Long Time Coming

It’d been so long since she’d thought of Arlo. She knew how bad that sounded, but the world changed so much since they last saw each other. Plus, she never had the best attention span even before the old world ended. But then she made her centennial return—well, maybe a little later than that—to pay her respects and a Builder was there. It shouldn’t have been surprising; they were everywhere nowadays. Except it told her Arlo was gone. Somehow, after all those years, he’d walked away.

That… was unexpected. And he didn’t even leave a message for her. How rude.

With her bag of prized possessions on her back, she headed across the bridge towards the community called Seventy-Seven. It was the nearest settlement according to the Builder. If she was going to find Arlo anyway, that was the best place to start. And nothing was going to stop her from tracking him down.

It turned out to be way easier than expected.

She had to duck back off the road as Arlo, sleeve pinned up and wearing an eyepatch, went into a building tagged Blackwell’s Market. He wasn’t alone, either. There was a woman with him; a pretty one too. From the way they talked, it sounded like she was his new owner. She watched them from the bushes as Arlo and the woman went into the store. Then he came running out a few minutes later terrified of something. She couldn’t help but giggle; same old Arlo.

Since then, she watched him. In his new home, when he would go to that tavern, when he went fishing. Always there, but far enough that neither he nor his new owner ever saw him. Not that she was particularly worried about her. That lady seemed a little slow.

Even after finding Arlo again and shadowing him for a few weeks, she still didn’t have a plan for how to approach him. The thought of it made her bashful for some reason. There were plenty of times when his new owner would leave, and he’d be home alone. It’d be simple to just walk up and knock on his door; she almost did a few times, too. But then her nerves got the better of her and she shied away like the child she was created to resemble.

That changed one day when Arlo jumped down from the balcony and sent her scrambling for cover, but luckily, he was distracted by chasing a bird. That was new. Keeping her distance, she followed along after the boy until he came to a house. Even she was curious about what the bird did to make Arlo chase it.

But then he met that boy. That stupid boy, with his stupid soft eyes and kind smile and his “hey, do you wanna go play?” stupid garbage EVERYTHING. She hated him so much, whatever his name was. Just like Anne. And she hated Arlo for accepting. Did he forget everything? Forget her…?

No.

No more hiding. No more waiting. She watched as the tired-looking woman came to the house and left with Arlo and his new owner. Then she dropped down to his bedroom window and slid the door open. He’d be back sooner or later. And she’d be waiting for him.

Reunion

Arlo held his breath with his back to the door. Both he and the cardigan girl listened intently as Lavinia turned and went back to her room. He wished he could be relieved at that, but Lavinia being safe also meant he was on his own with the stranger who’d haunted his mind for weeks.

Then she giggled. “Changing your clothes? That was the first excuse you thought of?”

“Who are you?” Arlo demanded. “Why have I been seeing you?”

“You know who I am” she replied. “Or, you better. Just shut up and think about it.”

Arlo closed his eyes. Ever since the incident where he’d forgotten where he was and shouted at Lavinia, he’d done his best to bury the image of the smiling girl and the old apartment. He never wanted to see any of it again. But now… he didn’t have a choice. He pushed deeper than he dared to in a long while. Until a squeaking broke his concentration.

He opened his eyes again and saw the girl bouncing up and down on his bed. When she realized he was watching her, she slowly stopped.

“… Something wrong?” she asked.

“I could use a few seconds to focus,” he replied.

“Oops.”

Arlo shook his head again and closed his eyes. “This is hard enough already, Mira. I don’t—”

As soon as the words escaped his lips, he froze again. The girl had to cover her mouth to keep from squealing out loud.

“You remembered!” she said in as hushed a shout as possible.

“I don’t know how I remembered…” It was like her annoying behavior was the final push to dislodge the name from the murky depths of his damaged memory.

“Because we’re best friends.”

That claim shocked the boy as much as finding Mira waiting for him a few minutes prior. If they were friends as she claimed, why was he so terrified whenever the image of her passed through his mind.

“Somebody doesn’t believe meee,” Mira cooed, seeing the mistrust that must have been obvious on his face.

“It’s not that I don’t believe you, it’s just…” He paused to think carefully. “My memory is damaged, and I don’t remember everything about you. But what I do scares me…”

The girl paused, her previous smirk dipping into a frown.

“But… But I’m your friend. You said we were, why would you… Is it because of your arm? I didn’t mean to, it was an accident—”

“Your arm”…?

“Mira,” he said. “What did you do?”

The girl he’d been afraid of for weeks shrank before him, changing from an unknowable and potentially malicious entity into the child she appeared to be.

“Everyone was running away from the sirens and the radio broadcasts, but you didn’t want to come with me…” she said. “You wanted to stay with them. With her. You promised you’d always be my friend. You said so when I brought you back to the factory!”

Arlo never saw a factor in his fragmented memories. “What factory? Why did you bring me there?”

“It’s what I was made to do. MIR-A; Mecha something Reclamation unit Alpha. And when you were broken and they sent me to bring you back to fix you, you promised that you’d be my friend forever if I helped you get back to your old owners.”

She looked frustrated almost to the point of tears.

