A/N: Well, off the back of reading Mortal Engines and going to see the film, I have officially just cannonballed into the deep end… As in: I have started writing YA fanfic.

'Am I broken?'

He looked at me, as best he could with cold, dead eyes.

They weren't real eyes. They had a fascinating, hollow green glow.

He had to think about it for a moment. Tilting his head, his eyes flickering over the piles of metal scrap that filled our constantly moving, rattling home.

'I… don't know… Hester Shaw…'

In his harsh, grating voice, he was just as unsure as I.

So I continued to wonder about it. While repainting broken dolls, while salvaging Old World technology from the crosshatching of tracks on the Outlands. While staring at a changing sky of clouds.

When is it that a person truly becomes broken? Is it when their bodies begin to decay? Or is it when their minds begin to fail?

I stared over the moors and sunrises and sunsets many, many times with these questions.

Or is it when something inside begins to break? Something unseen? Something that defines who we are?

I think I came to something resembling an answer when I looked at Shrike.

We are constantly breaking. We are constantly fading to dust. People do not go from whole to broken — we are in a process of breaking over our whole lives.

We break, in fragments of childhood, in shards of metal and glass, in pieces of dreams, in pieces of our hearts and minds.

I wondered sometimes, looking at the metal mirror image of myself that Shrike created. Was it true? If I died and was reborn in a metal shell, did that mean I would no longer be broken?

I touched the cheek of the metal angel that stood before me. Staring into her empty eyes.

No. I knew that I would not heal. I would still be broken, but frozen in time forever. A broken thing that would no longer decay. A broken thing with no emotions.

And I would not be able to kill Valentine.

So I remained a broken thing full of emotions, that decayed, day after day as I chased the man I sought to kill.

I left that metal angel behind.

And a decaying thing came to kill me.

We were both so broken, he and I.

Just broken things.

And I wondered if we would die.

The End

A/N: Reviews welcome, and thanks for reading!