught my hands when I brought them to my face, in complete shock. "You did nothing wrong."
I wasn't crying.
Not yet.
My mind couldn't even comprehend what was happening.
For once, I did feel like a robot. Like a machine encountering a command I had never been programmed to understand.
Free to go anywhere you want.
Free to do anything you want.
"I don't want you to leave," V spoke this sentence with much weight on each word, his eyes meeting mine. "You're not leaving today. I'm just-"
"So, you want me to leave. At some point, you want me to take that train," I quivered, freeing one hand to let an accusing finger point at that dune. "If not today, then when?"
"Let me explain," V moved to face me, his strong hold on my hands, anchoring me to the ground. "I don't want you to leave me, no."
"Why are you showing me this, then? Do you want me to escape?"
I should have let him explain, but talking felt better than thinking in this instant. Anything was better, but considering the new information he had just shared with me. My brain couldn't accept it. My mind kept rejecting it.
It, simply, couldn't be.
"I don't want you to escape," V repeated, his hands pressing around mine, his dark eyes even more intense. "But I need to think of the future. Your future. We only have two more weeks together before the lease ends," he reminded me. "Before that, I want you to know all your options. And not just me or Love Machina Inc... I want you to have a third option."
My hands relaxed in his palms, and he must have felt it because his thumbs stroked my knuckles, encouraging me to relax even more.
"One where you won't have to belong to anyone."
He looked back at the horizon, a painful feeling passing on his face. It didn't look easy for him to speak these words.
"To be fully honest," he continued, looking back at me with his sad eyes, a small breeze making his hair fly around his face. "I'm not sure how safe it would be. I heard the Free City of the West is a place where everything, or anyone, can be bought, sold, rented... Not just machinas, humans too," he winced, as if not comfortable with the subject. "I also don't know if they have the technology to maintain you..."
He shook his head, his hands leaving mine to rub his confused face.
"I have no idea what kind of maintenance you need... Love Machina Inc. obviously doesn't give instructions on how to deal with a machina that has gone rogue..."
"Gone rogue?"
"It means you stopped obeying your creators. In your case, you stopped following the commands Love Machina Inc. gave you."
I held my breath, my eyes averting his.
Was he slowly realizing I wasn't what I was supposed to be?
"Do you think I am going rogue?" I asked, wanting to check if I had done or was doing something that could betray my secret identity.
"I've been thinking about it for some time, actually..." he answered with a thoughtful stare, his head tilting to the side, his fingers playing with the lid of the water bottle.
"And what did you conclude?"
His eyes turned to the horizon, seeming to think of his answer. My chest tightened at everything at stake. It felt like forever before he finally replied.
"I don't think you are."
"Why not?"
He frowned, thoughtful again.
Then, against all odds, he smiled.
"Do you remember our first days together?" he asked, and I nodded, curious to know where this was going. "My first hypothesis with this research project was that you would flee," he said with a shy laugh, and I felt my eyebrows rise high up on my forehead in surprise. "I was so sure that a machina would see through me... You would see that I am a clone- no... Worse... that I am an exoborn. I thought you would be able to see I was a creation, just like you. I assumed you wouldn't be able to complete your commands. I had predicted you would... malfunction. But I was wrong."
Behind him, the sky had slowly turned to pale colors, the soft blue of the night gradually reached the horizon.
V kept talking. I looked up at the sky.
Some stars had already appeared.
"You did complete your commands," he spoke in a soft voice. "You perfectly did, actually."
"How?"
Next to me, he joined me to look up at the stars too.
"I read about machinas going against their programming for the sake of serving their owners... Your creators had not planned for it, but somehow, in your pursuit to imitate humans and human interactions... Machinas found a way to replicate patterns. No matter how harmful they could be to themselves or to their owners."
Harmful patterns.
The words echoed in my cloudy mind.
"So, no... I don't think you're going rogue. I think you're doing exactly what's expected of you."
In that instant, it clicked.
It felt as if all the clouds in my mind had suddenly evaporated, and all the answers lay in front of me.
My eyes left the stars, and I looked at him.
"You think I'm going to leave you."
His sad eyes smiled.
"Everyone who enters my life is bound to leave at some point."
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