“Luisa Williams and her little daughter Anne…” Mira said bitterly. “The girl you were sooo attached to. You wanted to go with her instead of staying with me, and we started shouting at each other, and then—then I tore your arm off!”

Arlo felt the air catch in his throat. When Lavinia explained that she found him under a building in the ruins, he thought his missing eye and arm were both a result of the building’s collapse. Or just as a result of time. But it was this girl, the unknown terror he’d been seeing for weeks, who hurt him and left him buried. Did she take his eye, too? Did she leave Luisa and Anne—whoever they were to him before—in the rubble too?

Mira was shaking and stood up on his bed. “B-But I didn’t mean to! It was an accident, it—it didn’t have to be that way! All you had to do was keep your promise!”

“Arlo, what in all heck is going on?” Lavinia asked as she stepped into his room.

She immediately froze at the scene; Arlo trembling on the ground before a girl standing on his bed with tears running down her face. The boy instinctively stepped over and put himself between Lavinia and Mira. And in that moment, as he sided again with a human companion against her, the hurt in her eyes was indescribable. Arlo reached out to her, but she bolted away and clambered out through his open window before he could say anything. Mira was gone in only a split second.

“Arlo…” Lavinia said a few moments later, after making sense of what just happened. “We really need to talk.”

“I know…” he replied.

An Unexpected Guest

“So… She’s not a friend of yours?” Lavinia asked.

“No…” Arlo replied. “I think… I think I used her. Whenever she knew me Back Before…”

“Arlo, you are a kind, shy, considerate little boy.” Lavinia shook her head, “You’re not a user.”

“How do you know? How do I know? There’s still so much I can’t remember…”

Neither made it far after Lavinia interrupted their confrontation. Now they were both on the floor against Arlo’s bed, and were finally able to talk after he managed to somewhat calm down. She wrapped her arms around the child’s shoulders and pulled him close. Lavinia could still feel his trembling as she did, but he soon melted into her embrace like when her mother hugged him.

“What did she say happened between you two?” she asked.

Arlo took a deep breath. “Mira is a hunter, another mecha created to capture us. She said I was broken, and she brought me back to wherever we were created. I don’t know what was wrong with me or why she was sent for me… She said I promised I’d always be her friend if she helped me get back to my owners at that time.” He turned away, “But… from how it sounds, I only manipulated her to get back to Ms. Luisa and Anne…”

“Ms. Luisa? You used to call me that now and again after I got you working again,” Lavinia said.

“Maybe I still have some memory of her somewhere…”

“Sure, but getting buried under a building for a couple centuries would give anybody memory issues.”

Arlo sighed. “What should I do? I’m afraid she might try to hurt you. She might have hurt my last owners, too…”

“Well, first off, I’m not your ‘owner,’” Lavinia said. “This is what I was gonna talk to you about before, but… I mean, I care about you. Like my mama cares about me.”

The boy looked up at her, his green and brown eyes both shining and looking like he might start crying next. Lavinia had to glance away; if he started crying then she was gonna start crying, and that wouldn’t help anybody right now.

“So, I guess now’s when I start giving you important parent lessons. You made a promise to that girl, right?” Arlo nodded slightly, and Lavinia turned back to him. “Then you’ve gotta keep that promise. Maybe she is dangerous, but she’s hurting too.

“I’ve looked in those old ruins and talked to just about every traveler coming through Seventy-Seven, and you two might be the only working mechas left out there. Before this gets any worse, you’ve got to at least try talking to her.”

Arlo was quiet for a time. He could still see Mira’s trembling and the pain in her eyes when she saw him prepared to side with and protect Lavinia against her. Then he remembered her confession about what she did to him. He remembered why he was so afraid of her when his memories began to resurface again.

“What if she doesn’t want to talk…?” Arlo finally asked.

“Then… Then we’ll figure something else out,” Lavinia said.

She pulled the boy in closer, and he closed his eyes. Whatever “something else” meant, Lavinia either didn’t know or didn’t want to say in front of him. He didn’t want to think about it either. But he was going to do whatever it took to keep Lavinia safe.

***

“I’ve really gotta teach you not to steal stuff,” Felix muttered, as he took a recently polished enamel pin from Capri’s beak.

The crow rustled its feathers and began to clean them in his windowsill now that his new treasure had been delivered. Felix smiled at the bird, then dropped the pin into a dented bucket with Return to Owners scribbled on it. At the brief clank, Capri’s head immediately snapped up towards the bucket. Before Felix could stop him, the crow dove forward and grabbed the pin again, flapping back up to the windowsill again and managing to knock the bucket over in the process.

Felix sighed and pet the crow. “Do you have to be so cute when you’re being a troublemaker?”

Capri closed his eyes and laid his head into Felix’s hand, until knocking on the front door caught both of their attention. Felix turned and went over despite his crow’s preference towards more scratching. When he opened the door, he found a girl around Arlo’s age waiting, wearing a white cardigan, skirt, and bow in her hair. When she looked up, he realized her eyes were red and puffy.

“Erm… hello,” Felix greeted.

“Hi,” the girl curtly replied. “I’m Arlo’s friend. Can I come in?”